Living The Red Life - Founders of Altera Aesthetix: Restoring Confidence, Not Just Faces

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

Janie Futch and Martina Kolovich, co-founders of Altera Aesthetix, delve into the intricacies of the aesthetic industry. Set against the backdrop of an American market still catching up to global standards, Janie and Martina share their journey from dermatology practitioners to industry innovators. They discuss the growing accessibility and acceptance of Botox and fillers, emphasizing the importance of enhancing natural beauty and restoring confidence without conforming to societal stigmas of vanity.Throughout the episode, Janie and Martina discuss their philosophy of patient-centered care, putting an emphasis on understanding individual concerns thoroughly before proceeding with treatments. The conversation touches on the rapid growth of med-spa culture, the significance of comprehensive training for injectors, and the evolving landscape of aesthetic medicine. As passionate advocates for safety and patient education, they aim to overturn misconceptions in the cosmetic industry, ensuring that procedures like Botox and fillers are seen as positive, transformative experiences handled with utmost professionalism.Key Takeaways:Patient-Centered Approach: Janie and Martina prioritize understanding patients' unique concerns, focusing on enhancing natural beauty and restoring confidence rather than radically changing appearances.Education and Expertise: Both founders stress the importance of advanced training and education for injectors to prevent unsafe practices and ensure optimal results.Market Insights: Learning about the American esthetic industry's growth compared to global standards, emphasizing the need for more regulated and safe practices.Stigma and Perception: Addressing societal views on Botox and fillers, they promote these procedures as confidence-boosting rather than superficial.Business Growth Strategies: They share their strategy of building long-term patient relationships over short-term financial gain, ensuring a sustainable business model in aesthetics.Connect with Janie Futch and Martina Kolovich:WebsiteInstagramFacebookConnect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

We're way, way, way, way behind in the aesthetic world. A hundred percent. Like, you go to South Korea, you can get, like, a whole new face in like a day. Like, it's wild. Just because you put something there doesn't necessarily fix the problems. That's exactly why we ask, what is bothering you? Not like, I want my chin done today, right? You give us what the problem is and we'll give you the answer.

10, even 20 years ago, not that long ago. Something like Botox was something that only housewives you watched on TV were doing, right? Or the Uber wealthy. but that has changed so much in the last 10 years. And so when we first got into aesthetics, that was really part of that movement, really. We were starting to bring aesthetics into a patient population who maybe didn't even think about these types of procedures before.

And we really made it more mainstream. So now, in addition to your hair and your nails, you're also getting your face done. We've had so many people just like cry in the chair just because it finally makes them feel like them again. It's a small change, but it makes such a big difference. How do you keep the safety rails up? How do you have a client and go, too much is too much?

Like, you already look fantastic. You don't need, but you also want to make money. Like, one is it good for business, but also bad for health. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the Red Life, ditch the Blue Pill, take the Red Pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Welcome back to another episode of Living Your Legacy, the Red Life Edition,

for Insight Success. I'm Ray Gutierrez. Joining me today are Janie and Martina. They are co-founders and they are in the business of aesthetics of Botox. Let's get real folks. The exterior matters, right? Yes. You know, it's not even that. It's not like necessarily, I don't ever want to change somebody's face, but just to make them feel more confident and what they've already got going on. Yes. You're just enhancing what they already have. So again, people like to think about aesthetics being superficial and like, does that really matter? Can you really build your way? life around that, but honestly, you'd be surprised. It's extremely fulfilling because you interact with the world differently when you're confident. Present client face. Like you have a must

have a face that's fresh, happy, and front facing. That's what we like to say here when we work in marketing. I'm a firm believer that you've got a resume. You might add a headshot. And the reason why I'm going down this route is like the exterior does matter. You're working with these folks. You guys are in the business of essentially making people happy from the exterior and then working your way in. Talk about your process and how you got into this. I mean, I was working dermatology and that's just sort of part of it, right? You know, people are coming in and asking about their skin. And then, you know, from that goes to like, okay, so I have this problem. I have these lines I don't like. And so you can, we try to take a medical stance at that. If you come in and I'm

sick, I have a sore throat. Okay, let me run you through these things. I do the same thing. We hand somebody in the mirror and say, what's bothering you. It's not like what I see. It's what you see. So that's the big difference on the way that we practice medicine. Yes. And I would say, you know, 10, even 20 years ago, not that long ago, something like Botox is something that only Housewives you watch on TV were doing, right? Or the Uber wealthy. But that has changed so much in the last 10 years.

