Shawn O'Hara: Welcome, everyone. My guest today is Vicki Peters, who is the owner of Vitality Laser Clinic in Victoria, BC. She brings a unique background to medical aesthetics, having spent 15 years as a registered dental hygienist before becoming a certified laser technician in 2021. Her clinic offers laser hair removal, microneedling, chemical peels, and treatments for conditions like rosacea, melasma, and spider veins.

Vicki's own experience with laser and skin treatments in her late 40s shaped her passion for helping clients feel confident and liberated in their own skin. Welcome, Vicki. Thanks for being here.

Vicki Peters: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Shawn O'Hara: So tell me, what do you like about what you do?

Vicki Peters: I love helping people feel their best. I'm actually kind of an odd person to have ended up in an aesthetics business, because I'm not particularly a glamorous person. I don't wear makeup. I'm a pretty casual dresser, and I believe that people don't need to look like Barbie dolls or movie stars to be considered attractive.

I think we're all beautiful in our own way, and beauty comes in all different colors, shapes, and sizes. I don't believe in making people look fake or overdoing cosmetic treatments, but I do believe in helping people feel their best in their own skin. I actually got into this because I'd gone through an incredibly stressful time, and it had aged me considerably, and I would look in the mirror and wonder, 'Who was that looking back at me?'

I didn't like the way I looked, and I didn't feel that it matched how I felt. One of my dental hygiene patients was a cosmetic nurse, and I had talked to her about it, and she had said, 'Oh, all you need is a few thousand dollars and I can fix all that for you.' So I started saving my money over the course of the next year, and I booked the appointment, took the time off work, and then COVID hit and my appointment was canceled, and I ended up taking that money and I used it to renovate my house.

I bought flooring, taught myself how to lay the flooring and install it, and on the last day of banging in the boards, I said to my daughter, 'This was supposed to be my face.' If I owned a laser, I could put it in that spare room downstairs and laser myself whenever I wanted, and that's honestly how the idea was born.

But at the same time, I was also becoming increasingly unhappy working in dental hygiene. It's an incredibly physically demanding profession, and it was taking its toll on my body. I was living with daily pain, and I felt I was really lacking vitality, so I was already considering taking a different career path when I had this epiphany.

I started looking into laser and medical aesthetics and realized a lot of my healthcare education transferred really well. I'd already had a strong background in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, pharmacology, infection prevention, patient care, things like that, so it was a fairly natural bridge between two professions.

In an effort to find vitality, I went for it, and that's why I named my clinic Vitality Laser Clinic. Once I started treating my own skin, I started feeling more like my good old self again, and better as a result. I didn't look twenty-five again, nor did I want to, but I did look like my good old self again.

And that's really what I love about what I do now. I'm not trying to turn people into somebody else. What I am trying to do is help them improve something that's bothering them, so that they can look in the mirror and feel good about who is looking back at them.

Shawn O'Hara: So that they feel better about themselves?

Vicki Peters: Yeah. Yeah. I want them to feel the best in their own skin. We don't have to subscribe to unrealistic beauty standards to achieve that.

Shawn O'Hara: I like the way you got the name of your company as well.

Vicki Peters: Yeah. Yeah, I did too.

Shawn O'Hara: So how long from the time of the renovation till you opened?

Vicki Peters: I started considering this as a career path in 2020 during lockdown, and by April 2021, I was trained and up and running. I opened the business with the amount of money that it took me to do my education, buy the machine, and do the renovation. And I actually think I took five bucks out of my own personal account to open up my business bank account.

So I started it on a shoestring budget, and I just worked on friends and family until I saved up a little bit of money so that I could purchase more equipment, and then more supplies, and then do some advertising. And I did all that while still working full-time as a hygienist. And then within about two years of working both as a hygienist and in my clinic, I was able to pull out of dental hygiene and work exclusively in my clinic.

Shawn O'Hara: Probably much more controlled days that way.

Vicki Peters: Much more controlled days that way. But also, in some funny ways, less control over your day. When you're self-employed, you're always in it. You don't go home after a hard day of work and just relax. You work harder. So yes, sometimes I wonder why I named it Vitality, because there are definitely some days where I'm still lacking in that, because it is such hard work.

But I definitely appreciate being my own boss, controlling my own schedule, and my work is able to adapt around my lifestyle now too, which is nice.

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah, that is so nice about it. So you mentioned going through training. Are you a regulated industry?

Vicki Peters: As a dental hygienist, I'm regulated, but that doesn't transfer over into cosmetics. And so it's actually a bit more complicated than people might realize, because there isn't one organization that regulates medical aesthetics in BC. Health Canada will regulate medical devices themselves.

