You May Not Find Your "Forever Home" ... and That's Okay

Rana's Perspective

During one of our Confidence Roundtable Zooms, a preceptee shared how much she loved our program; but she said she felt like we had covered so much except one very important question: How does a practitioner find their forever home?

I immediately responded: You create it

She then said she never wanted to be a business owner, but she wanted a workplace where she could stay forever. I told her that, ultimately, she may never actually find her forever home.

And I say that not to discourage, but to reframe the way we think about our careers in aesthetics.

Because not finding a "perfect" workplace does not mean you can't create an incredible experience for yourself, for your patients, and alongside your peers.

Reflecting on Where We Come From

I asked her to think back to her time in the hospital system. Were any of those environments ever a perfect home? When I was a younger staff member, I remember having an amazing manager, but having the worst shifts.

Or loving the work itself, but dealing with constant staff turnover, getting called in to cover, or managing heavy patient loads because of regular staffing shortages.

There was always something. And maybe that's just human nature. We often look for what's wrong before we recognize what's right.

Aesthetics is Different (Whether We Admit It or Not)

In aesthetics, we still find things to complain about. But the reality is the landscape is very different from the hospital system.

There are no night shifts.

No 12-hour hospital shifts.

No life-or-death emergencies.

No waiting on the medical team for orders or discharges.

No shortage of beds. No picking up sickness from patients.

When you really step back and look at it, we are working in a version of medicine that is, in many ways, a luxury. And yet ... we still find ways to complain.

Sometimes it's the business.

Sometimes it's the operations.

Sometimes it's the patients.

The Reality of Aesthetic Business

Many aesthetic practices are not perfectly run. And that's not always due to a lack of care; it's often due to a lack of training and experience.

Plastic surgeons and aesthetic practitioners like myself are not taught how to build or manage a business. Leadership, operations, and team culture are skills learned over time often through trial and error. I know firsthand.

Since opening The Confidence Bar in 2020, I've had to learn how to lead a team, create SOPs (long before the era of ChatGPT), and write employment contracts, just to name a few. This didn't come naturally to me and it wasn't what i was really passionate about, but it all had to be done.

Thankfully, six years in , I now have the yin to my yang in our Operations Manager, Cathy Christensen. She brings strengths that I lack. But it took me six years to find that right person.

What You Can Control

You may not find your forever home, but you will find growth in every place you work.

Each workplace will teach you:

• What you align with

• What you don't

• What excellence looks like

• What needs improvement

None of the workplaces I've been in were perfect. Our little business here at The Confidence Bar isn't even perfect, but we work damn hard trying to get it there. The business of people is hard.

But what I will tell you is that I have always, and I mean always, built something very special in my treatment room. That was my space. The one thing I could control.

That's where I created consistency, trust, and a high standard of care.

That's where I built a loyal patient following, where patients felt seen and heard and referred their friends.

My days became full with back-to-back patients, remembering the small details, making a real impact, and even developing wait lists. I was, in many ways, cocooned in that treatment room. When you're busy, focused, and drive, you naturally avoid the drama. When you're not, it's easy to get pulled into workplace negative noise that won't move you forward.

A Final Thought from Rana

You don't need a perfect workplace to have a fulfilling career.

You need to:

• Take ownership of your behavior and your direction

• Work hard to grow your treatment room and your patient base

• Create a positive experience for your patients, because that gives you job satisfaction and makes you feel good

• Show up well rested, early, prepared, and ready to give your best every day

• Stay focused on growth, even in a challenging environment

• Use downtime wisely (not in gossip), follow up with patients, build your social media presence, shadow others, and continue learning.

Your "forever home" may not be a practice, but you can create it in your treatment room and create a knock-on effect.

Cathy's Perspective

A forever home for an employee in a business is a beautiful idea, and is really the dream for a loyal, hardworking person. Unfortunately, Rana is right in the idea that it may be more of a dream than a reality, especially the word "forever".

Seasons and Chapters

Your career will have seasons or chapters, and this is OK. It may be cliché, but it is important to see your career as a journey and not a destination. All while also acknowledging that you are the only detail in that journey that will stay the same.

Jobs will come and go, people will come and go, changes will come and go, but YOU will still be on that path, absorbing, growing, and evolving. With time, what you valued in the beginning may change.

I started my career as an editor at the beginning of my journey and ended up in business and operations, each step giving me new skills, insight into myself and my values and needs, what I like to do, and what I'm really good at doing. And who knows what the next 20 years will bring! Did I always want to learn those lessons? No, but somewhere along the line I discovered that being open to this journey versus trying to cram an experience into my perfect fit has actually resulted in more fulfillment for me as a person and more available opportunities for me in my career.

Your fulfillment needs to come from within and be rooted in what is solid in your life outside of work. No matter how wonderful the workplace is that you will find (and I know you will find a great fit), it is critical that you understand the owner of that workplace is not always going to keep your happiness at the forefront. Sometimes, outside factors come along, often financial, that require the owner of the business to make hard decisions that will ultimately change your trajectory. If you tie too much of yourself into that business, it can be devastating to your self-worth when things shift in your role, which they inevitably will.

Developing Your Self-Strategy

Any point in your journey, whether it be at the beginning, in the middle, or when you are looking to exit, is a good time to really do some introspection and determine what you are looking for in a workplace. This stems from what you value as a person, and what you need to support your life outside of work.

For example:

• I value flexibility = Find a workplace that allows a flexible schedule that meets your needs.

• I value freedom and autonomy = Find a workplace where you aren't micromanaged and are given relatively free reign over your time there.

• I value community = Find a workplace where culture is top priority, both internally and with the larger medical aesthetics community.

Once you take control of what you value, you can have better control over what you are getting out of your workplace. I realize that from a giver's perspective, this may sound a bit calculating and not exactly the idealized symbiotic relationship of a dream workplace, but it is important to understand yourself and be rooted in these values in order to get closer to that perfect fit. And, if that perfect fit becomes not so perfect, you will find another home (or maybe we should call it a timeshare, lol) that will fulfill your values at that stage in your life.

The dangers in seeking work as home is that you become reliant on it for your identity and self-worth, and give too freely to a job that probably doesn't have you as an individual as its top priority. Instead, give all that you can to the workplace that matches your values and be open to all the good things you can receive and give from that: camaraderie, support, education, mentorship, career growth, and more.

When it's time for the next step in your journey, you can take all of these good things with you and find another timeshare where you can teach and mentor from all you have learned, giving back to others at the early stages of their journeys, while still growing in other ways.

A home is what you make of it, and by knowing yourself, mindfully giving all you can to your patients and your team, and being grateful for opportunities and evolution, you will find joy and belonging every step along the way.