Krista DiLorenzo, a nurse with a background in cardiovascular ICU, transitioned to esthetics after being inspired by a dermatology job. She reached out to Dr. Gretchen Freeling on Instagram, shadowed her, and persisted through the COVID-19 shutdown. Krista assisted Dr. Freeling for three months before starting treatments, gradually building her clientele through hydro facials and laser treatments. Now, she sees 12 patients daily, emphasizing the importance of patient education and the role of a medical assistant in managing her busy schedule. Krista is also pursuing NP school while maintaining her full-time role.

Transcript

This is medical millionaire the podcast, helping your Med Spa increase in status, visibility and profitability. Join your host as he dispels myths, shares trends and gives you actionable steps today that will take your medical practice to the next level. Here’s your host, expert marketer and founder of growth 99 Cameron Hemphill,
Hey, what’s up, everybody? Cameron here with medical millionaire. Hey, hope you guys are having a great day. I just want to jump into a great episode that we’ve been preparing for. We have a wonderful guest, friend, colleague, Krista DiLorenzo. She’s with G face. MD, so she her and I met through Gretchen, dr, G and we’ve become friends. We’ve built a relationship. She works over there, and she has been in esthetics for what, almost three years, right? Almost three years, yep. Okay, so talk to us about the journey. What did you do before? Esthetics, I mean, shoot coming into three years, it See, that seems like a long time, right? But talk about, Hey, what did you do prior? And what got you to, I guess, talking us through that journey to to getting going to G face, MD, and then where you are now?
Yeah. So I graduated college in 2019
when I got out of school, I had previously worked in the hospital. During nursing school, I wanted to get some hands on experience, learn how to talk to patients, build relationships, things like that. So I worked in the hospital all throughout nursing school. When I got out, I stayed on the floor. I worked on it was a cardiovascular surgical step down ICU, so we had a lot of post op open heart surgery patients, different cardiac patients, so very, very different from esthetics. But when I was in nursing school, I worked in a dermatology office for a while, and that’s what really got me into learning about different skin diseases. Skincare, in general, there was a little bit of cosmetic in the office I worked in, but not as much as I had wanted. But I would say that’s where it really, like piqued my interest. I knew, like, this is what I want to do. But of course, as everyone else, it’s hard industry to get into. So worked in the hospital for a while, which I think was a super important part of my journey. Think that gaining those skills and learning how to deal with like, critical, difficult situations is super important, especially being in the esthetics field, because, you know, we deal with some patients that are difficult sometimes, and I feel like my background prepped me for it, in a sense, awesome. So worked in the hospital for a few years, got some experience there. I had talked to a friend who works in esthetics, and I was like, how did you get into this industry? Like, what did you do? I’m dying to get in. I’ll do literally anything. And she had said she met her new boss that she was currently working for as because she was a patient at the practice. And before getting into esthetics, I had never done, like any injectables, but I had done, like, laser treatments, facials, things like that. So I didn’t really have an injectable provider that I could go to to be like, hey, please hire me. I’ll do anything. But she had said, reach out to people on social media like it doesn’t hurt. So one night, just hanging out, I’m scrolling through Instagram, and somehow Dr G’s Instagram popped up on my page. You know, social media, those bots get us right. On her page popped up, and I realized that she was local. She was in Massachusetts, and I just loved how educational she was. She had such a fun personality. I’m like, something about this lady, like, I’m just going to message her. Why not? Awesome. So I messaged her on Instagram, and I basically just said, Hey, like, I’m a nurse. I have no experience whatsoever in esthetics. I really want to get into the industry, but I don’t want to just go take a certification course and then do nothing with it. I wanted someone who would really bring me in and take the time to mentor me and educate me so I knew what I was doing, I could be good at it, and really just kind of go from there. So Dr Freeling, and I had a phone conversation to start. Then I came into the office, and this was right before the shutdown, the big shutdown, nice came in, literally the week before she shut down, and I shadowed in the office. I was a little baby at the time. She always says it, she’s like, You were like a deer in the headlights. But I was just, I was ready. I came in questions blazing. Was ready to, just like, get her to take me on, and I was going to do whatever. So I shadowed. Week later, she was like, All right, the world’s shutting down. So basically, I don’t need you right now. But I knew. Okay, like, things will reopen at some point, I need to make sure that I just stay on her radar and do whatever I can so when she reopens, hopefully she’ll hire me. So during quarantine, Dr feeling had done a lot of like, webinars online and different educational things. So I always made sure, like, I’m gonna attend everything I can attend, make sure that my name, just like, stays fresh in her head. And to my luck, it worked. I mean, here I am, almost three years later. I
