Interior Design Captures the Personality of a Growing Medical Aesthetics Practice

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Allie Edwards: [Opening the podcast discussion casually Allie talks about how her clients leave her aesthetics practice wearing her work on their literal faces :)] ...they're going to leave here, go to lunch with their friends, and say, "Allie did this." Just like when you're designing a space, people are going to say, "Robin did this." You are the first and only designer I've ever worked with, so I didn't really know what to expect. Honestly, I was probably a little worried that, not necessarily my vision, but maybe my personality would get lost in it. And I can't tell you how many people have come into our space and said, "I can see your personality in this. I can see that this is you." I feel like you captured that so well. You were answering questions I didn't even know I had.

Robin Pasley: Oh, I'm so glad. That's the thing we hope we're achieving. We actually tell people who haven't hired us yet that that's what we do: we don't have a style. Our style is you. Thanks for coming in today.

Allie Edwards: Thanks for having me.

Robin Pasley: This is Design to Help Your Business Grow. I'm Robin Pasley, and you are Allie Edwards. Who are you with?

Allie Edwards: Renova Medical Aesthetics. I'm a nurse practitioner and the CEO of the company.

Robin Pasley: Awesome. We just got to work together and finish your new location. It's amazing. I'm so proud of how it turned out, and I'm so happy that you've been happy with it.

Allie Edwards: Oh, thrilled. We get so many compliments.

Robin Pasley: Do you?

Allie Edwards: So many.

Robin Pasley: That's wonderful.

From Side Hustle to a Medical Aesthetics Practice

Robin Pasley: Tell me about how you started Renova.

Allie Edwards: It's not very sexy. It's not like I had a dream and it came to fruition. Honestly, I was an ER nurse for 15 years. People become nurses because they want to help people, and I don't know if I was getting tired, or getting beaten down by the system, or what it was. But a friend invited me to a Botox party, and she said, "You should do this. You're a nurse," which is not necessarily the way you should get started. But I started taking classes and certifications, and I thought, "Hey, I can do this as a side hustle." Then I realized really quickly that I was dealing with people's faces. It's the one thing that everyone sees all the time.

Robin Pasley: Yeah.

Allie Edwards: And I realized it wasn't a side hustle. I needed to take it a lot more seriously, so I started getting a lot more certifications and a lot more training. It took over. We started in an 88-square-foot room in the back of a hair salon, and now there are 10 of us working in our beautiful new space. We don't only do aesthetics; we also do skin and wellness. We want to approach it more holistically, which evolved a lot from just wanting to do it as a side hustle.

Robin Pasley: So what about your background? Tell us where you came from and what got you into the medical side of things, nursing, and then what led to this.

Allie Edwards: I always wanted to be a nurse. That's never been a question. I graduated nursing school in 2001 and went right through. What I liked about nursing is that it was so versatile. I am by nature a very noncommittal person. I am married, which is a miracle. But I didn't feel like I wanted to commit to one thing, and nursing gave me that. I've done so many different things. I worked in plastic surgery. I worked at a girls' treatment center. I was able to go on lots of medical missions doing surgeries on cleft lips and palates all over the world. I feel like all of these things have led me to this point. What I didn't expect is that it would bring out my entrepreneurial business acumen, which I have loved, and I feel like I have a knack for it.

Robin Pasley: Okay, let's think back to your formative years.

Allie Edwards: Okay.

Robin Pasley: Do you recall anything you would trace back and say, "Oh, that was that little entrepreneur being born in that tiny person"?

Allie Edwards: Maybe my parents. My family's from Brazil. I was born in Brazil, and we moved to the United States when I was seven. My parents were, I would say, passively influential in my entrepreneurial journey. When we came to the States, they were on a student visa, and we needed to remain that way in order to be here legally. So they would do these off-the-cuff jobs. I remember the things my parents would come up with, specifically my mom. She was always looking for what's a need, and how do we fill that?

Robin Pasley: What can we do? That makes so much sense, because finding the holes and filling them is part of my entrepreneurial brain: how do we answer the questions someone's asking that haven't been answered yet? That's why we ask so many. I know we did a long interview with you, too, to find out so much about you so we could really dial the space in for you.

Allie Edwards: Honestly, you are the first and only designer I've ever worked with, so I didn't really know what to expect. I was probably a little worried that, not necessarily my vision, but maybe my personality would get lost in it. And I can't tell you how many people have come into our space and said, "I can see your personality in this. I can see that this is you." I feel like you captured that so well. You were answering questions I didn't even know I had, and you did such a good job integrating that into what my space is now.

Robin Pasley: Oh, I'm so glad. That's the thing we hope we're achieving. We actually tell people who haven't hired us yet that that's what we do: we don't have a style. Our style is you.

Why Would a Med Spa Say No to What I Ask For?

Robin Pasley: So in your industry, what is a challenge you've been facing recently?

Allie Edwards: Oh, don't get me started. Actually, that's why I'm here. Honestly, there's a lot of clickbait and a lot of social media, and I think it goes both ways. One side sets unrealistic expectations. All the way on the other side, there's almost fear-mongering: "What are you doing? You're doing too much. This lasts too long, and you don't even know." So either it's really, really bad for you, or people are doing way too much and have unrealistic expectations of what's actually going on. People are probably the most educated they've ever been when they sit in my chair, before I even talk to them. They say, "Oh, I already know about Botox and Sculptra and all of these different things." Before, I'd have to explain it to them. Now they're telling me what they know and what they want, when in fact maybe that's not the best thing for them.

Robin Pasley: Right.

Allie Edwards: But they're getting educated on YouTube or TikTok. I think that's one of the biggest struggles we have: trying to redirect or correct people who have these Google doctors or ChatGPT telling them what they need. I always go back to this: this person is my billboard. They have my name on their face. They're going to leave here, go to lunch with their friends, and say, "Allie did this."

