Getting Your Start In The Skincare Industry:
Mara: Talk to me a little bit about how you got started in the industry? What brought you into skincare?
Josh: I started with Medicis when Medicis was only a prescription dermatology company. From 2001 to 2004, I was in skincare but on the prescription side, and at the time we had prescription hydroquinone. We had products for acne, rosacea, antifungals, everything that a dermatologist could need really, it was insane gear back then for a rep. In 2004 Medicis acquired both American rights to Restalin and that’s when I switched from the therapeutic sales force in Medicis over to the aesthetics sales force. Really, I’ve been in the cash-based aesthetics side of things ever since then. I had various positions at Medicis with both Restalin and Disport being both field-based and corporate based. Then there was an opportunity with PCA skin, they contacted me back in 2015. They wanted to hire someone for their sales force and grow aggressively. It was private equity-backed and the goal was to put PCA on the map and to eventually sell to a strategic partner, which we did a couple of years later to Colgate Palmolive. I stayed on with Colgate/PCA for a couple of years and then I was presented with a very similar opportunity at Clarity RX. I was not just going to be running sales, but really every function of the company, so I took the join 2019.
Favorite Clarity RX Product:
Mara: Do you have a clarity RX product you’ve fallen in love with?
Josh: It’s nice because you look at some of our products like nourish your skin, which is a squalene product. You look at the ingredients, it’s 100% squalene oil and that’s it, t’s a very clean line. Everything is sourced from plants, and plant-based is hot right now whether we’re talking skincare, cosmetics, food, and that’s what attracted me to the line. There are really very few lines that are results-driven yet plant-based.
Selling Your Products and Practice:
Mara: Do you want to share a couple of the top tips you always share when it comes to how a practice can really move retail quickly and how they can really focus on selling skincare and their practice?
Josh: I would say the first thing is to just do it. A lot of people say, it’s not worth the hassle and I can make $50 or $100 by selling that, but that’s all really. To respond to those comments I would say, there’s a variety of reasons to do it and it could take up the next 30 minutes, but it’s better for you to make the money, then CVS, Walmart, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus or whatever. If profitability isn’t the biggest thing, which it probably shouldn’t be, but it’s a nice added bonus. It’s the control of knowing what they’re doing because you come to a medspa or physician, and then you leave and buy a product elsewhere. The customer is going to associate that product with the visit. Whether you like it or not, so if it’s irritating, full of fragrance, if it doesn’t make a difference on the skin, they’re basically saying I went to the doctor and this is what I got, even though they went and bought it on their own elsewhere. The important thing about skincare is they’re putting it on their face every day, and they can’t come to see the doctor every day. So we’ve always said, what they do every day is going to outweigh what they have done once every four months, once every eight months. If you can control what they’re doing in the morning in the night, that’s where people are going to see the biggest impact if they’re using results-driven products with ingredients that work.
Mara: I think that it is so important because they come and your patient is spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on a non-surgical treatment. Then they go home and wash their face with Neutrogena or another lotion and there’s nothing wrong with those products, but they’re not meant to really nourish your face or skin in the way that a high-quality skincare product will. With that, your entire team should have talk tracks, about skincare so that everybody should be able to sell skincare in the practice.
Josh: Totally agree with you and the common objection with offices and they are kind of programmed to say to skincare companies, “we’re just not looking at bringing in another line right now.” To which I always say, “that’s great because we’re not looking for you to bring in our whole line.” I’ve had people say, we want to bring in your whole line because it’s plant-based and results-driven. I say, well, that’s not really setting you up for success. Let’s put thought into each individual’s view because, for example, we have products for acne. If you don’t see acne patients than don’t bring in our acne products.
Mara: We always say, know your audience, and know the demographic of your patient. We as consultants wouldn’t say, “Oh, you need to bring in every single product from a specific line.” You want to choose maybe Clarity RX for one thing or whichever skincare line the practice chooses to go with. There are specific products they carry that you don’t. I know that there are specific products that clearly are not produced. If you say, look, I really want to go green, it means you go with a couple of products here and a couple of products there so that your patients get to really know what works best for them.
Making Skin Care Enticing:
Mara: How can practices make skincare enticing?
Josh: I think the most important things are the console phase, the conversation phase, and the recommendation phase, explaining why you’re recommending what you are and tailoring a regimen to that patient. You should go through each product, why you should or should not use it, and go through when to use it. Maybe there’s products every night, maybe there’s products twice a week, you know, just like you would if you were giving them a prescription.