So if I'm using a regulated medical laser or another medical device, Health Canada is the one that determines whether that device meets its requirements for safety and effectiveness for the purpose that it's licensed for. Then provincially, as of April 1st, 2026, so very recently, BC's Health Professions and Occupations Act and its regulations specifically restrict certain uses of laser.

Applying a laser for the purpose of cutting tissue or destroying tissue is considered a restricted activity now, meaning it can only be performed by a regulated health professional who, under their health professional scope of practice, is authorized to perform that activity. But it doesn't outline what is considered cutting or destroying of tissue to be.

So that can be interpreted differently amongst different health professions colleges. The BC Ministry of Health also publishes specific laser hair removal safety guidelines for owners and operators. They were developed by the BC Centre for Disease Control Radiation Protection Services, I believe.

And they cover things like laser safety training, controlled treatment areas, protective eyewear, warning signs, operating procedures, treatment records, and safety documentation. But there is no enforcement to take that course and no enforcement of those guidelines. And there isn't a regulatory college for laser technicians.

There isn't an organization equivalent to the college that regulates me as a dental hygienist that says every laser technician or medical aesthetician has to complete this particular education, or demonstrate these competencies, or pass these examinations, and then maintain a license to practice.

So I wouldn't say laser is unregulated. But there are regulations, because there are regulations surrounding the equipment, the facility, public health, and certain activities. Certain restricted activities, like injections and the use of some lasers, can only be performed by authorized regulated healthcare professionals, and how those activities are governed can differ depending on the practitioner's profession and regulatory college.

So it's kind of regulated and kind of not, and it can be confusing, because one college might say laser hair removal or removal of spider veins is considered destruction of tissue, because essentially it is. We're always doing controlled damage to get an effect. So yeah, when I remove your spider veins or when I deactivate your hair follicles, that's doing destruction.

So one college might consider that destruction of tissue. Another college might consider using a laser to cut a mole from the surface of your skin destruction of tissue.

Shawn O'Hara: Wow. And each college has different definitions, and that can be confusing.

Vicki Peters: Mm-hmm. Like within my own college of dental hygiene, or it's actually now an amalgamated college, but within my own college as a dental hygienist, I learn the anatomy of the face just like a dentist. I learn the blood vessels, the nerve patterns, the names of the nerves, what tissues they innervate.

I learn the muscles of the face. I learn the layers of the skin. I have the same first aid course that the dentist has. The dentist is allowed to inject Botox and filler. The hygienist is not. The dentist is allowed to inject local anesthetic without supervision of another dentist, but a hygienist needs to have supervision of a dentist in order to inject local anesthetic.

And then within that rule too, there's other nuances to the rules. Just looking at it like that, just within the college itself, there's different things that different people are allowed to do based on their training that sometimes makes sense and sometimes don't make sense.

And then when you start comparing those nuances from college to college, it can get a bit convoluted and confusing as to why certain things are regulated and others aren't.

Shawn O'Hara: I guess it could be straightforward for a practitioner, well, maybe not as straightforward for a practitioner, but for a consumer, they might have to wonder if they should be getting treatment from someone, and if they really can administer that treatment. That can get tricky.

Vicki Peters: Mm-hmm. And for the most part, I think when a profession has a college looking out for it, the public's aware, because the college's purpose is to protect the public, right? So we all know that if we go to see some doctor and he treats us wrong, we can sue him. Or we know that when we go to a doctor, we have to sign a waiver saying that you can't sue him if he does something wrong.

The public seems to have a fairly decent understanding of when they're protected and when they're not, but this is an area that I think confuses people, because in some aspects they are protected, and in some aspects there's nobody looking out for their best interest.

Shawn O'Hara: And they wouldn't necessarily...

Vicki Peters: They wouldn't know. They wouldn't know. I'm still registered with the college to practice dental hygiene, but there's nothing in that scope, there's nothing in those regulations that tell me that I have to practice a certain way as a laser technician. But if I was a nurse or a doctor, there might be something in my legislation that I have to follow when it comes to laser treatments.

Shawn O'Hara: Oh, it gets tricky.

Vicki Peters: Very tricky.

Shawn O'Hara: Yeah.

Vicki Peters: Yeah, yeah. And there isn't really, there's not a lot of associations either. So typically, for say, a medical professional, the association advocates for the professionals, where the college advocates for the public. And so there's also not a lot of really strong associations that people can belong to.

Personally, I belong to the Beauty Council and MCAS, but that's totally voluntary and doesn't necessarily, unless you know what those agencies do and what they're for, it doesn't really provide a lot of assurance to the general public.

