Why I Walked Away From the Perfect Spa Job
I used to have the kind of job people envy at dinner parties. Lead esthetician at a high-end medical spa in Cherry Creek. Soft lighting, clients who flew in from other states, product cabinets stocked with things that cost more than my first car. I was good at it. Really good. I could talk someone through a treatment plan that made their skin look like it had been quietly upgraded overnight, and I could do it without sounding like a sales script.
Then one Tuesday in early 2023 I finished a double-booked day, drove home to Boulder, sat on the kitchen floor with Fig the lab mix, and realized I was tired of the part of the job that never showed up on the treatment menu: the quiet pressure to recommend the expensive thing even when the mid-range thing would have done the same work.
That night I started a spreadsheet. Not a business plan. Just a list of every product I had used on clients that week and what I actually thought about them when no one was listening. By the end of the page I had more “meh” and “overpriced for what it is” than glowing notes. That spreadsheet became the seed of this site.
What Twelve Years Behind the Chair Actually Taught Me
I earned my esthetician license at Aveda Institute Denver after a B.S. in Integrative Physiology from CU Boulder. I spent the next twelve years in luxury day spas and dermatology clinics. I saw the same ingredients show up in $18 bottles and $180 bottles. I watched clients get talked into twelve-step routines when three products would have fixed the problem. I learned how to recover a moisture barrier that had been destroyed by enthusiastic over-exfoliation (including my own, once—more on that another day).
The biggest lesson was simple and a little uncomfortable: most people do not need more products. They need clearer information and someone who is willing to say “this one is not worth the money” even when the brand is paying for the treatment room’s new LED panel.
I left the spa in 2023. Not because I hated the work. I still love working with skin. I opened a small treatment room in my home studio and kept a testing bench right next to it. Half-face trials, timed notes, same lighting every morning, cost-per-ounce calculations that would make an accountant proud. No brand deals. No affiliate pressure. Just the results and the math.
The Rules I Live By Now
I will never tell you a product is “toxic” or “dangerous.” Fear is a terrible sales tool and worse science. I will break down the ingredient list in plain English so you can decide for yourself.
I will never bash a brand for entertainment. If something underperforms, I show the data—photos, notes, cost breakdown—and move on.
I will never claim a product “treats” a medical condition. I am an esthetician, not a dermatologist. I can tell you what I observed on my own face and what twelve years of client work taught me. That is the line, and I stay on this side of it.
And I will always do the cost-per-ounce math. Because “luxury” should mean something more than a heavy glass jar and a gold logo.
What You Can Expect Here
This site has five steady homes for the work:
The Label Decoder – one ingredient at a time, no fluff
Half-Face Test – two products, one face, real weeks of notes
The Real Routine – three to five products, total cost listed up front
Cost Per Ounce – where the money actually goes
Between Appointments – the industry stories and hard-won lessons that never make it onto Instagram
I still trail-run on the OSMP trails, throw mediocre pottery, and brew kombucha that sometimes tastes like regret. My husband Ben designs landscapes, our daughter Avery is six and already has opinions about face cream, and Fig thinks every open jar is a snack opportunity. None of that changes the testing protocol.
I started this because I was tired of watching smart women spend money on products that looked beautiful on the shelf and did almost nothing on the skin. I stayed because the spreadsheet kept growing and the results kept surprising me.
Learn the label, then choose.
That is the whole point.
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