We were lucky to catch up with Dallas Michelucci recently and have shared our conversation below.

Dallas, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s talk about social media – do you manage your own or do you have someone or a company that handles it for you? Why did you make the choice you did?

Only recently have I hired a remote social media team to help me and my businesses with posts and staying on top of trends. For the last 11 years I have done it all myself and it worked really well, but I have been working on promoting more of the businesses and individual staff members instead of mostly just my content. I think as a business owner that has staff and provides services, it’s important that it’s not all about me. At the end of the day, I want my team to be more booked than I am so I have focused on promoting them more evenly and a range of services we provide. So far, it’s been an amazing weight lifted off of my shoulders to remember special days in the year to post, birthdays and a different insight. I think it’s important to hire a team or a content manager who specializes in your industry though. I don’t think we would have as much success if we hired someone who doesn’t understand medical terms, aesthetics and beauty trends. As a last note and tip to other beauty professionals, the BIGGEST downfall I see from them while promoting their work on social media is not showing up on camera themselves. I understand it’s uncomfortable at first and people don’t want to be on camera, but strangers and potential patients/clients don’t buy from businesses. They buy from people.

Dallas, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have been in this industry for almost 20 years. I got my start working at a local salon and opened my first salon at 21. After partnering with some of the largest medical spas in Pittsburgh to work on their growth and marketing in collaboration with my salons, I decided to open my own in 2017. We have since expanded multiple times and have grown our team at some points to over 50 staff members. As life has ebbed and flowed along with becoming a mom of 3, I know have only 2 locations and a moderate team of 25. I absolutely love this change and it’s allowed me to narrow my focus as a provider, mentor, trainer and business owner. I still own a salon as well as a medspa but I spend more time in the medspa as it needs a more narrowed focus.

Most of the problems that I solved for my patients at Renuva Medspa involve fixing their skin. They find us and seek help with different skin concerns like rosacea, acne, scarring, skin laxity and volume loss. Between my team and I, we have the skills, training and proper equipment to do almost any skin fix without the need for surgery.

I am most proud of the amount of trainings that we hold at Renuva. This industry is constantly changing and there is no shortage of new things to learn. Sometimes that means new techniques, new technologies or new products. Last year we had over 30 trainings, 3 of them being advanced cadaver labs.

Lastly, the thing I want anyone to know about the work I do is that if I would do it myself or believe in it, we don’t sell it. For instance, we don’t carry every product from any retail line because if there is one that’s better, we carry that instead. Everything we carry is specially curated to drive the safest and most effective results. I think it’s important that owners and decision-makers don’t get caught up in carrying the “most popular” fillers, toxins or devices just to be like every other medspa. If there is a better product, find it and go that way. Sure, educating your patients on why you don’t have what everyone else is doing and knows by name (like Botox) but you will have integrity.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

My biggest pivot happened during the COVID shutdown of 2019. I had just delivered a baby in March 2020 and was sitting in my post-delivery room when we learned that we would have a mandatory close for 2 weeks. For salons, this ended up as a 3.5 month closure. At the time I had over 50 employees and two locations, all while navigating what would have been my maternity leave now turned into survival mode for both my business and myself.

About 10 days into lockdown, I decided I had to do something for my staff and to keep paying the rent. After getting creative, I decided to open my first online store to sell the products we carried at the salon and mesdpa directly to consumers. It was something I always wanted to do, but never found the time until I was forced to.

I added all of the inventory from products we sold in the physical office to the website. Then my husband went to the salon and brought home 20 boxes of products. We set up shop in our basement as a shipping center and started helping our clients find the products for them via Instagram. There are days I would send out over 100 packages to my followers around the US. It was an amazing take-off for what I thought was just something to get through a few weeks.

Additionally, I gave each of my staff members promos codes as a way for them to earn money while their unemployment was taking away their inability to service clients in person. It was my way of making sure I was doing something to help them too, not just keeping my doors open.

I still have our online store where we sell the authorized products that we offer our clients and we ship out everyday.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

As a young business owner, I most definitely think I had to unlearn some behaviors that I picked up from childhood, previous jobs and just being a young ego-maniac. Having children was the most humbling and amazing thing to happen to me as a person and I immediately became more empathetic to employees and clients.

One of the mindsets that I had to unlearn was thinking that everyone wanted to have the same goals as I did. I thought everyone should want to be booked and busy 24/7, work 90 hours a week, have no life and promote themselves on social media. I ended up creating a toxic work environment in the first half of my business owner journey and it was largely my fault. Some of the issues were a result of hiring errors, but at the end of the day that’s still my fault too.

I have since learned to meet people where they are and accept that their needs, goals and expectations simply do not have to match mine. If I had to force it, it wasn’t right. I can see that clearly now and in hindsight that would have been valuable to understand then.

I am, however, not upset about the tough lessons I have learned throughout the years. Going through them always seems to be rough but the growth and insight you get afterwards cannot be matched by anything else other than failures.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://renuvamedspa.com
• Instagram: personal IG – @dallastheaesthetician
• Facebook: https://Facebook.com/renuvamedspa
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/renuva-medspa-pittsburgh

Image Credits

LeeAnn Stromyer for the professional images