On the first Tuesday of every month, we’ll announce a new Female Founder, including a video interview of them sharing their business story. Want to be featured as a Female Founder?
Contact Memberships for more details. The Female Founders Program would not be possible without our Title Sponsor, Scotiabank.
To learn a little more about the Scotiabank Women Initiative, and why they’ve chosen to sponsor this program, see the video below.
The next Female Founder we’re featuring is Shawna Leifso, Owner & Lead Injector at Subtly You.
To learn more about Shawna’s journey as a Female Founder, watch the interview below (or read the written format).
Tell us more about your business
So Subtly You, we’ve been around since 2019, and we are in the business of helping people look and feel their very best. We specialize in, you know the name says it all, we specialize in subtle enhancements, subtle results, helping women and men look and feel their very best in their skin.
We focus on, you know, your classic botox, fillers, chemical peels, micro needling, medical grade skin care, B12s, women wellness, you name it, we kind of do a little bit of everything here at Subtly You.
Where did your business idea come from?
This whole business idea, let me take you down memory lane here. So, when I first got into this industry, I went to school for medical aesthetics in Toronto when I first got out of high school. I’ve always been wanting to be in the beauty and aesthetics industry. I’ve always loved skin care. I did my two-year program in Toronto and during that time I felt like I was missing something, I needed a little bit more.
I actually asked my professor at the time, are there any other avenues that I could dive into? And she mentioned doing, becoming a cosmetic injector and I said, oh, what does that mean? She said do Botox and filler and I’m 18 at the time and I knew nothing about it. And I said, how do you do that? And she said, well, you must become a nurse first. So, I went into nursing school, did that. I ended up working as a psychiatric nurse at a hospital in Guelph for four years. And at that time, my goal was to save up to take my injector course because it costs a little bit of money. So, it took me some time, saved up, took the course. And after I did the course, you know, I’m ready, I’m eager. And I hand out my resume everywhere in Kitchener-Waterloo and no one would hire me. Not a single person would hire me.
I came so close, and they all said the same thing. We need to see some experience. We need to see some experience. And I had zero experience. And how do you get that when you’re not given an opportunity? So, it was at that point where I realized I just spent all this money on these injection courses. I had a passion, I had a goal, I had a drive. And so I said, I guess I’m starting my own business. And from there, that’s kind of where Subtly You started. I converted my old townhouse at the time. I converted one room into my clinic and started taking clients out of there. And from there, it just snowballed and spiraled and clients kept coming back. And that’s how Subtly You came to be.
What have been some of your career highlights so far?
My highlights with Subtly You and the growth and the accomplishments that I think it’s almost hard to talk about because it’s very hard to, I don’t know, reflect and pump up your own tires and say that you’ve accomplished things. But I can say that, you know, the first step of choosing to be a nurse when I never thought I was going to become a nurse. I think that’s a huge accomplishment.
The making the decision to myself and the choice to invest in myself, taking the injector courses, because they’re not cheap, they’re very expensive. That was a huge accomplishment for me. And then I think as the business was growing, I would say developing a team and hiring that first employee.
I’ll never forget that day and that time when I had to make that choice and then find that right person. I think that was a huge accomplishment. And, you know, building a team of badass women who have like-minded thoughts, and we all want the same thing to be the best we can for our clients. I think that is a huge accomplishment. And then truthfully, if I can say, you know, being here in uptown Waterloo, this is a huge, huge accomplishment. I mean, I started in a one-bedroom townhouse, little clinic, and then I moved into our old location that had three rooms.
And then, you know, we’re heading into our sixth year now, and I opened a place in Uptown Waterloo. And this was, you know, a huge accomplishment, something that had you have asked me, I don’t know, five, six years ago, where I’d be. I never once thought it would be here, to be honest. And so I’m very grateful and honored and blessed to be here in Uptown Waterloo.
What have been some of your challenges that you faced so far?