Shawn O'Hara: And they're not really an advocacy group either.

Vicki Peters: No, no. They focus more on education and safe practice and studies, like the newest studies and the newest findings, and there's good information there, but none of it is mandatory.

Shawn O'Hara: With all this regulation, or lack of it, and the different governing bodies and so on, where do the real safety checks actually come from?

Vicki Peters: There are several different layers. Ultimately, it comes down to the technician, or practitioner, or business owner. First, I want to know that I'm using a Health Canada licensed device and that I'm using it for what it's actually intended to do.

Then there are manufacturer protocols, laser safety procedures, appropriate eye protection, infection prevention, and safety of the treatment environment itself. But at the end of the day, one of the biggest variables is the human being operating the machine, and the human being being treated. I, as the operator, need to understand the skin that I'm treating.

I need to know what I'm actually trying to target, how the particular technology works, what parameters are appropriate for that person, what the contraindications are, and what the expected clinical endpoint should look like. I also need to recognize when something doesn't look right, and know when to stop and what to do about the problem you could have potentially created there.

Health Canada can determine that a machine meets its requirements for safety and effectiveness when used appropriately, but they're not standing beside me when I'm treating somebody. So ultimately, it's my responsibility to determine whether I should treat that person in the first place, and if I do, how to do it safely. Sometimes that means asking for advice.

Sometimes, still five years later, if I have a complex condition or an ultra-sensitive situation I'm dealing with, I will take photos, and I will push pause on the treatment. I'll take photos, and I will send photos, with permission of the client, to my mentors and to my laser trainers and say, 'This is what I want to do. Do you think I'm on the right course here, or should I consider something else?'

I also will happily refer a client to a different clinic, to a different practitioner, if I think they have equipment or treatments there that would treat them better or safer than what I can do. Because ultimately, for me as a business owner and a person who lives in the community she works in, I want to build trust with my clients, and I would rather them go somewhere else if that treatment can be better for them than what I have to offer.

And sometimes when you're pushing through your day, or pushing through your month, trying to earn an income, earn a living, sometimes that's hard to do. You have to have a strong conscience and a strong sense of integrity to be able to say, 'You know what, I want your 300 bucks, but you're going to want to give it to that person instead of to me.'

So really it comes down to the operator, and their integrity, and their willingness to respect and follow the rules that are really in their patient's best interest.

Shawn O'Hara: And their personal code of ethics.

Vicki Peters: Yeah. Yeah.

Shawn O'Hara: With all these regulations, how do you put that across in your marketing?

Vicki Peters: That's a lot. There are really two different things that I have to think about: what I'm legally allowed to say, and what Facebook, Instagram, or Google will actually allow me to advertise. I do most of my marketing online. It's expensive, but it's more affordable than doing other kinds of marketing, and other kinds of marketing are also often more just about brand recognition, as opposed to, 'Hey, I have an offer for you, come and get it.'

Right? But under Canadian advertising law, I can't make false or misleading claims, and if I'm making claims about how well something works, I need to be able to support those claims. And that's particularly relevant in aesthetics, because it's really easy to write things like, 'Gets rid of pigmentation,' 'Eliminates wrinkles,' or 'Guaranteed results,' or 'Best laser in town.'

But human beings don't work that way. Two people can have the same treatment and respond very differently. So I can explain what a treatment is intended to improve and what kind of results we typically hope to achieve, but I can't promise a particular outcome. But they also don't just look at the words you're using, they also look at the overall impression of the ad.

So just sticking the words 'May help this condition' in front of an exaggerated claim doesn't necessarily make the ad okay, if everything else about it is telling the consumer, 'This is definitely going to happen to you.' And my own personal stance, because of that, is I don't use airbrushing in my ads. When I am on film, I don't use anything special.

Sometimes I don't even wear makeup. I'm just, here I am, this is me, I'm comfortable in my own skin. But just sticking words like 'may help' in front of an exaggerated claim, it's not working with integrity, and it's really not supposed to happen. And then on top of that, you have Facebook, Instagram, and Google imposing their own advertising standards on top of everything else that we have to think about.

They all have rules of their own. If you show too much skin, or if a certain body part is too close to the center or too much in the forefront of an ad, or if there are too many emojis, or specific language, or too many capital letters, or whatever, there's so many different things that you have to know.

And so sometimes it works well to work with an ad agency that knows those rules, which is what I prefer to do.

Shawn O'Hara: So you work with an ad agency now?