And so when we first got into aesthetics, that was really part of that movement, really. We were starting to bring aesthetics into a patient population who maybe didn't even think about these types of procedures before. and we really made it more mainstream. So now, in addition to your hair and your nails, you're also getting your face done. I was just going to say, I'm a firm reliever. I haven't done my nails in a while,

but a good manicure on a man says a lot, like especially the handshake, the whole presentation, especially nowadays. But I grew up in a different time when my grandma grazed me, very Cuban, in a very traditional, old-fashioned way. Talk about the transformation that you see with your clients. Like, folks spend so much money to speak to a therapist.

They'll sit in those lips and they'll talk to me for hours. But you folks have found a different, kind of therapy. That's almost instant. Like you've had, you've had transformative experiences right when they see that mirror. Yeah, I mean, especially the new mom is like the classic one, the new mom. So we have spent 10 months cooking a baby and not feeling like ourselves. And then we're like maybe breastfeeding and just not sleeping, not sleeping. And you really don't feel like yourself at all. And to come in that chair and be vulnerable at that time. But then also, especially something like filler, they look different right.

then and there. And just giving them that confidence back. I mean, we've had so many people just like cry in the chair just because it finally makes them feel like them again. It's a small change, but it makes like such a big difference. What do you think it is? Is it kind of like bringing back to their teenage years, their youthful years before the evolve into parenthood? Like, what do you think is triggering? Yeah. Most of the time it's restoring something they used to see. So every once in while, maybe you were born with really small lips and you finally decided today is the day you're going to change that. But for a lot of times, it's something that's true. change on their face. And now it's just all they see every time in the mirror. So again, we don't

usually pick apart people's faces. We let them come in and we let them tell us the one tiny thing that bothers them. And that's what we treat that day. Because truthfully, if I can fix that for you, your confidence has gone way up that we can treat anything else that you have an issue with. And chances are once one thing's fixed, you're going to find the next thing that you want to fix. And like the tired thing is a thing, right? So, you know, tear troughs and just like feeling like you don't look like yourself and I think that's a huge thing when you I mean for me when I was pregnant I'm Italian my nose went like this big like right like I just stretched out and then everything goes back so just kind of just feeling like who you are again and it's not necessarily

I don't want to look like a teen I'm 40 like I mean I would like to look like in my 30 and Botox is a great way to fake that you look like you've slept I don't really know how to explain it and yes your lines are going to soften away but you just look refreshed like you've had a full night sleep even if Hatten. Yes, that's the best. And it's not like, I think people are so afraid to look like filler face so they don't even want to try Botox. I'm like, no, no, no. Botox is like you went on a two-year vacation. That's what it is, like in a bottle. Talk about the stigma. Folks think Botox and they think needles and they think about this weird experience or their face is not moving because there's good Botox and there's terrible Botox. There's no in between. Yeah, something we hear

so much. So our women come in and it's usually that their husband doesn't want them to get it done. Right. So, I mean, again, not to interrupt you and, like, chime in on this, but we hear this genuinely almost every single patient. You know, they just say, my husband doesn't want me to get done because he doesn't like the way Botoxin filler look. I'm like, your husband is only aware of the people that have bad Botoxin filler, right? So there's tons of women walking around with good Botoxin filler.

They just have no idea. And same with your hair color, right? Like how many people are dying their hair and you would have no idea because it's done well. It's done naturally. It looks good. So that is something that we have to kind of unravel with them a little bit and it's again another reason that we start really conservatively you kind of dip your toe in one little area see how you feel about it and then you're like wow that looks

great we're also really big on all of our injectors looking not overly done right so it almost looks like they've had nothing done and that's what we attract patients that come in and they don't want to I mean some want to look like they've spent money on it but for the most part they want to look like they have never had anything done and I think that's the secret sauce because if you look crazy. Your patients are going to think that they are going to look crazy. So it's kind of this, you know, fine line that you're towing. So I got to say you guys have a very unfair advantage because it's almost like, you know, the transformations. It is instant. So it's easy to market. It's the before and after. Talk about some of the challenges. How are you marketing?

