Alex Medeiros of LightTouch Med Spa: Five Things You Need To Know To Succeed In The Modern Beauty Industry

Set goals. Many Med Spas do not have goals for the future, nor a plan for the end game. Knowing your goals helps you achieve them and that’s going to help you carry the mentality to progress.

As a part of our series about “Five Things You Need To Know To Succeed In The Modern Beauty Industry”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Alex Medeiros.

Alex Medeiros carries over 15 years of experience growing aesthetic practices, and is the current Manager at LightTouch Med Spa® Orlando location. Through utilizing his knowledge of marketing, management, and operations, he has been quickly able to help the brand grow to one of the top-performing injectable med spas in the Orlando area within 2 years. LightTouch Med Spa® features a stunning 14 treatment rooms with over 12 full-time staff just within the first 4 months of operations. Using in-depth data-driven analytics, he is helping drive LightTouch forward into 2023.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Absolutely. In the beginning, I originally was on the marketing and management side of the cosmetic aesthetic industry. After spending 5 years working with brand recognition, client testimonials, and working with the staff I was really inspired by the staff and clients to focus all efforts on customer experience. People come to LightTouch Med Spa in Orlando because they want to have an enjoyable and personal experience that is affordable.

When we look at the traditional concept of a Med Spa location, we typically see a 2–5 treatment room location that usually ends up doing pretty well on the customer experience side. Financially, administratively, marketing-wise everything is usually fine. But, when we look at that model being taken across multiple locations in efforts to extend that success, it becomes very apparent that the main challenges of replicating that success and customer experience is more than challenging.

It is extremely difficult to replicate management, customer service experience, and leadership across multiple locations, and that is where I feel so inspired to be a part of this 5,000 sq ft location with 14 treatment rooms. Here, we are able to have so much growth potential, and every aspect of the customer experience is able to be focused and improved on constantly. After 15 years, I have so much passion and excitement to continue running this new model and customer experience methodology.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

In the past 15 years working in this industry, I have come across quite a lot of situations on the front and back end, but I believe nothing could compare to COVID-19 hitting. That is where politics, and legalities, and client and staff safety was really taken to a new level.

It’s interesting how our state of Florida handled things, and everybody really had their own difficulties across the industry just trying to ensure clients and staff were safe. Here, I feel things went better than other places, and we were able to put the clients and staff’s safety first, while still respecting people’s boundaries and that was really a testament to our company being agile in a difficult environment. I would put that as the most memorable event so far.

Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?

So experience and failure are always great teaching moments, and there has been a fair share of that with myself and this industry. Luckily it has never been a complete failure, but there have been many low points, or head-scratching “how do we handle this” kind of moments.

You start to wonder if it is you that is getting it wrong, but luckily I realized that sticking to your values of hard work and providing a good customer experience is the key.

The turning point is that we wished to take things to a new level, and invest into what we know works and what we believe in. I sort of took a plunge into unknown territory with this 14-treatment room location.

This ended up allowing our team to be central and focused on customer service. It also allowed us to lead, pay competitively, improve our in-house processes and software, and focus more on marketing. Once we migrated into our new location approximately 4 months ago, we really saw the impact after just the first month. Clients were so elated to walk into a big facility, staff were encouraged even more through seeing the growth potential, and you really can’t quantify that on a spreadsheet.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Absolutely. Part of our new philosophy is to take quite a bit of time and have a rigorous hiring process that allows us to have a team that is in sync with each other where we work hard and also can be ourselves. Every team member we have on board comes in with a smile and we really have so much fun, while achieving our goals. That to me is the inspiration daily, which is so important when you’re looking into the future of the company.

Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. The global beauty industry today has grown to more than a half a trillion dollar business. Can you tell us about the innovations that you are bringing to the industry? How do you think that will help people?

You’re right the beauty industry has changed a lot. At LightTouch Med Spa Orlando we carry the best products you can get in the world and the most clinically reviewed products. With these first-in-class products, you get exceptional quality and safety. We also use a world-class injection technique called MD codes. This system is designed by a world-renowned plastic surgeon Dr. De Maio from Brazil. MD Codes deals with the cause of aging and not the symptoms. It delivers first-in-class results treating areas such as cheeks, temples and jawlines to restore the youthful structure of the face and delivers natural results.

MD Codes is so exciting because it:

1. Treats the bone structure which is the cause of aging.

2. It can make patients look less: tired, angry, sad, or even saggy appearing.

3. It impacts the muscles in the face which makes people look more natural when smiling and talking.

With MD codes we can treat men and women well as transgender or nonbinary people. It is important to us to be welcoming and inclusive to all.

Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the modern beauty industry?

1. The technology changes and improvements are providing patients with lots of options.
2. The industry is absolutely exploding with interest.
3. People are accepting that injectables are a great non-permanent solution to quickly and effectively address certain facial aesthetic concerns.

Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to improve the industry, what would you suggest?

Firstly, this industry definitely needs more inclusiveness and mutual support among injectors, owners, and supporters. Secondly, this industry needs to be discussed much further from an educational standpoint so that whether you’re a seasoned veteran of getting injectables or you are brand new, you can learn fun and interesting things. For example, many patients getting Botox on their forehead do not know that it can be used to help with teeth-grinding as well. Thirdly, we need to spread the love and show that it is ok to address concerns you may have about your aesthetics.

In terms of addressing this, there really is no secret sauce. Everybody needs to come together and that is the tallest order. Patients are in a tough spot between quality and pricing most times with certain med spas, and owners or providers are stressed about making sure their business is successful and growing.

You are an expert about beauty. Can you share a few ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”?

Beauty is really in the eye of the beholder, and it is important to love yourself and address concerns you may have with an open mind and reasonable expectations. There are many people out there that have great ideas!

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, Can you please share “Five Things You Need To Know To Succeed In The Modern Beauty Industry”. Please share a story or an example, for each.

1. Know who you are, what you bring to the table, and double down on that. Many owners and injectors are amazing people, and that is why people will keep coming back. It is the same model hairdressers use, where you will usually drive 45 minutes and pay more for your favorite hairdresser, instead of driving less time to get your hair done for a cheaper cost.

2. Identify areas of improvement, and progressively work on them. Knowing strengths and weaknesses are imperative to being successful. If you’re great at customer service, make sure you’re great at sales as well!

3. Know your market and competition. Knowing what your clients in your area really like and what your competition is doing about it is important. I have never seen anybody know everything or nail down a perfect setup when it comes to a Med Spa. Your competitors and your market can give you amazing insight into how you can best address appealing to your customers and incentivising your staff. Underpricing or overpricing can really slow you down in progression.

4. Set goals. Many Med Spas do not have goals for the future, nor a plan for the end game. Knowing your goals helps you achieve them and that’s going to help you carry the mentality to progress.

5. Always put the patients first. The focus should always be on the patient experience. The more efficiently the patient is greeted, waited on, and cashed out, the better the experience they will have.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Definitely education about Botox/Fillers, and having a great time getting aesthetic cosmetic treatments! It’s so fun having a great time at your favorite med spa with your favorite injector!

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Success is not final, failure is not fatal — Winston Churchill. This highlights to not give up, but also don’t get too ahead of yourself when times are good. Stay grounded and hard working.

How can our readers follow you online?

Our LightTouch Med Spa Orlando Blog: https://lighttouchorlando.com/blog/

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.