Vicki Peters: Yes. Yeah. But even that's not foolproof. I've had to let go of two different ad agencies because they essentially were breaking Facebook's rules. Facebook and Instagram, like Meta, they're joined, but they broke the rule in an ad, and you do that enough times, and then Facebook closes your ad account down, so then you can't post ads or anything on there, and you end up losing your followers and have to open up a new account and start all over from scratch again.

So finding an agency that knows those rules and keeps up with the rules, because Meta and Google change their rules on a regular basis, and they change the way their algorithms work on a regular basis, so working with somebody who stays on top of that is really important, because otherwise you can just be throwing good time and money after bad as a business owner.

Shawn O'Hara: So what would you like marketers to know about your industry?

Vicki Peters: Wow. That's a loaded question. There's a lot of marketers that claim to know everything about the industry. I find most marketers tend to take often an aggressive approach to marketing by saying things like, 'Best clinic in town, best laser in town,' and I just won't go for that.

They like to use a lot of Photoshopped images, airbrushed images. I don't go for that. They often will recommend basically giving away the farm. Buy one, get two free, or unlimited laser hair removal, entire body, for a year for $300. And then their idea is once you get the person into the chair, then you upsell them onto other treatments, and that's just not how I roll.

I refuse to treat people that way. I don't look at people as my next target or my next dollar. I look at people as my next connection, and my next potential lead, and my next referral. And so I don't like playing games with people at all with marketing. And so rather than deferring to the agency's recommendations, I tell the agency what it is that I want in the ad, and I get them to design it.

And if it comes back and it's got something in there that I don't like, or don't approve of, or didn't agree to, it comes out before it goes up publicly. Marketers are often, their job is to make you think that they're doing a really good job for you. That's how they stay employed. So they will often count your success by the number of leads that they got you.

So they'll say, 'Well, this ad, we had this budget on it, and for every $10 you got a new lead, or for every $100 you got a new lead, and we got you 30 new leads this month, or 60 new leads this month.' But those leads mean very little when you're not making any money.

You have to, as a business owner, also be able to pay your own expenses and cover your own costs and take a paycheck for yourself at the end of the day, while still providing the service. And so many times their approach is, well, just get the person in the door at a cheap discount, and then try and upsell them.

And to me, I interpret that as playing games with them. Upsell them into something else just so that you can then start to earn an income. But to get them in the door, you're essentially working for free, or you're going into a deficit, and that doesn't make good business sense to me. So it's not all marketers are looking to help you build your business.

They're looking to help prove to you that they're getting you new clients. But a new client, you don't want the client that you're going to lose your shirt on, right?

Shawn O'Hara: That you could almost say is just a customer, or somebody looking for the lowest price, and only going for the cheapest.

Vicki Peters: And so you're not necessarily generating loyal clientele that will come to you and put their trust in you and refer people to you. You are getting the person filling the chair for the day, but it usually ends there. They're usually the people that say, 'Okay, well, I want to do this treatment next, so when it's on sale next, call me.'

And then that becomes an unrealistic expectation too. As a business owner, you can't keep a running tally of all the people that want the next sale, and then put the next sale on and call them and say, 'Here it is,' and still not make any money. The truth is we're all in business to earn an income, right? And I'm happy to earn a modest income. I don't need to take advantage of people to earn an income, but I still need to pay my mortgage at the end of the month.

Shawn O'Hara: And you also don't want to risk alienating the people who will pay full price, because they start to wonder.

Vicki Peters: And the thing is too, when you super-duper discount your rates, a lot of people will look at that and say, 'Oh, it must not be very good, it must be a less than awesome laser.' And I actually have the best laser you can get, the most comfortable laser you can get.

A few years ago, when I was new in the business, I ran an ad, and it was, 'Get a Brazilian and get your underarms for free.' That's a significant giveaway, it's almost a 50% discount. I'm not making money on that treatment at all. But I ran it, and this summer I thought, 'You know what, it's been so long, I'm going to run it again.'

Not because I needed to or anything like that, but I just thought it's a nice way to give back to the community, and it's a nice way to make some treatments accessible for people who wouldn't normally be able to afford something like that. And so that was my reason for running it this year.

I'm busy enough now, I don't need to run a super-duper bargain in order to get somebody in the door. But I ran it this year because I wanted to make it accessible for people who wouldn't normally be able to afford it. So every once in a while, I'll still do something like that, but it's not generally the clientele that I'm trying to attract.

I'm trying to attract the people who will send their daughters to me when their daughters want treatment, or send their friends to me when their friends want treatment, not just the person who's looking for the cheapest deal in town.

Shawn O'Hara: Another thought with marketers too, they often just go as far as delivering the lead and that's it, and then the rest is up to you. Nothing to help the sales process or the retention process. They only bring it so far.