Robin Pasley: Right.

Allie Edwards: And just like when you're designing a space, people are going to say, "Pasley Commercial Interiors did this."

Robin Pasley: Yeah.

Allie Edwards: So I think education is a big piece of it. We want to educate the patient and the client on what will truly look good and what their anatomy is built for. A lot of times they'll come in with a filter they got on Snapchat and say, "Oh, this is what I want my face to do." So I do think educating is a big part of it, but so is being okay with saying no. I'm okay with saying no.

How Do I Hire a Commercial Interior Designer I Can Trust?

Robin Pasley: So if you were going to describe the perfect client, what do they look like to you, as far as their demographic, their psychographic, and how they're thinking about coming to you?

Allie Edwards: Honestly, this has evolved over the years. When I first started, I would take anyone and everyone. I wanted to be for the masses: come one, come all. I prided myself on that. I thought it was a good thing, in the sense that everyone deserves to feel pretty.

Robin Pasley: I love that.

Allie Edwards: Sure. But as I realized over the years, and like you were talking about with non-ideal people coming in, I want people who value my expertise, my education, the time I put into continuing to educate myself, and making sure we have a safe space, safe equipment, and safety in general. So, someone who listens and values that holistic approach, with the inside matching what we're doing on the outside.

Robin Pasley: That's awesome. I identify so much with what you're saying, because it's how we work as well. I think most people don't know how to hire a commercial interior designer, so it can be intimidating. Most business owners get to the point where they can expand because they're smart, right? So many times they think asking for a designer means they don't know what they're doing, and that intimidates them. Other times they believe so much that they know what they're doing that they struggle to trust our expertise, which is what you were just saying. That's challenging for us too, because we're there to help their business grow, and it's hard when we can't bring them everything we have to give in the process. So it is hard to say no sometimes, but we've learned the same thing: if we can't really be ourselves in the project and offer the best parts of what we do, we're probably not a good partner for them either.

Why Do the Details Matter in Medical Spa Interior Design?

Allie Edwards: One thing I remember is the light bulbs. You were talking about the numbers on the light bulbs: do we need this kind or this kind? And you were getting after the general contractor: "No, these need to be... give me a 3000K."

I didn't know what that was. And he said, "Oh, okay," and went and switched them. I would have never caught that. The other one was the textured wall.

Robin Pasley: Oh, yeah.

Allie Edwards: There was a whole array of people watching this one man create these lines and this texture on the wall, and you were saying, "Nope, do it again. Nope, it needs to be wider. Nope." If he had done it once, I would have said, "Cool, looks good. I'm okay with that." But the way it all fit together, now I think, "That makes sense." Watching you say, "No, these need to be different lengths. No, this needs to be not as thick," was such an "Oh, thank goodness I have Robin" moment. I probably would have looked at that wall today and thought, "Ugh, I hate this wall."

Robin Pasley: And I love it. I'm so glad you love it. I'm sure the drywall guy did not love me. He did not, because he had to redo it five or six times. But at least I caught him in his test window.

Allie Edwards: Yeah, it's a stunning wall. I get so many compliments.

Robin Pasley: That was one of my favorite parts of your design, doing that finger-texture look. I was also remembering trying to figure out how to get that circle wall built for your display. What I loved was working with a GC who was a "yes, I can" person. I've worked with many who say, "Maybe," or "We'll figure it out," or "We'll see." But Jared was such a great partner in saying, "Yeah, we can do that." Another thing I remember from your project was your husband building every cabinet in that whole place, including the ones at the front desk. He should really start a side gig, because he's pretty amazing.

Allie Edwards: Unfortunately and fortunately, he has.

Robin Pasley: Has he really?

Allie Edwards: He has, from clients, and our general contractor has now given him several jobs. So we'll give him a shout-out for all that he did on that job. That was a big job, and the cabinets are beautiful.

Robin Pasley: When somebody says, "Oh, I can do that," 99% of the time I think, "Huh, what does that mean? Can you really do that?" So I was a little nervous at first, because I'd had experiences in the past where I thought, "Oh no, you cannot do that." And he knocked it out of the park. It's hard to describe on a podcast how fine-tuned and perfectly made those cabinets were. I was asking for a specific reveal on the door frame, and he would send me pictures: "Do you want this, or do you want this?" I just thought it was great. That was super fun. I loved working with him as well. I felt like we had a really good team on that project too, and I don't know if that's the difference, but I liked it.

Allie Edwards: I had a good experience, and I do feel like people have a lot of not-great experiences in this industry. In construction specifically, there are so many bad experiences.

Robin Pasley: So when you have good ones, keep the name and share it with your friends, because that's a good one.

Allie Edwards: I like that.

Robin Pasley: Wow, Allie. I just love working with you so much. And I love what you do for women. I love the way you listen and the way you think about them as a whole person and not just a face, because that's probably what they're coming in for a lot of the time. But I love that you're caring for them, and that's definitely where I can see the wellness part really shaping what you do. How can people find you?

Allie Edwards: We are in Castle Rock, Colorado. You can find us on Instagram at @renova_med.

Robin Pasley: Is there a website people can use to book appointments as well?

Allie Edwards: Yes. renovamedco.com is our website. There's a wealth of information there about everything we do, including the three branches I touched on: wellness, aesthetics, and skin. There's lots of great information, testimonials, and before-and-afters, so that's a good place to go and look us up.

Robin Pasley: That's awesome. Thanks so much for spending time with me today.

Allie Edwards: Oh, thanks. This was fun.

Robin Pasley: Great to have you.

H.B. Pasley: If you need to create an unforgettable experience, then branded interior design is your secret weapon, because we don't do boring. Designed to Help Your Business Grow.

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