Hello fellow professional! My name is Cindy Benard and I have been a self-employed Licensed Esthetician for 16 years! I own and operate a beautiful boutique skin spa in the Antelope Valley and have been at my location for the duration of my 16 years in professional practice! I started as a room renter and eventually took over the lease where I was renting and became the proprietor of the premises with all the inherent risks and responsibilities. I’ve never looked back on the past 16 years with anything but fond memories and gratitude for the opportunities this career has afforded me and the amazing and wonderfully devoted clients I have been so fortunate to have! Most of my clients have been with me 10 years and more!

I vividly remember renting one of the rooms in what is now my boutique spa 16 years ago with a head full of ideas on decorating my room but fewer ideas about taking care of clients. I, perhaps like you, was relieved to be done with school and the State Exam and so ready, excited and nervous to dive in…planning my skin care practices was clearly a bit more abstract in the beginning! It’s important to start planning right from the start what kind of skin care you wish to practice and how you’re going to do that! I spent many days for many months in my room, which was beautiful, wondering if I just had a new ‘hobby’ or was going to be able to make a career out of this. I learned most of what I know today through trial and error simply because there were few mentors in this industry when I began practicing. When starting my skin care career there was a great deal of mistrust and suspicion about sharing your secrets with others in the industry and many were quite proprietary about their practices. Fast forward 16 years and you see so many professionals generously sharing their day to day practices. However, simply ‘copying’ a technique can be a failure if you don’t understand the why’s and how’s of it. Unfortunately a great Instagram does not always mean success will be yours, especially if your services and skill don’t live up to the social media hype in person! Building a foundation upon which you create and expand your client care practices is vital to your success and it will be easier for some than others. Jumpstarting your path to success is an exciting endeavor that will get you in the game faster with much more confidence!

You may ask why the name The Existential Esthetician? The art of skin care goes much deeper than the skin. When you touch people for a living you can only be truly successful when those people both benefit from and love your touch! Anything less and you won’t have clients who are clamoring to come back to see you. It’s important to learn how you will affect the people you touch both physically and viscerally bringing the element of existentialism into professional skin care. I’d like to teach you what to look for when touching a client to determine if you are getting into the deeper aspects of human connection where creating trust is the most important part of your client relationship, and where a true bond is formed with a client. A great facial can be many things and the how and why you do what you do is so important! I believe in the importance of having a hands on training experience to help you truly learn on a deeper level how to touch your client. I can’t count the clients I’ve had that shared an unpleasant experience with another professional and I’ve listened to each and every story over the years. These shared experiences have turned out to be gifts from my clients. It gave me a golden opportunity to learn what clients felt, experienced and hoped for during a skin care appointment.

I look forward to an opportunity to help you get really comfortable in your professional endeavors while continuing to educate yourself about the vast myriad of potential services you can offer clients! Making the best choices is harder than it seems! There will be mistakes about what clients will spend money on but those can be greatly minimized with careful research and investing! It’s so important not to be the ‘cookie cutter’ of professional skin care! Set yourself apart by investing in your self, your skills and your business! You won’t regret it! I look forward to meeting you and helping you elevate your skin care biz!

Warmly,

Cindy