Vicki Peters: There are agencies that will call the client for you and guarantee that you'll only get the leads where they've already verified a client as being able to pay, and they've already taken a deposit from the client. But I won't use those agencies, because they're quite aggressive in their approach and their marketing tactics, and I don't believe in pressuring people to spend their hard-earned money.

Anybody that I treat, unless they're a minor with their parent's consent, is a grown adult, and they know what decisions they can make with their time and their money and their desires. They don't need me forcing that on them. So I believe in contacting people. Once the lead comes in, I will reach out. I try to do that quite quickly. I reach out and ask, 'How is it that I can help you? What is it that you need from me?' And we go from there.

And if all they're doing is fishing for some information and they don't want to book a consultation, that's not ideal for me, because I know I would rather give that information to people in person. But I understand that if you've just got one or two quick questions, that doesn't necessarily warrant a thirty-minute consultation. And so I don't want somebody on the phone pushing you and hammering at you to get your credit card and purchase before you've even met me.

Part of the reason for the consultation, aside from determining if you're a candidate for the treatment, is you determining if I'm going to be your provider. Do you trust me, right? And you're not going to know that after looking at an ad and some stranger from an ad agency calls you and starts hammering on you to give them your credit card. I just can't work that way.

Shawn O'Hara: Are your treatments maybe not one-off, but once somebody treats, let's say, a body part, is that it, or do they continue to come back?

Vicki Peters: It really depends. That's so individual. Lots of times people will come in and they'll start with, say, a small area like underarms, and then they become obsessed, and they're like, 'Oh my goodness, yes, as soon as this is done, I'm going to do my legs,' or, 'As soon as this is done, I'm going to do my Brazilian.'

Or while they're there, they'll say, 'Oh, can you help me with my spider veins?' Or, 'Can you deal with the seborrheic keratosis on me?' Or, 'I've got a toenail fungus, can you help me with that?' And so sometimes treatments will morph into other treatments, but other times people are like, 'Nope, this is all I want, I don't want to know about anything else that you do, and once it's done, we're done.'

Everybody is different that way. And then what I like is, and this just happened yesterday, in the first year of business, I had somebody that I did some microneedling treatments on, and she just reached out to me four years later, yesterday, saying, 'Can I come back?' That is why I do what I do, and that's why I treat the way that I treat.

I want people to remember me and come back to me in the future. It takes a while to establish yourself as a business and get to the point where you're getting people coming back to you over the years. But when that starts to happen, that's the ultimate compliment, because you know that you did right by them. And it also means then you need to advertise less, which then means that you can keep your pricing more competitive and more reasonable for them.

Shawn O'Hara: Do you have anything in place now to stay top of mind with past clients?

Vicki Peters: Yes, I've recently reintegrated that. I used to do a newsletter and social media activities, and I kind of quit doing it, because I was getting really frustrated with ad agencies and advertising and spending a ton of money every month and getting very generic content, and my newsletters, I didn't feel they were adding a lot of value.

For me to open an email where I'm being marketed to, it's got to provide good information for me, and it can't waste my time. So I took a year and a half, two years away from doing newsletters and social media, and I've just restarted that effort again.

But my approach now is much different than it was before. Now my emails are not consistently sent every month, they're sent when it matters to send them. And the one that just went out yesterday said, 'You guys have three days left on the super wicked deal. If you've already had it, but know a friend that wants it, refer them, because you'll save 50 bucks on your next treatment, plus you'll get entered into a draw to win a prize.' And if not, I only took 30 seconds of your time to read that.

So I feel like my emails are more respectful of people's time now. And my social media content, I've transitioned from doing still images, where it's just questions and answers, that kind of thing, or product highlights, to doing video reels.

I have a highly talented content creator working with me right now who happens to be my daughter. And she builds amazing content that is fun, funny, trending, engaging, informative, trust-building. She's a phenomenal medical esthetician herself, and she is so good in front of the camera, and it's just a natural fit.

So we're working together doing that now. And since she's been doing this, and since we've changed our strategies and our approach, I'm getting way more engagement, and way more follows and likes and all that kind of stuff. So that's really helping to build the business.

But from my perspective, what I also like about that is that there are people out there now getting good quality content that's truthful and reliable and trustworthy, which I really like. Because we're getting more engagement, my existing clients are coming in now saying, 'Hey, I saw you on social media. Oh, I saw your daughter. Oh, that was a funny clip,' or whatever.

And so that is working to keep me top of mind without making you feel like you're being sold to. That's not really my goal, to sell to you. If you want the service, you'll come to me if you trust me. I don't need to tell you that you need to come to me.