You're doing a lot of on-camera education. Talk about that. Yeah. So we do do a lot of education on social media and things and that helps people understand because this is very foreign to people. even nurses and doctors who went through medical school and nursing school don't even know the difference between Botox and Filler. So this is a separate specialty that you learn outside of your, you know, graduate degrees. But I think that our patients are also very misinformed and they don't know anything about it as well. So it's super important to educate them, really sometimes before they even come in the door. Yeah, and I think there's certain things that are not instant that we do, something like microneedling.

Like that takes time. You don't really see your first real thing for like six months. and for our Americans, that's hard. We want instant gratification. We want to do it and we want to see it. And so it's hard for patients to see that, but I promise like those little things or skincare. Like I'll have someone be like,

oh my God, your face looks great, but I can't do the skincare piece. I'm like, well, girl, you ain't just going to get it from Botox? Like I'm doing it from every angle. And so that's the other piece that people have to understand. It's not all instant gratification. Some of it you have to do over time. And yes, we do get before and afters,

but you'd be surprised how challenging it is to get it before and after. People don't want to let you do it. They don't want their face put out there to the world, but that's what they get. Again, because Botox is still taboo. And so you sometimes, and maybe you'd be fine if some people knew you got it,

but you wouldn't want everybody to know. So really in our industry, we're very grateful for patients that allow before and afters to be shared, but truthfully, we're lucky if they tell, like, their best friend and their sister. Oh, for sure. I'm a firm believer in it,

but at the same time, I was a compliment, oh, your skin's so great. I'm like, no, this is 42. too. Like I could definitely use some work. What's something that's very common that clients walk in and you do right away? Is it crow's feet? Is it shed? Like what, if I walked into your office, what would be the first thing you go, hey, Ray, you need because? Well, I think most of the time it's what is bothering you. So it's either here for most women. If it's here, it's here, it's here, it's here. And if we treat just that one, I promise when you come back at your two week, you're going to see here if you didn't see it before. It's just sort of what happens. Because these go away. So for me, like, if I could only get one thing, it would be my crow's feet because I feel like they made me look like a grandma and I hate them and so I that is the one thing that I will always share and it's a very real thing because you'd be surprised how many times we sit a patient in a chair and you can just see it the forehead lines are just popping yeah and they're like well these tiny little lines right here they just really bother me

and guess what that's all we treat that day because she's going to come back and be so happy that these little tiny lines are gone chances are she actually comes back and says yeah but these are getting way worse and it's like no we just eliminated this and now you're moving on to the next thing It's even things like we've had people with like really bad acne that like can't, like I don't have lines, I don't have lines because they can't see past the acne. You clear their acne. We had a patient like that. We cleared her acne and she was like, my God, look at all these wrinkles that I now have. I'm like, oh, they were there before, but we just weren't looking at them. So again, so it's just super important we feel like to start conservative and start with what bothers

that patient most. It's not a bad business move. You're not getting a smaller transaction because they're going to come back. And it's a lifetime patient versus something. Like if you, it could be a cash grab. You come in and I'm like, oh, well, you need to do this and you need to do your cheeks and you need to your temples.

And if you, you know, that's going to be $7,000 today. People are like, whoa, like I came in here because these two lines. And now we, I'm paying you to say that. Maybe not where we live. Well, and we're from Savannah, Georgia. So yeah, I mean, we're still in a small, it's a small town.

For sure. So you're still like talking about small town America. And what Janie said in the beginning, when we first started, all they would ever talk about, we'd go to these big conferences and they're like, we've only tapped 17% of the market. I'm like, yeah, because you're not marketing to the masses. You're marketing to the like,

but as what they're telling you, you have to do this one-hour console or you rip apart their face. I mean, I would hate that if I was a patient. I'd never go back. Yeah, you get enough courage to come in and tell somebody what bothers you about their face and then they rip apart the rest of it

and tell you now it's 10 grand. I mean, that's not what we're trying to do. We're not trying to give you more insecurities than you came in with, right? Yeah, yeah. No, that's very, I wouldn't say clever because that almost sounds malicious, but that's very wise. Like, you definitely understand that your client has a very vulnerable experience, and they're willing to grow. They're willing to literally heal and change and metamorph.

