Romance Before Receipts

I recently went in for a skin consultation - spider veins, some hyperpigmentation, things that had been on my mind for a while. I'm turning 40 this year, and I told them that. I said I wanted to go into my 40th year feeling good, and the idea of seeking these treatments was to try and leave behind some of the difficult parts of life so far; a clean slate if you will. Between a layoff, taking my business full time then suddenly caregiving for my dad, I felt like I'd aged a decade in a fraction of the time. I wasn't just there for my skin. I was there hoping to feel like myself again.

That part didn't really land. What followed was a diagnostic machine that scans your face and displays, in detail, everything "wrong" with it - every spot, every vein, every line, lit up like a problem to be solved. And a comment about whether I’d noticed recent redness in my cheeks.

The beauty industry has a way of doing that - pointing at aging like it's the enemy, like the goal is always to erase it rather than support the person living through it. I walked in already a little vulnerable, and the approach didn't exactly help.

From there it was a narrow room, average lighting, and a consultation that felt more like an inventory than a conversation. I'd mentioned the caregiving, the wanting-to-feel-like-myself-again, the milestone birthday, and none of it really came up again. It was more like, yeah, cool, here's what we can do. By the end I was handed a price of several thousand dollars, asked if I wanted to move forward and financing offered.

Here's what I wish had happened: someone hearing what I said and reflecting it back. Acknowledging that this wasn't just about spider veins, that I had just entered a chapter of my life that was life changing and difficult, and I was trying to mark something meaningful. Making me feel like a person turning 40 with a story, not just a face full of treatable concerns. If you're going to ask for thousands of dollars during what's already a vulnerable, significant moment in their life, the least you can do is actually hear them first. Romance me a little before the bill. Make this feel like care, not correction.

This isn't really about skincare. It's about what happens in the moments before someone says yes to something significant, and whether anyone stopped long enough to see the person behind it.

I think about this in my own work too. I help businesses build the systems behind their client experience, and the thing I keep coming back to is that systems should never replace the human moment, they should protect it. A great process makes space for someone to actually be heard, not just processed efficiently. The two aren't in conflict, the best businesses figure out how to do both.

I walked out of that appointment with a treatment plan I ended up cancelling. I couldn't really afford it anyway, and financing thousands of dollars for treatments I never felt sold on, in an experience that hadn't romanced me at all, was a hard sell. Nobody made me feel like more than a face and body full of fixable issues. I don't think that's a systems problem, they clearly had a process. I think it's what happens when people get so deep into the doing that they stop asking what they're actually doing it for. Helping someone feel like themselves again. That's the part worth remembering, in any business, before you can do anything else well.