love it, all right, I’m gonna stop you right in there, if that’s okay, just for a second. And the reason why I want to stop you is because you point out some things that I really want the audience to understand, yeah, number one, first off, congratulations. And that’s, it’s, it’s a really cool story, because I think there’s a lot of people that are scared to reach out totally, you know, and May, and that’s like, the first thing is, they want. They want, okay, it’s a goal, but you are the type of person that saw something, wasn’t afraid to reach out. Doctor, you know? Doctor, frankly, she can be intimidating, right? Sure, education, she’s beautiful, she’s got going on, right? And you’re like, you know what? I’m gonna I’m gonna reach out. You did, yeah, you were able to get her attention, you’re able to have a conversation, have a meeting, and then, who knows, the whole world shut down. Yeah, you made a point, right? That you, you continue to you didn’t give up. You didn’t let the world around, like, dictate your world totally. You kept going. And so, like, what I want the audience to basically get out of that story is, don’t ever give up. Go get what’s yours. Yeah, you know, because you own your destination. So I love, I love the fact that you shared that. Keep going,
yeah? I mean, I think that just being persistent. I was like, this is something I really want, and I just need someone to give me the chance, and I’ll take it from there, like, I’ll show you what I’m capable of. But it’s hard when you have nowhere to start. And I have people reach out to me all the time, and they’re like, how did you get this job? Like, you’re so lucky. And I’m like, Well, I am super lucky, but I also, like, really fought for it and made sure, like, I’m the one in hindsight, like, if there’s 20 other people interviewing for this job, like, you need to stick out and find ways to that make you different from other people, like maybe no one else was reaching out to her all the time, making sure, like, Oh, I’m gonna attend all her webinars, or just find ways to be on their radar and make you a little bit different. But I think being persistent was one of the biggest things for me,
yeah, yeah, absolutely, you’re persistent. And, you know, people can say, Oh, you’re so lucky. Well, you surrounded yourself to get lucky, right? Luck surrounds where, where people put themselves in a position to get lucky, you know? And so, yeah, that’s great. I love it. So, so fast forwarding. So you, the world opened back up. You How long? How long was it was she shut down for
she was shut down from March until beginning of June, when, like businesses and mass were able to reopen. She had to reach out to me. I want to say beginning of May, maybe end of April, and was just like, Hey, would love to bring you on the team. Like, we’ll do a trial period. We do trial periods here. So whenever we bring someone on, we do like, two weeks, just to make sure, like, they’re the right fit, because phone calls and even, like, in person interviews. Everyone’s on their A game. You don’t know someone until you work with them for a little while. So she was like, I’ll bring you in for a two week trial period. We’ll see how things go. So I came into the office few days before reopening, just to kind of learn how the flow went, like the charting system, scheduling patients, things like that. And then when we open, the way we do things at G face is any new providers have to assist? Dr Freeling, you don’t just come in and start injecting, which I also think is super important, because it’s hard to go from never doing anything, esthetics wise, to then being like, Oh, I’m going to inject. And you think, like all these patients are going to come in and be lining up at the door to see me. But that’s not true, sure. So basically, I assisted her for about three months. I worked full time. I was here. I’m here Monday through Friday. I would assist her, and that was how I learned, like all the different treatments, how she spoke to patients, how she educated them. I learned about the different fillers, the different neurotoxins, our skincare products, how to describe them to patients. And I think doing that truly sets us apart from other providers who are new in the industry. So I assisted for a while before I could even begin seeing patients, and then I eased into doing some. Skin health treatments. First I would do like hydro facials, laser Dermaplaning, things like that. Then once she felt like I was doing a good job, I was comfortable in what I was doing, then I eased into doing neurotoxin, did some trainings with her on that slowly started accumulating patients, and then easing into filler. But I think doing it that way allowed me to progress in the way that I did, because I wasn’t a deer in the headlights. I didn’t have 5 million things going on at once, and you’re learning how to do neurotoxin and filler and all these other things,
right? Right now, I think that’s a really good point, like going through the journey in the sense of, hey, understand, hey. Is it a culture fit, right? Work long term, like a check box, like or non check box, right? That’s huge. And then understanding the flow of the practice, right? Meeting someone, going to the patient room, the checkout process, I’m sure that you went through that, understanding the products, understanding like learning about patient flow, I guess a patient experience, right? And then, okay, now I get into hydro facial, which is, like, you know, I guess less nerve wracking than neuro right? Yeah, you’re not infecting anyone when you’re building up the I like that cup, by the way,
so fancy. Oh yeah,
nice. I gotta get me a growth 99 you absolutely do, but no understanding like building up the confidence. So I agree. So you know, if, if, for those folks that are listening like that’s a great, great takeaway right there, when it comes to hiring new providers and then building up that confidence for success.