Like, 40s is the new, like, 14. For sure. I definitely do not feel my age. Look around you. I definitely don't do anything remotely close to what I should be doing, especially as a, especially as a good old Cuban Latino from Miami that, you know, so how do you talk about You mentioned the American way. Now, hot dogs, instant, feel gratification.

Do you all do this work outside of the United States? Does this even exist if I go off into Switzerland, where everyone's topless? Is this something that's taboo there? So we're like this big in the aesthetic market. The world is like this. I mean, we'll- America's actually far behind when you're so far behind. I thought we'd be far ahead.

No, because we have FDA and we have all of that stuff. So there, I think there's something ridiculous, like 70 neurotoxone. On the market it's like Botox we have what six yeah like so we're way way way way way behind in the aesthetic world A hundred percent like you go to South Korea you can get like a whole new face and like a day like it's wild How do we fix this? Do we go up to Melania trouble like yo bro? What else are you doing? There's also other things that I say like we're a little bit more in the safety side Right so yeah like if you're in Europe if you're in London or in England Anyone can inject like really you could be like a like a

car mechanic and say, you know what, I'm going to start doing Botox store. I guess what you can. So you're probably not really going to see that. But as you can tell, there's not as much regulation and control and things concerning with safety like there is in the U.S., which even in the U.S., honestly, that could actually probably use some help and support. It could. Med spas are becoming popular, so more and more people are popping up med spas.

Yes. And so some of them are doing it well, and some are doing it a little bit unsafe and a little bit noncompliant. And so that's, I mean, I think part of our growth mission, too, is a, you know, if more people are going to pop these up, we want to help them do it correctly. Yes. And that's the other thing. Like you should vet your injector.

Like, okay, are they actually a medical provider? Because guess what? There are places near us that they're non-medical provider and they're buying it off Amazon, right? So, you know, I know. I know it seems wild that that happens, but it's happening, right? So definitely if you feel like you're in a place that doesn't feel clean or safe, like you should probably get up. Like, it's one of those situations because that happens. And I would assume Miami probably is...

Oh, I'm sure it's happening here. Right? Yeah, Miami's popping. Like, legally, very legally and illegally. Right. Like, I always say Miami's like the land of fake frauds and thieves. Like, everyone's a gypsy out here. Like, you got to be very clever to survive out here.

It's grown up. But beyond that, besides that, how do you keep the safety rails up? How do you have a client and go, too much is too much? Like, you already look fantastic. You don't need, but you also want to make money. Like, one is it good for business, but also bad for, for health. We say no a lot. I always say like I don't do weird. So if you ask me for something weird, I'm probably going to say no. And yes, is that going to turn some people off? Yes, because they are

going to go to the person that's going to say yes. It just is what it is. But at the same time, it's not safe sometimes. Like, we don't do nose filler, okay? Nose filler can be done very safely. I'm just going to send you to the plastic surgeon to do that. We're not going to do that. And I think that's okay I mean yeah and it's kind of about you know picking your heart or picking you know there's pros and cons to everything kind of thing yes maybe saying no to somebody might seem bad for business but if you gave them really overdone lips and 10 other people saw that and saw that that was your work and now that 10 people don't want to come see you because of that that's also bad for business right so there's a trade off every time you decide to make that decision but we do people

don't think that, but we say no all the time. Yes. Or people will come in and say like, let's say, I want my cheeks done and their cheeks are like this. Okay, well, what is it about your cheeks that you don't like? And they're like, well, I don't like these lines. There's like this famous woman that's from like, I don't know, somewhere in Europe. And her cheeks are like this bit, but guess what?

Her nasal labial folds are just the same as they were before. Just because you put something there doesn't necessarily fix the problem. So that's exactly why we ask, what is bothering you? not like, I want my chin done today, right? You know, so we try to, like, you give us what the problem is and we'll give you the answer. And I think that that usually works a little bit better. Right.