Mara: Write it down just like you would a prescription that you say this is the product usage, and this is what you use every morning. First, you wash your face, and then you will use a Vitamin C serum, then you want your SPF because people need to know that you don’t put an SPF on and then put on a vitamin serum, for instance.
Implementing Online Skincare:
Mara: With everything that a practice has going on with the web as it relates to skincare, what would you say is one thing that they should focus on? What is something that you see practices focusing on that they shouldn’t be?
Josh: My number one is always going to be, and you had mentioned it earlier, is results. Really looking at the patient outcome and making sure that they’re getting that desired outcome. Making sure that you are meeting both their expectation and your expectation whether it’s a physician, nurse, PA, or aesthetician, I think that should always be the biggest focus. Sometimes what too many people focus on is what special do we want to run? We need to move some of this, we need to have an event, we need to do a social media post and in I get it, it’s 2020. Maybe I’m just more old school but I think the focus should be more, what are we doing for the patient in room A in her 9:30 am appointment? You have 30 people in your schedule for today, they all need sunscreen and 90% of them need an antioxidant. Why do we need to do an event with 60 people when you’re going to have 60 people here over the next two days?
Mara: That’s such a great way to think about it. I don’t need you to explain the inner workings of the tube or the pipe or whatever that happened with my fridge right or my washroom. Just fix it if I’m doing something wrong along the way, tell me that. Other than that, I need you to just help me with a quick problem and that’s such a great way to think about it. We always say that people talk about what they’re passionate about. If you have every one of your team members inside your practice, using the products that you sell, it’s going to be easier for them to talk about it. And they are going to talk about that with patients. I always Encourage practices when a patient is checking in, look at their previous history and look if they have previously purchased an eye cream if they’ve purchased a retinol product if they’ve purchased a vitamin C serum, etc. Have all of those products out ahead of time, if you know that they could be running close to the end of that product, pull them out ahead of time and say when they’ve checked in, I’ve set these aside for you. Always making sure your staff is really trained well to ask those questions and to do those little things for your practice is key.
Concluding Questions:
What is one thing that you learned along the way in your career that you want to pass on? What is one thing you would do differently in your career if you’ve had to do it all over again? Lastly, either personally or professionally, what are you most proud of in your life?
Josh: I think what I’ve learned along the way, and again, this may sound small but doing things in person and not via the phone, text, or email. I’ve always tried to do everything in person whenever possible. When I was hired at PCA we went from no registered PCA to over 70 and that’s the goal. Even at Clarity RX, the goal is to follow that same path of expansion, and that’s something that I always talk about is the importance of doing things face to face.
Mara: I totally agree, I think it is a lost art.
What about the other two questions, you know, what would you do differently in your career? Or what are you most proud of?
Josh: I think as far as what I would do differently is I would try to enjoy it more along the way. I think we’re in a fun industry and instead of having such a high-stress level and going at things a thousand miles an hour, I would probably try to enjoy things a little bit more as I went. That’s what I would definitely try to do differently, although it’s obviously much easier said than done.
As far as being most proud of something, I can kind of take that in a couple of different directions. I think one is, you know, being able to, over the course of the last 15 years in leadership style positions, being able to hire a lot of different people and develop a lot of different people. A lot of these jobs, they’re life-changing to people and, maybe perhaps from an income standpoint but also an increased quality of life and enjoying what they do. I think that’s something that’s kind of cool to be able to look back and say, I hired that person or you know that person had no experience but I saw potential in them. There are names of people as I’m talking that just popped in my head, they’ve never done outside sales, but they have the intangibles. You can tell about likability, the work ethic, the street smarts, taking a chance on a number of people. I pride myself on being pretty easy to deal with and I carry that over to the companies that I work for now. I’m proud of the success of the companies that I’ve been a part of like Medicis PCA and now at Clarity RX. We’re in the early stages of really growing this great brand, and I’m proud of that. I’m proud to have the opportunity to do that here as well.
Contacting Josh:
Mara: Now that we’ve come to the end, how can people reach you either email, website, LinkedIn, anyway that you want people to be able to connect with you?
Josh: My LinkedIn is Josh DeBlasio and my email address is Josh@clarityclinicalskincare.com.
It’s a pleasure and I know you have a great group of clients and it’s always a pleasure to connect with you And like I mentioned earlier in the call, preferably in person, but during these times, I think this is a nice alternative. So I’m glad you’re doing well and congrats on all your success as well.