Shawn O'Hara: People don't like to be sold, but they do like to buy.

Vicki Peters: Yes. This year I purchased a microneedling with radiofrequency device, and I'd wanted this device since day one, for five years.

But I waited, because the technology was, it's an uncomfortable procedure, and the technology posed risks. And I waited until we had a machine that gave me the best of all worlds and was the safest on the market, and that is what I believe I have purchased. And so then I started marketing via email to my existing clientele and letting them know that this was a new service that I was offering.

Shawn O'Hara: Do you talk about the machine, or have you, in your emails?

Vicki Peters: Yeah. Yeah. I explain the differences. I highlight my reasons for purchasing it, my reasons for waiting. I think it was in 2023, I was in a position where I figured I could take on the expense of adding a new machine to my practice. And so I was researching different equipment, and I did some test demos on a couple of different devices, and I just found them way too painful.

I loved my skin afterwards, don't get me wrong, but when you're at a nine out of 10 in pain, and you can't breathe, and you need to ask for a minute so that you can catch your breath, that's a lot of pain to endure for beauty. And it just didn't align with my values. I had also been a dental hygienist for a lot of years, and that's not a comfortable thing to put people through on a daily basis, and I was kind of done with the whole hurting people.

But it also came with risks of post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation as one of the bigger risks, and risk of melting fat in the face. So I wanted to wait until the technology had improved enough that those risks became minimized. We still have those risks, obviously, it's not just a matter of pushing a button.

You also have to read the skin and the depth, know the right depths and the right parameters to change in order to get the desired result. So there's definitely a lot of learning that goes with it.

Shawn O'Hara: That's a fascinating story. It says a lot about the trust and the integrity too.

Vicki Peters: Yeah. And, well, you know what? I've owned that machine for six months now, and there is definitely a learning curve with it. And so I was offering it to my existing clients who already trusted me at a discount, to allow me to use them as my guinea pigs on it. And now that I've been using it for six months and I'm more confident with it, now I will go into advertising it to the general public.

But I didn't want to do that before, because I didn't want to disappoint the general public and blow my trust with a client that is new to me. So I was able to humbly approach my existing clients and say, 'If you let me practice on you, I'll give you a deal. This is what could happen.' And everybody was treated safely, and everybody's been happy with their results, but I have learned how to improve those results also.

And so to me, it's just a more responsible way to do it, and I feel less pressure. It's more comfortable for me as well. As a practitioner, you don't want to be sweating bullets while you're doing an expensive treatment on somebody, you know?

Shawn O'Hara: You offer skin brightening treatments that touch on ingredients Health Canada actually restricts in cosmetics. How does that shape what you're able to say, or what you're able to offer, in your clinic or even in your marketing?

Vicki Peters: That's an interesting question, because I've had quite a bit to deal with that in the last five years. Pigmentation is actually an interesting example, because the products that consumers would probably lump together as skincare don't necessarily fall into the same regulatory category. Depending on the ingredient, the concentration, and the claims, something can be regulated as a cosmetic, a natural health product, or a drug.

Hydroquinone is a really good example. People hear that hydroquinone isn't allowed in ordinary cosmetics and interpret that as meaning hydroquinone can't legally be used for hyperpigmentation. But that's not true. Higher strength topical hydroquinone can be available as a prescription drug. It's the regulatory category that's different.

I've also personally had products that I was using successfully, that were Health Canada approved, become unavailable because Health Canada pulled them from our market, even though they're still being sold and used in other countries. And just as a side note here, I don't actually use hydroquinone products. I don't believe in hydroquinone for a multitude of reasons, so I won't carry products that carry that. But even still, the product that I was using still got pulled.

And I've had the opposite experience as well. I've invested quite heavily into a couple of different skin brightening products that do meet the Canadian regulatory requirements, and then clinically, I found them to be ineffective and unnecessarily irritating, which actually increases hyperpigmentation.

So I threw them in the garbage. Thankfully, after exhaustive research, I found a great Health Canada-approved alternative for skin bleaching that is also hydroquinone-free and actually works, and my clients are happy too with it. So I've replaced what I was using with that now.

But that is an important distinction too, that Health Canada determining that a product meets the requirements to be sold legally doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best pigmentation product on the market, or that you're going to love the results. So those are two very different questions.

Shawn O'Hara: Is it also a difference between something for consumer do-it-yourself use versus something in the hands of a trained practitioner?

Vicki Peters: Yes. Yes. I have yet to find a product that you can do yourself at home, that you can just buy at Sephora or Amazon or wherever, that works when it comes to pigmentation. How these formulas are formulated makes a difference. There's a lot of science that goes into getting the ingredients to the right layer of the skin and getting those ingredients to do what they need to do in the skin, to get the skin to react the way that we want it to.