Where is the technology going? Are we at some point, am I going to just kind of rub like some sort of palm and Botox in or is it always going to be a needle? Like, what is actually happening when that needle goes in? I mean, for the most part, yeah, unfortunately you still have to, I don't want to say no pain, no gain in aesthetics,

but there is still a little bit of that. Even when it comes to things like laser hair removal, Typically, the ones that hurt a little bit are going to be the more effective ones, right? And yes, it does involve a needle, but something like Botox, we're using the tiniest little needle. It's really a very quick process. Nine times out of 10, that first timer says, oh, that's it, right? So it's something that I think most people in their brain have said this is going to be so much worse than it is, and then you realize it's really just nothing to it.

Our console, like if you're a new patient, is 30 minutes. My injection time is probably 30 seconds. So most of it is. is what are we trying to do? What are we trying to achieve? What neuromodulator do we want to use? And where are we treating? And then, like, what's the dosage?

Let me map you out, all of that stuff. And then us drawing up the medication. Me drawing it up takes longer than me actually injecting it. We try to do quick. Like, we do not numb for talks. If you want to, you can come in early and you can get it numb. That's fine. Sure.

But honestly, it's kind of, I'm the biggest baby known to man. I hate needles. I had four kids without epidurals. because I'm afraid of me. Oh, wow. And I get them on my face just fine. It's just, am I going to sweat? Sure, yeah, I'm going to sweat.

And I'm going to have to white down the chair afterwards, but it'll be fine, and it's really not that bad. You all didn't just, like, walk off a car lot and start at this business. You guys are all, like, many super geniuses. Do you all want to kind of brag about where y'all come from? I don't know about super geniuses, but, like I told you, there's a lot of nurses and doctors.

They have no idea the difference between Botox and filler. So that's what's hard about aesthetics. It's definitely something that's a special. that you go into after you get whatever degree or specialty or you know again nursing PA NPRN those are usually the designations that can do this type of stuff and it's a specialty that you learn afterward I mean our first year in practice we spent at least $30,000 a piece in training you know one training be $6 to $8,000 just for a day to learn something about injectables and so it's something that's super specialized and you know rightfully so it involves a ton of anatomy a ton of

safety features and things that you need to know. So it does take a lot of homework. I would love to say, yeah, just pop up your own med spa and you can be successful like us too. And you can. You definitely could do that. But I don't want to disguise the amount of work and time and things that were put in to get off the ground. Yeah. And in the beginning, what's funny is that like a lot of places are going to treat everything.

When we were in the beginning, we literally did like talks from here up and lips. And that was pretty much it. And we did it all together. And then we went from lips to doing like some cheeks. and then we added things on. Like nowadays people are like, oh, I'm a master injector. I've been doing this for a year

and I do like all the things. I'm like, you need a master of anything. Master injector is not really real title. It's not a real title. And if you really look at it, it's the amount of... Right.

There's no... It's like salt bay. It's like, do they just hold the injection a different way? Yeah, it's silly because really it's the amount of hours you put into your craft, right? And so we were doing this stupid franchise

and the biggest issue with us doing it is that everyone was like, well, They'll already know how to do that. They're a nurse. Like, no, they don't know how to do this. And they wanted to let us only have a week to train these people.

Like, that's not safe. It's not safe. It's not safe for the patients. It's not safe for the injector. And it's not fair to whatever business owner decided to, like, break this off. I mean, really and truthfully, we don't, we let make our people watch us for months before they're injecting filler. I mean, you can blind a person.

Let's be real. This isn't just like, everyone just thinks it's like fun. It's like the nail salon or the hair salon. They just forget that it's real medicine. I get it. It's the beauty world. So you want to pretend like it's downplayed. And again, we kind of do downplay it so people aren't afraid of it.

Correct. But at the same time, you do have to remember it as medicine. And it takes an intense amount of training. And why you can't just rub that Botox on your face is that that neuromodule has to get into the muscle. To the muscle. So the basic, yeah, the muscle, you basically make it so it can't fire anymore. I mean, you're making it so acetylcholine cannot go against a synapse to make the muscle. I mean, there's all the things.