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absolutely. And it was a way for me doing snail treatments. At first, I was able to get patients in for that because it’s something like, you know, it’s a facial you still want to go to someone that you can trust with it, but it’s not as it’s not as intimidating as injectables, right? But what we found by me doing that was I gained a lot of clientele who would come in for those treatments, and then they would get to know me, and they would trust me, and they eased into injectable patients with me. So that was a way that I think I was able to grow my clientele pretty quickly because I had people who already were coming in and trusting me. Got
it, that’s a really good point. So they’d come in get a hydro facial done, or something of that nature. While that’s taking place, I’ve had a hydro facial. Probably need another one, but it’s we all do. It’s a great like, it’s a great place to have conversation and educate them on what could be right. And build up that, build up that trust, that quick friendship, if you will, right. Like, because the friendship kind of starts right. Like, absolutely, it’s all a friendship. It’s, it’s interesting. Like, like, I’ve noticed I become talkative when I’ve gotten a service treatment done. Yeah, um, my, my wife owned a salon for years, and she’s like, my, my clients would come in and just like, talk about everything. Oh
yeah, they’ll tell you everything.
It’s the best, right? So, um, yeah, and then you were able to basically build up that rapport, and they would turn into injectable patients, and your clientele grew from there. And I’m sure a lot of word of mouth referral came from from that as well,
absolutely, which is great, but I think that was a huge takeaway for me, is a lot of people are just like, I want to inject. I want to inject. I want to inject, and they don’t want to put in the time and the effort to like, I just assisted. At first, I didn’t do any esthetic treatments on any patients. I was just assisting learning the ins and outs of the office. Then I did skin health treatments. Then I got to inject but I personally believe, like, that’s what made me the provider that I am today. Okay, let
me ask you a question on that. Why do you think the people. Want to just, they just want to get in and start injecting, injecting, injecting, instead of, like, put in the blood, sweat and tears to get to injecting. Or, you know what I’m saying? So, yeah,
I think money is the thing. I think injecting, seeing it even, like on social media, like it looks so fun and it looks so cool in the before and after, is like, they’re amazing. But I don’t think people realize the work that goes into it, right? And I think it’s also hard when you come into esthetics, when you first start, you don’t have any clientele, you’re really not making any money. And that was something like I went through. I came in and I went from making good COVID pay at the hospital to making nothing at all. But I was okay with that. I knew that. And Dr feeling always said, like, hey, work hard and do the best you can. Like the clients will come and you’ll make more money. Awesome.
Let me stop you right there. Sorry, you’re making some great points. Like you went from making good COVID pay, it’s called at the hospital, comfort you are comfortable totally, to stepping into an area of unknown, knowing that if you continue to invest in yourself, the future would outweigh the comfort COVID, pay, absolutely. That’s awesome, yeah, and I think
that’s what sets
people apart. Is like, if you’re coming in here and you think that you’re going to get hired and start making all this money immediately, that’s where you’re wrong. People don’t line up at the door to come see you the minute you start injecting right. Have to put in the blood, sweat and tears and take a little bit of a pay cut. And like, over time, yeah, it will happen. They will come and it’s so worth it. But I honestly believe, like, whenever we interview people, I’m like, Okay, what are they saying? Like, we’ve had people come in and we’re like, why do you want to be in esthetics? And like, well, I want to make a lot of money. And it’s like, all right. Red flag number
one, not the right fit for us. I love it. How many other how many? I mean, how many who are in the office? Doing injectables right now?
We have myself, Dr Freeling, and then we have two other nurses as well.
Okay, and are they as busy as you are? The other two nurses, they’re a
little bit newer, so they’re kind of getting up and running. One of them has been here since the winter. The other one started just a couple months ago. So they’re in there, like, skin health treatment phase. They just started doing injectables pretty recently. So they’re getting up and running, and they’re doing great, doing
great. And do you find yourself kind of mentoring them a little bit as well? Definitely?