I would say it’s hard because it’s like, where do you start? Because business is always a challenge. Entrepreneurship is always a challenge. There’s always ups, there’s always downs. The one thing that I can think of is, truthfully, is self-doubt is a challenge. And, you know, you really want to be the best in business. You want to do what’s best for your clients. You want to do what’s best for your staff and your team. And it’s very easy to be extremely stressed in business.
And I just think that is a hard part of it. And a challenge is just managing your own emotions and dealing with self-doubt and reminding yourself that, you know what, you’re a good person. You’re smart. You know what the heck you’re doing. And truthfully, you have a wonderful team that’s backing you up and helping you along the way. And I think that you’re always your worst critic. And so that is probably the biggest challenge.
I think also another challenge in business that I struggled with is growing a team. So as much as that’s a huge accomplishment is growing a team, I think it’s a challenge because truthfully, I didn’t go to school for business. I went to school for nursing, and I went to school for medical aesthetics. And they don’t teach you a single thing about running a clinic or running a team of seven, eight, nine people. And so as much as it’s an exciting thing, it’s a challenge. And I’ve had to learn a lot along the way of, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly of being an owner. And, you know, I don’t take it lightly having when I hired my first employee and realizing, wow, I have somebody’s livelihood. I’m responsible for somebody’s livelihood.
I’m responsible for paying somebody’s wages. And I don’t take that lightly. And it’s a very serious role.
But I’d say it is very challenging and rewarding at the same time. And then I would say the last challenge would be in this past year. I mean, there’s lots of challenges I could go on for days here.
But the last challenge would be I had a baby last year. So, I have a baby girl named Perry. And in that last, you know, we found out I was pregnant and I’m running a business, and I have a team of staff that I need to take care of. And I have this clientele that I need to take care of. But I had to give time and space to myself to have a baby. So leading up that, you know, the last four weeks of my third trimester was hiring a new staff member to take over my clients, making sure the team was going to be OK for me to take a little bit of time off and trusting that the clients are all going to be OK in which they absolutely were. And everything was totally fine.
But I think that was a challenge. And also, just giving myself permission to step back for a little bit to work on the family side of things.
Knowing what you know now, is there anything you would do differently?
You know what? Truthfully, my motto in life and what I always have to try and remind myself of is everything happens for a reason. And you can sit, and you can dwell and you can ruminate and play scenes back in your head. I should have done this. I should have done this. I should have done this, which I’ve been caught in far too many times. I really don’t think I would change anything because every lesson that has been brought to my attention, every bump in the road has truly led me to where I am today and has made me, I guess I could say, really resilient to stressors, to little hiccups along the way that, you know, when I first started in the first year, it’s almost laughable now that I lost some sleep over these little things. And now I’m able to tackle bigger problems and not let it affect me as much.
But if I guess I had to answer that question directly, I would change my train of thought. And I would give I would tell myself not to worry. And I would tell myself that it’s all going to be OK, because at the end of the day, it is OK.
And I know what I’m doing, and I’ve made it this far. And again, with that self-doubt that I think every entrepreneur has at some point in their journey.
What methods have you used to grow your business?
When I think back to the ways that I’ve grown my business and what we’re doing to grow the business, I can say that in the first two and a half years, I didn’t do any marketing or advertising per se, truthfully. And thank you to all my lovely, loyal clients. But my business skyrocketed because of word of mouth. So, clients telling their friends about me, telling their family members about me, telling their co-workers about me was truly the way that my business snowballed. And I grew a clientele. I’m not going to lie. Did I hustle? Absolutely, I did.
I reached out to my local gym around the corner from where I worked and I set up a booth. And I just talked and talked and talked to all the clients of the gym that went by and said, hey, I’d love to meet you. Come on in.
Told them a little bit about myself. Of course, my Instagram presence, I think, is very important. And that is also what has helped me grow and talking to the community that I’ve grown online.