And then also, while minimizing the side effects and keeping people comfortable and happy to continue using it, so I've yet to find a product that's effective that's not a clinic-based or medical grade product that's available just through common sources.

Shawn O'Hara: Because if they could get them through common sources, they could just do it themselves.

Vicki Peters: Exactly. Exactly. And I can't tell you the number of people that have landed in my clinic saying, 'I've bought this product, I've bought that product, I've bought this product.' And then often those products create side effects in them that they don't want, and they didn't get the result that they wanted.

Shawn O'Hara: And you're also able to tell the skin and so on, of what's going to work for one versus another.

Vicki Peters: Exactly. Exactly. And in the example of hyperpigmentation, there's different kinds of hyperpigmentation. There's different layers of the skin that it can be present in, and the deeper it goes, the harder it is to treat. And the underlying cause matters too, right? Is this post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, or is this melasma? We have to look at the cause, the root source of it, to know how best to treat it.

Shawn O'Hara: If somebody is not in this geographic area, because you're in Saanich, Greater Victoria, and they're out of this area and they listen to the podcast, and they're going to go to a local practitioner, what are some of the questions they should be asking to make sure they're getting a good one?

Vicki Peters: There's lots of questions they should be asking. Training in this industry can vary enormously. You can take a two-day course, and somebody will give you a certificate, and you hang that on your wall, and now you're a laser tech. I came into this already as a registered dental hygienist, so I had healthcare education behind me.

Then I specifically enrolled in a laser program intended for medical professionals. I did a week of theory and a week of hands-on practicum, and at the end, I was essentially told I knew what I needed to know. I came back to Victoria thinking I was going to be the best laser tech in town. And then my first laser arrived.

The company sent a trainer out, and I had two days of training on the actual machine, and I suddenly realized how much I didn't know. I realized I was going to be dangerous to my clients. So for about six weeks, I didn't sleep. I thought if I start treating everything I'm technically now qualified and insured to treat, I'm going to practice dangerously, and I don't want to do that.

I felt I had enough foundation to become proficient in laser hair removal, but I didn't feel treating vascular pigmentation, rosacea, acne, some other things, that I was going to be practicing effectively and safely. And so I kept training. For the first year and a half that I was in business, I was contacting the trainer from the laser company almost every other weekend, and we would do Zoom training.

I'd bring questions and cases to her, and then I paid to have her come back to my clinic and do additional hands-on training with me a year later for more advanced treatments. And that experience changed the way that I look at certificates, and this is what I tell my clients. People come into my clinic all the time, and they see certificates on my wall and say, 'Wow, you must really know what you're doing.'

And I tell them, 'Don't assume that.' A certificate tells you that I completed something. You should still ask me how much training I've had, how much experience I've had with the treatment you're considering, how frequently I perform it, whether I can explain to you what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

And another one I get all the time is, 'I knew you'd be good, because you're a dental hygienist.' And I correct that too. Dental hygiene gave me an excellent healthcare foundation, but it doesn't make me a good laser tech. I could be an excellent hygienist and a terrible laser technician, and that's particularly important to me, because there isn't one standardized government pathway that everybody has to complete for becoming a laser tech in BC.

So even if you've got the training, it doesn't mean that you still really know what you're doing, or that you're accountable to what you're doing. Some clinics have comprehensive consultations, health histories, informed consent processes, baseline photographs, detailed treatment charting. That's who I am. And some don't document effectively. Some barely document at all, and if you walk in with money, they'll take your money and trade it for a treatment that might not be doing their best for you.

Treatment settings might be different each time. I document extensively, because I need that information to look back on and to plan for future treatments. In dental hygiene, we're taught an acronym called ADPIE. It stands for assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation, and we chart according to ADPIE, and I still use those same habits in my charting here in the clinic.

So that gives me a huge amount of information when you come back for your second treatment, and I can look and see, this is what you started with, these are the settings that I used on you, this is the treatment plan, this is how you're responding to treatment, this is what we need to do moving forward. I also know business owners here in town who have purchased devices directly from overseas that aren't Health Canada licensed, and the consumer isn't going to know that either by walking into the clinic.

So it's just worth asking a lot of questions. Ask what kind of experience they have, what kind of education they have, how long they've been doing this for, what their track record is. Look at their Google reviews and see if they're all five stars, or what people are saying about them. Do your homework before you do anything.

So I take the same kind of approach to patient education in my clinic: ask me questions, ask me a lot of questions, don't make assumptions. And part of my consultation, I answer those questions for you anyway, because if you don't ask, I want you to know regardless.

