Each year, we host an annual esthetician workshop - a two-day event where we dive into specific topics surrounding a theme that our spa partners can use inside and outside of their treatment rooms and businesses. Our 2023 theme? Harmonizing Healing: Crafting a Balanced Practice!

Creating harmony in the treatment room is so many more things than just creating a beautiful facial. It’s about listening to our guests and understanding their background. Learning what’s important to them and knowing how to meet the needs of their skin using the tools in our back bar. It’s about referring our guests to other trusted practitioners when we don’t have the knowledge, bandwidth, or space to help. It’s about harmonizing our finances to support the lives we want and thriving in the businesses we create.

We’re also creating harmony in our lives so we can heal people fully. Balance is everything. We want to create more happiness and harmony in our lives and we just love holding this space for our estheticians.

Workshop day one - New skills for the treatment room

Each day is curated to support our estheticians in building their esthetics skills and business skills in a balanced way, with lots of mindfulness and heart-centered teachings. Day one’s focus is all about new skills for the treatment room. 

We’ll kick off our workshop with a grounding meditation, energy healing, and introduction to reiki led by Kelly Koski of Wildflower Botanica, a Reiki Master, Shamanic healer, Sound Healer, Herbalist and Priestess. This session will offer healing and stress relief techniques to help ground our estheticians before a treatment and help to bring their clients’ energy down to relax while receiving their facial.

Then we get right into the nitty gritty with our founder, Justine and unveiling her secrets to achieving hormonal harmony. In this session, we'll examine the physiology of hormonal disruption: how fluctuations in estrogen, cortisol, and progesterone scientifically manifest on the skin. Then we'll learn how targeted botanicals gently optimize hormonal pathways and levels, with clinically-proven tips to evaluate each client’s hormone levels and provide personalized botanical care scientifically designed to help clients find their natural rhythm.

We’ll follow up with two amazing practitioners also focusing on balancing hormones using other modalities of treatment. We’ll learn from Anne Woods, LA.c, licensed acupuncturist of The Garden Wellness Clinic in San Francisco. Anne’s session will look at approaching balancing hormones from an Eastern Medicine perspective and she’ll help our estheticians know when to refer clients to local acupuncturists for additional support.

Then we’ll dive into learning how nutrition is deeply connected to hormones and the skin with Brooke Mader Ganev, a Clinical Functional Nutritionist who practices out of Den Mother, a beautiful wellness space in Venice, California. 

To end day one, we close with Holistic Licensed Esthetician Leia Hohenfeld of Flower Power Skin Studio in northeast Ohio and will learn how language can help to create a safe and inclusive space for our estheticians and guests alike.

Workshop day two - Essentials for business owners

Day two is all about the skills our estheticians will need to run their businesses in a healthy and balanced way.

We’ll start the day with a balancing and nourishing yin yoga session led by Melody Hopkins, a holistic licensed esthetician and yoga practitioner at Radiate Studio in Sebastopol, California. Connecting to our bodies with movement so that we feel grounded in our day.

Then, we’ll get into balancing our business with Nina Kaufman, owner and principal of You Design You, a business coaching, training, and consulting company based in San Francisco. She also happens to be Botnia’s business coach! She’ll teach our spa partners the tools they need to create a healthy business they love, and how to create a safer, more productive, and fulfilling company culture for all.

Next, we’ll jump into a marketing panel featuring five of our amazing spa partners who excell at marketing their practices to the world. We’ll discuss how each business owner looks at marketing at different stages of entrepreneurship, from the content that resonates most to how to gauge marketing success. Featuring Lauren McKinney of Soul Skin Studio, Leah Kirpalani of Shop Good, Lee Zavorskas of Holistic Skin and Tonics, Mia Nguyen of Colette Sugar Studio, and Shauntavia Ward of eleMINT Skin Health & Wellness Studio. 

After two big classes on business skills, we’ll take a balanced break and enjoy a session with Master Esthetician and Botnia community specialist, Julianna, and give our brains a boost of creativity with watercolor. Drawing inspiration from nature just like the customized facials we offer in our treatment rooms! It’s in allowing our minds to be creative that lets us show up as whole humans to our businesses. (And make some pretty art, too!) 

In school, we aren’t taught financial basics so our last class will help small business owners face their finances straight on with a session on Books in Balance with Luisa Alberto of People First Finance, a complete financial service solution for women agency owners and service providers. This will be her third session at our workshop and she always makes looking at financial success achievable and fun! 

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Our goal with the workshop is to bring our estheticians together to share new learnings and skills as holistic healers in our communities so they can show up fully for themselves and their guests. It’s through this collaborative setting that we get to connect with other like-minded practitioners and expand our minds in ways we never believed possible.

Business is an ecosystem. For estheticians, it’s not just an ecosystem of healing skin. It’s an ecosystem of being a good business owner and we think about that as equal to our skincare being healing and healthy for our spa partners. We’re thinking about the longevity of our partners’ careers and we think that’s what makes Botnia very different from other skincare companies. Why does it matter that we care about a strong business mindset? It’s because it supports your dreams, your practice, and your clients ultimately in the long run, and we think that’s pretty darn exciting! 

Xo,

Botnia