Now, I would say in the last couple of years, we’ve really homed in on email marketing. We do some Facebook ads, which is very successful, working on collaborating with local influencers in the area. But I think what I’m excited about, about social being in our new location, Uptown Waterloo, is networking with other local businesses and kind of reaching out into the community more to grow our business, grow our clientele in that aspect.
And I think we’re honestly at the prime location to start doing that because we’re around so many awesome, like-minded businesses. And I think that’s going to keep spreading the marketing for us.
How do you define success?
I would say that success for me, anyways, is constantly a moving target and success – I guess as an entrepreneur, we’re never at the finish line, there’s always more work to be done, so it’s hard to say, OK, now I’m successful, now I’m successful. But I think at this time in my career and where we’re at in business, if I could define success, it would be the impact that we leave on clients, truthfully, because without our clients, suddenly you would be nothing.
And so, the impact we leave on a client when they look in the mirror after a treatment that we’ve done and, you know, they have the biggest smile on their face, or they shed a tear because they didn’t think that they could feel that beautiful again. Or, you know, they leave, and they leave a Google review, and they’re just elated with their results and how we’ve made them feel. And then our two week follow up, we touch base with them and they’re still ecstatic over everything.
I think that client impact is how I can determine success of suddenly you. And then truthfully, at the same time, because this plays a huge role into it, is success is also the happiness of the team that I’m growing and the staff members and making sure that they’re happy to show up every single day for work. And they share the same passion that I do with serving our community, serving our clients and delivering the best results possible.
So as much as it’s about the clients, it’s about the staff. And I think, you know, I feel I feel successful when everyone is happy, staff are happy, clients are happy. And that’s success for me.
What are some of the core values that you have integrated into your business?
I have quite a few and I can hone in on a couple of them. I think first and foremost is client safety. At the end of the day, we are nurses and client safety take top priority. I mean, we are the treatments that we do and we’re talking about Botox or dermal fillers and, you know, vitamin injections. We are performing medical procedures.
And so, client safety is always top priority, making sure we have the best products on hand, making sure from start to finish, even through to your aftercare, that you are well taken care of. I think that is very important. I think another value is integrity and something that I’m very proud of in the business model that I’ve kind of established from day one is we over educate our clients. I over explain. I really want to make sure that clients, you know, have all the information necessary to make the best-informed decision for themselves. There’s no tricks, there’s no gimmicks, no nothing like that.
It’s just I’m a very much a straight shooter. I’m going to do what’s best for you in a, I guess you could say, a safety parameter of what I can possibly deliver for you. And then the best thing and the most important thing to me, well, safety and all that is important, but it’s having fun. And I think from day one, I have set a different tone in the medical cosmetic field. And this is the feedback that I’ve gotten from clients and from staff is we like to have fun and we like to joke around. And I don’t want to say, you know, you can sometimes go into a medical place, doctor’s office or a clinic and it seems a little bit, you know, cold or medical or I guess I could use the word hoity-toity or prim and proper.
And yes, we’re proper, but we like to laugh. We like to have a good time and people come in and they just feel a different kind of energy when they enter suddenly. So fun is extremely important.
What strategies do you use to hire talent?
Building a team is not easy and finding the right people for the job is not easy. And, you know, when I’m interviewing potential candidates and I’m building the team, first and foremost, listen, like it wasn’t easy to get here. And I want to make sure that anyone on the team is works hard and they know how to work hard.
You have to have a good attitude because there’s going to be good days. There’s going to be bad days. And furthermore, what I’ve grown to realize as the team has gotten bigger is your attitude really impacts everyone else on the team. And one bad apple is going to ruin the whole bunch. And so, bringing your best attitude, you know, skills can be taught. Attitude cannot.