Shawn O'Hara: Dental hygienists are very detail-oriented.

Vicki Peters: We do tend to be. We tend to be very detail-oriented and type A. When you're searching for a tiny spicule of calculus five millimeters deep below somebody's gumline, and you're working blind, and you're relying 100% on the sensory feedback, the vibrations you're getting through the instrument into your hand, and each vibration has a different feel, to know if you're on tooth, if you're on root, if you're gouging into the gums, if you're on calculus, if you've just got a bucket full of plaque in there. All that feels different, and it tends to be detail-oriented people that pick up on those subtle nuances very well.

Shawn O'Hara: So with that and ADPIE, do you put that across in your marketing?

Vicki Peters: No. No. I do put across in my marketing that I'm a dental hygienist, because I do think it builds trust, because the public knows that's a regulated profession. And anybody who's had their teeth cleaned knows that the hygienist has to ask certain questions every time, has to document certain things, and has to give them good explanations of certain things.

So I do let them know that I'm a dental hygienist, just so that they can kind of draw that conclusion without me actually telling them. But I don't get into the details of how I chart and what I put down. Most people just yawn when I tell them that.

Shawn O'Hara: I'm just thinking maybe the attention to detail would be, because it's a differentiator, it's what separates you.

Vicki Peters: Yes. Yes, it is. I really don't think that my dental hygiene certificate should be what people base themselves to choose me. They need to choose me because they know that I'm careful and that I care, and that I don't do things that I'm not comfortable doing, that I do homework and I ask for advice and I use my mentors when I am concerned about giving you the best treatment.

I think that is how they should make their decision, knowing that they're moving forward with somebody who's careful and cautious, as opposed to somebody who's just happy to take their money and give them a quick treatment and send them out the door. And I love it when people come to me and ask questions. The people who walk in with a pen and paper, I get excited. I'm like, 'Oh, goody, let's start.' Rapid fire, you know?

Shawn O'Hara: Excellent. That's the way to do it. Thank you, Vicki. So what do you do to ensure that what you're doing in your practice is safe and effective?

Vicki Peters: Well, because I came from a kind of standardized medical background, I realized pretty quickly that I wanted to create the same kind of structure in my laser clinic. I developed protocols for every treatment that I perform. I developed specific consultation questions for each treatment consultation, so that I don't forget to ask you the important questions.

I've created treatment sequences that I follow, so that I don't forget an important step. And then I also have probably an annoying amount of consent forms that you need to read through and understand before you even come for your consultation. I don't ever want to rely on memory, especially with my menopause brain. Just because I've done something hundreds of times doesn't mean that I will remember to do it that way again.

So that's really how I standardized my own practice and built safety checks into the way that I operate my clinic. To me, it's really important. If I'm doing a chemical peel on you, for example, I want to talk to you. I want to make sure that I'm picking the right acids to use on the skin for that right condition and for that right skin type. And I want to make sure that I follow all the steps properly.

So I will pull out my consultation form for that particular treatment, and I will make sure that I cover everything that's on there. And then I do the same when I'm doing the treatment. I pull out my protocol form, I have it laminated, so I can wipe it down in between clients. But I pull that out, I put that up right in front of me. Even if I've done it a thousand times, I still put it up, because what if I forget? What if I skip a step?

That could impact your treatment, so I still follow that word for word with every treatment that I do.

Shawn O'Hara: That's good, as in the book The Checklist Manifesto, about the advantages of doing that.

Vicki Peters: That's right.

Shawn O'Hara: Great. Thank you, Vicki. This has been absolutely fascinating. How can people contact you?

Vicki Peters: You can find me online at vitalitylaserclinic.ca, on Instagram at vitalitylaserclinic.yyj, on Facebook at Vitality Laser Clinic YYJ. Recently on TikTok, I don't know where on TikTok, I don't have that one for you. And at my home base clinic at 4204 Morris Drive in Saanich, near Lake Hill School, where parking is easy and free.

Shawn O'Hara: Great. We'll put that into the show notes.

Vicki Peters: Perfect. Thank you.

Shawn O'Hara: My guest today has been Vicki Peters, who's the owner of Vitality Laser Clinic here in Victoria, BC. Thank you for being here today, Vicki.

Vicki Peters: Thank you for having me. It was really fun.

Shawn O'Hara: That's a wrap.

Show Notes

Vitality Laser Clinic, Saanich, BC

Website: vitalitylaserclinic.ca

Instagram: @vitalitylaserclinic.yyj

Facebook: Vitality Laser Clinic YYJ