Yeah, I think it’s where I’ve been here the longest, other than Dr freelang. Like, they’ll definitely come to me with any questions, or if I can train them on things. So that’s super fun too, because it kind of gets my brain going, like, Okay, wait, I forgot when I went through this. Like, this is what it was like, and this is information I can pass on to you that I wish I knew at the time. Or, Yeah,
very cool from ways to teach, I guess. Well, you’ve had an incredible mentor, and, yeah, such a cool lady like, what? What a, what a neat experience you’ve had. That’s, that’s amazing fun. It’s a fun one, yeah, I’m sure the office,
we have a blast, you know, and we’ll also work hard. So it’s a good mix of both, which I also think is super important,
yeah, absolutely. Okay, so as you you went to the area of unknown, you’ve built up the clientele before we jumped on here. I was like, Hey, how much time do you have? Because I know how busy you ladies are, and you’re like, I mean, I’m here Monday through Friday. I am booked, so
I’m booked and busy, booked and busy. So going from
unknown, okay, this is scary. I’m going to get, you know, comfortable being uncomfortable to now, I’m sure you’re extremely comfortable, right? Maybe even too comfortable, right? And we can talk about that in a second, because I want the audience to understand your journey. Yeah, right? Because it’s a really cool story that I don’t think that you know, like the audience gets to hear a whole lot of that process from because a lot of people go from, as, you know, being in the hospital to wanting to get into esthetics, yeah, right. And they fall in their face, or they think that the grass is greener on the other side, where maybe the hospital was actually better for them because of the stability, and maybe they’re not really an entrepreneur or whatever the cases, but you get into the area of unknown, you get yourself, you put yourself in a position of being uncomfortable. To get uncomfortable, which is going to push you in the envelope as a person in every angle. Okay, now let’s fast forward, like, let’s call it two years. Okay, so now you’re in year two, talk to us about that process of like, you’re starting to get busy, yep and and shits getting like, overwhelming, yep. Okay, so I want to hear about that. Um,
it’s a lot. I think now I feel I say all the time. I’m like, I have. No brain, because I went you go from like, not having a ton of clients, like, maybe you have like, one or two clients a day, when you start, if you’re lucky, and it’s like, you can put so much into these patients, and you have all the time in the world to spend with them and educate them and do all these things, and then once you get busier, it’s a lot harder to do that, and you don’t get to spend as much time as you may want to with patients. I like to make sure my patients, like, are beyond educated on everything they’re doing. They’re so happy with their treatment. It’s definitely tougher when you get busier and I think you have to sit back and look at like, what’s important to you. But I think help in the office is the biggest thing. So like, we have a medical assistant, Jen. She is amazing. She’s so helpful. She’ll help, like, consent my patients, take their photos, just different things that she can help assist me with. So like, I went from being the assist to now having someone who can
help assist me, and that’s huge.
Yes, yes. I want to talk about that for a sec. Yeah. So having Jen, I’ve never met Jen. Hope you’ll have the opportunity to meet her, great. But has she been able to put you in a position to, obviously, like, do do more appointments throughout the day with ease, right? Definitely, and give those patients the experience that like but like that. Let’s say at one point in time, you’re doing two or three appointments a day. I don’t know how many you’re doing a day now, but let’s just going, let’s just say going from two to three to to six to 10, for example. I’m just saying that’s double the amount of work, right? Or triple, um, if you didn’t have her, would your patient experience? Would probably
say, yeah, it would be tougher. It’s hard because it’s like, even if you have one patient that shows up late, even if they’re only 10 minutes late, I mean, that’s 10 minutes that you’re now like, Okay, I need to consent you. I need to discuss the treatment with you. I need to take photos with you. I need to do the actual treatment right after photos. I need to give you like post treatment care, different things like that. And even though someone’s scheduled for one thing, they typically come in and they want to talk about something else, or they want to do something else. So by having someone who’s able to help me, I can do more than one treatment in an appointment, if I deem that I’ll have enough time, I don’t like being late for patients. I mean, you’re paying to come see me. I don’t want you waiting super long to see me. If I’m running a little bit late, it’s okay because I have a medical assistant who could go start my next patient for me, so that by the time I’m finishing up, I can just hop to the next room and be ready for them, ready to go. Oh, definitely would be a lot tougher if I didn’t have someone alongside me. And I don’t think that I would be able to see as many patients in a day as I do without, or
I’d be dead at the end of the day. It’s exhausting. It’s
exhausting. Yeah? I mean, you gotta have a steady hand. You gotta be fuel energized, ready to roll, and
it’s multiple conversations a day, right?
Yeah, I mean that you made a point earlier, like, I feel like I don’t have a brain, because everything kind of meshes together, like over the throughout the day, right?
Absolutely, go home. Alright, that’s it. No one speak to me. I’m done.