It's on Snap 24. We know all of those things before you're doing it. It's not just some fun liquid that I'm putting in your face to make you not move. So I think we make it look betterly. And the problem, too, is I could put Botox in this area of her face and it gives me a great result. But if I put some just right here, she might have a really bad result. So again, it's what I love to just say, yeah, we'll just squirt it all in there and it's great. And it might get rid of all your lines, but you're going to look really weird because it starts affecting the muscle anatomy and how your face moves and how it sits.

And we, okay, so I was doing this, what, four years before we opened, and now we've been open six years. I don't even inject the way I did last year. Like, we're, I'm constantly changing, yeah. It's constantly changing and evolving with patients' anatomy and their faces. It's not cookie-cote. Like, back in the day, if you pull out the Botox, like, a little insert, and you follow what's on there, that person's going to look crazy. Like their brow hair is going to drop and their eyebrows are going to be like this. And everyone's going to know they had Botox and bad Botox.

So that's the problem is that everybody's different. And there really aren't any clinical trials for this. It's really a lot of just trial and error and experience of what injectors have realized works and doesn't work over the years. And that's one of our favorite parts about having multiple offices and hiring a lot of providers now that are doing this is we get to like team up and bounce ideas off of each other, get an opinion. Hey, this happened. What do you think? And that's, I think, super important in the aesthetic industry. It's not fun to feel like you're on an island.

And so, again, that's why I think things are constantly innovating and growing. it's because they're now more our people coming together and learning about what's really the best techniques. What needs to happen is they need to have some kind of like specialty for this. I just don't know how they accomplish that as fast as it needs to happen. And a lot of people don't want that, right? So like I'm on the board for AM spa, the American Medical Spa Association for the state of Georgia.

And like my idea is like people don't like to hear what I have to say because no, I don't think you should take an eight-hour course and be able to inject Botoxin fillers. Like, I don't. I don't think that's safe. Yeah, no. So, and I would say the majority of people that have been doing it for a long time feel the same way.

Oh, for sure. It's just going to hurt the overall bottom line. You're going to have a lot of amateurs just, like, poisoning the well. Yes. Yeah, there's so many avenues we can take this conversation. And do you all have competitors? Like, is there someone down the street that's just like, like, do you all give each other this thing guy?

Like, what's the business like and how do you stay relevant and, like, unique? Yeah, I mean, so we definitely. have competitors, right? So again, like I said, the med spa world itself is booming. You know, I would say competitive in nature, just in general. Right. It is competitive in nature. And I would say, you know, years ago, our competitor was truthfully more of a plastic surgeon. They were doing these things on the side, but now I would say that's not quite as common. A lot of plastic surgeons have left surgery and are specializing more injectables. But for most surgeons, surgery is their bread and butter. So that's usually their specialty they stick to. And then somebody like us who are injectors,

We're doing that same thing every single day, just like the surgeon is. And so that's what really makes you good at your craft is when you're doing it all the time and not just every once in a while. Our area, though, in Savannah is kind of nice that we do have a group that we get together. We used to get together more often, but it gets hard because then you have to get sponsors to do these dinners and things like that. But we do get together. We all know each other. Again, Savannah's a small town, like 250,000 people, right? We're a small town.

So everybody knows each other at this point. And I do think that for the most part, we are kind to one another. I mean, I think, I wish that we were kinder to one another, but I just think it's the nature of the beast. There's enough to go around for everybody. A hundred percent, because I'm going to do something different than somebody else, and you're going to like the way that other person does it, or you're going to like the way I do it.

Sure. And that's okay. Like, I'm not going to be everybody's injector. You can ask Janie, like, if you want, like, way more talks, it's probably going to come for her, because I'm kind of like don't give as much as like everybody else because I want people to move and do all the things and some people don't want to do that so yeah we said it's still an art and a craft so everybody has their own like you know flavor of it so I don't want to compare it to

a hairdresser but just like you might like this hairdresser and not that other so it's the same with injectables right you may have gone somewhere and enjoy your experience and then somewhere else and not and so I think there is someone for everyone I think that you know there is plenty like you said we can all play in the sandbox together in an industry like this you're going to be way better off if we all can help one another than hurt one another right there's there's going to be plenty of times where you need that colleague or you need that friend to be able to call and say hey this happened or can i borrow this or what about that um and i just think that that's always going to be more important to have than whatever you're going to accomplish by making an enemy out of somebody