Silence, silence,
oh yeah, no, I hear, like, a lot of times, you know, we’ll hear people, you know that are practice owners, are working to practice, and they’re not sure where the value of the assistant comes. And I encourage them to listen to podcasts or YouTubes like this, because it’s it. You can you how you can’t scale without it. No,
it’s not possible so
valuable to have someone assisting you. Like, I’m sure it’s a hard jump to make when you’re used to not having someone, but once you do, then it’s like, oh my gosh. What would we ever do right without these people? Like, they’re so helpful and they play such a crucial role in our office at least. And I’m sure any other office that has an assist that it’s like, you don’t have them at the end of the day, then you’re like, oh my gosh, how was I doing all this on my own before? And why? Like, I’m making so much more work for myself, but I don’t need to.
Yes, and so almost three years. So when will three years be for you, June? All
right, that’s coming up. We’re almost there. Oh
my gosh. I can’t believe it. I feel like we just turned 2023, I know
it’s crazy. I can’t believe it’s going to be like may next week. I know whatever it is. I don’t even know what day it is anymore, but,
yeah, it’s crazy. Are you guys going to esthetic next? Yes, okay, cool. So I’ll see you there in a couple months. Absolutely. Okay, cool. And you guys are having your own conference.
Yes. Face it, live will be amazing. It’s a little bit of everything, ultrasound, cadaver, all of the things, December 1 through the third in Massachusett. It’s okay,
very cool. Well, we are, we have committed to come see you guys. Then cannot wait. It will be a party. That’s right. You have to show us where to go in Boston.
Yeah, definitely thoughts. I’m sure you guys know the local
spots. Very cool. Okay, so my last question for you. I know you got to, you got to run because you got an appointment coming up, um, third year coming up here in June, it’s going to be here before you know it. Where like, okay, I guess two part question, are you as Are you as excited now as you were about the thought of getting into esthetics?
I’m, I mean, yes, I feel like now I’m so like, I have so much going on that I’m almost like, now I feel more like a deer in the headlights. I’m like, Oh my God. I have so much going on. I don’t know where to start. I started NP school in January. So school on top of full time work, it’s a lot of planning and being organized and just a lot going on. So I’m definitely excited. I feel like at this point in my career, I’m excited about, like, doing hands on trainings and going to different events, and just like being the best that I can be, and constantly like upping my techniques and learning different techniques, or just, like, making my patient experience better. So I feel like, Yes, I’m excited. It’s totally different. Like, when you first start, it’s an excitement that’s like, oh my gosh, I don’t know anything, and I want to learn all the things. Now. It’s like, you know more than you think you do, but you’re also still constantly learning in
this field. Yeah, yeah. Though, great point, great point. You always have to just, there’s always something else to learn, right? Like it’s never end. It’s never done. You know, there is no end point.
Every week there’s something new out on the market. It’s constantly evolving. Yes,
very cool. Okay, so how many, so your Monday through Friday? Yep. Okay, and so how many, how many patients will you see today? Ah, I
don’t know. Let’s say I have no idea. I just take it day by day. I’m like, I just show up to work and whatever is there, is there. That’s amazing. Hold on, I would say I probably have depending on what I’m seeing. Patients for, like, our talks, appointments are only, like, 15 minutes fillers, 30 consults or 45
probably, let’s say my thing’s loading.
You can just give me a guess, man, I’m just curious.
I would say probably, like, at least 12 patients a day. Yeah, so
you’re, you’re, you’re slamming, yeah, you’re jamming. It’s a bit, it’s a busy
schedule. Usually there’s no time for lunch. We’re going back to back. And looks like this. I have a little, I have a little break having this. So this is fun.
Yeah, absolutely no. I appreciate you. You coming on and and it means a lot, because, you know, like, that’s what people want to hear, is they want to hear, what is the journey like, what does the LEAP look like? What’s the best way to do it? And I’ve, you’ve done a really good job, Krista, of First off, reaching out to somebody that’s, you know, well known in the industry, has a great background, motivated, great personality, cool, right? You know, and then the ability to continue to march and continue to crank. And, I mean, it sounds like you’re just, you’re just going to continue to thrive. You just keep doing what you’re doing. And, I mean, sky’s the limit, absolutely, that’s right. So for the audience out there, guys, I mean, you heard it straight from her, you heard her story. And, you know, I’m sure she’s, she’s very successful, and, you know, she’s young and smart and and I’m, I’m excited for you, so congratulations. Yeah. So where can people find you?
You can find me on Instagram,
nurse. K, R, I S, T, A, G, face, MD, you can come to Massachusetts and find me if you really want.
But I’d say those, those are two places that are easiest to find
me. Okay, awesome, guys. So you heard it. Go follow on Instagram. Thank you so much for joining guys. Until next time, we appreciate it like I’ll see you here in a couple months. It sounds like, Right, absolutely okay. Everybody. Appreciate it. Have a wonderful day until next time. Happy injecting you.