i mean when we started there was really only one real med spa in savannah at that time and it was the only one for like 10 years something ridiculous like a really long time and so when we started i didn't know how cutthroat it was i was just like this sounds fun like let's do this like you know and so i i mean again i didn't know what i didn't know but if you're not passionate about this and like what like again that long process with your patient and that lifetime value you can see it as a cash grab so that every like the people that are trying to do it as a cash grab i mean that's why i think it becomes cutthroat is then they're you know they're competing over those patients. Again, that's not our MO. That's just not our style. It's not what we're

working for. We want those long-term relationships with the patients. I feel like that's when you have a non-medical provider like owning the business. When it's like the, if you ask the provider for the most part, they're not trying to do that. It's that non-medical person that's saying like you need to see this many people and you need to do this many syringes. And that's not fair. And that's again why we try to like stay in both lanes because I think that's when you get in trouble is when the non-medical person is telling you what to do. We even had to get creative on how to pay our injectors because we wanted them to be compensated well if they did good.

But at the same time, if I pay you more based on how many syringes or units you shove in somebody, I get it. Like you want to feed your family. That's a slippery slope. So we had to get really creative with like this algorithm that we did that basically, you know, incentivizes them and compensates them for hard work. But it's not this just like, you know, I get paid per unit and per syringe because, again, you don't want to just have filler faces.

Well, we just finished filming your women in power episode. Thank God, there's two of you, women in power. What are we going to learn about you all in this episode? I don't know. I guess that we're like resilient. I think that's like the biggest thing with owning a business that I've realized that's probably how we got to where we are. Like we're willing to take a leap and we're willing to pivot.

Most people get stuck. And so I think being able to just say, okay, let's throw that all in the trash and let's find something new to do with this group of people. and being excited about it is what makes you resilient. I think the other thing that you'll learn about us and that is also that we, you know, yes, Botox is fun and we make people feel pretty, but it's about so much more than that.

Again, for us and our internal mission is that we wanted to establish something where we could have a work-life balance, you know, where we could have a career, we could use our degrees, we could use our education and contribute to the world on a daily basis, but also still have time with our family.

And so, again, we've kind of expanded that mission into the employees that we hire as well. So I think that's a huge part for us is, you know, we've created this company now where people are able to get that. And again, do women own a lot of companies? I guess not right now in this day and age. But at the same time, like now we may not be doing like a franchise

but what we can do is say like this person's like really interested in doing this. Okay, you know what? We're going to work with you and we're going to help do the beginning part and we're really going to open because that's, Janie and I realize that's what we're good at. Like I can open a business like that. Like I can take a space. JD and I spend a weekend. We'll get it ready. We'll get your operations going boom, boom, boom, boom. I just don't want to manage it for the long term. So let me get you up and running and then you

get to do with what you want to do. And so being able to give that to people makes me excited. Kind of what happened here. How can folks find you? How can folks get a hell to you? So we're pretty, we're decently active on social media. We are no social media gurus by any means, but we do like to put our face on there regularly. Be silly, be transparent. Educate from time to time, right? But honestly, just make it where people feel comfortable to come in and see us.

Again, we are in way more hair and makeup right now than you will ever see us any other day of the year. We like to keep it real and raw because I think that that makes people feel more comfortable. I think in the aesthetics industry, there is this stigma that you have to be kind of poised and put together and all the things. And while that is great,

and I love those people who can do that, you know that's not really our most of our patients right like we're all figuring out life one crazy chaotic mess at a time and so we just like to have that natural relationship with our patients where they just feel comfortable so we're altera aesthetics is like our regular handle but we have altera aesthetics savannah altair aesthetics richmond hill alter aesthetics borough and then i am like injector martina and i am the busy nurse on social media those are great names right on well i have i appreciate the golden black It's very aesthetically pleasing. Yeah, that concludes yet another amazing episode of the Living Your Legacy podcast.

For Insight Success, I am Ray Gutierrez.