So, I think just showing up to work and having the best attitude and wanting to do your best and be like minded in the fact that, hey, we really love our job and we really love what we do. And I think you can ask everybody who works here and every treatment provider. We seriously love our job. And that is, I guess I could say that’s kind of rare to truly love their job as much as we do. But we do. So, I want to feel that energy. I want to feel that passion. And then honestly, you must have a sense of humor. If you’re going to work here. I say some things were funny. We like to have a good laugh.
So, you must have a sense of humor. And that also helps the clients get through some sometimes-uncomfortable treatments and procedures.
What have been some of the benefits of establishing your business in Waterloo Region?
Well, it hasn’t been long. We’ve been here; I don’t know two weeks now here in Uptown Waterloo. And we came from Kitchener. But I can already tell you that even like the first week as we were moving stuff in and getting the clinic up and running. The community around here has been phenomenal. Local businesses, they’ve all popped in. They’ve introduced themselves. They brought plants and flowers. And it’s been a very kind and warm, welcoming neighborhood, truthfully. And every one of us has said, you know what, we’d love to collaborate in some way.
So, I’m already like we are in Uptown Waterloo. We’re in the hubbub. We’re in the hustle bustle.
And it’s something that I’m not used to from where our last clinic was located. So, I can already see the potential. I’m very excited to see how the rest of the year folds out. But I mean, come on. We have just a beautiful network of people here and other businesses. And everyone has been fantastic. And I’m just excited to see where it goes.
What inspires you?
Truly, what inspires me, who inspires me is my clients. I mean, each and every person that steps foot into Subtly You, they share their own story, their own journey, their own wants, their own needs. And for me to be a part of their journey, even if I’m not their provider, but even to have our staff and our nurses and our medical esthetician and whoever they talk to when they come in. My clients inspire me to be the best that I can. They’re the reason that, you know, we take so much training because I want to be the best for them. I want them to be at the safest clinic. I want them to have the most the best results, the safest techniques, staying up to date with latest trends, you name it. So, clients inspire me.
Honestly, now that I’ve grown a team of kick ass nurses and support staff, the team inspires me. They inspire me to show up every day to do the best I can for them. They bring an enormous amount of energy, and they inspire me. Then, of course, I mean, my husband, who is also my business partner, he inspires me. He pushes me. He is, I could say, my number one cheerleader when it comes to this.
And then my daughter, Perry. I mean, of course, at the end of the day, aren’t we doing this for our kids in some sense? And now I’m I feel privileged to be in this mom group now and I and I’ve entered this new era of life. And so now I’m doing it for my daughter.
What advice would you give to other aspiring business owners?
One thing I would say is, especially if you haven’t started business yet, you haven’t started your business yet, is to start. Just start, because I can think of a handful of clients who have said, I really want to start this business, and I have this idea. I have friends who have amazing ideas for a business. And then they go and talk about it for two, three years and they’ve taken no action. And the truth is, is there’s never going to be the right time. There’s never going to be enough money to start it. There’s you’re never going to be confident enough to start all those things. And I can think back because I was scared to start. And thankfully, Greg, you know, pushed me to push me to start my business.
But I was terrified. I made every excuse in the book not to start. You just got to start.
Just start taking action today. Stop thinking about it. Stop talking about it and start doing because it’s all going to fall into place. And once you start, then the next thing is going to fall into place and it’s going to snowball from there. But if you don’t start, you’re never going to. And just trust and just do it.
What audacious goals do you have right now?
It’s hard because right now the goal was to open up a brand-new location. And we’ve finally hit that milestone just being in this location as of two weeks ago. So that was a huge goal that I didn’t I didn’t think there was a there was a lot of journey to get where we are today.
But that right now is like I’m just soaking that in. I’m taking in this huge milestone. But next on the list, I would say is I really want to get into more teaching and trainings of other nurse injectors.
So, you know, once we get this new clinic up and running and it’s smooth sailing and things are good, I think I want to hone in on being more of an educator in the community. And, you know, even one day doing more talks on stage and on a grander scale and educating other nurses or other small business owners about how to get there and what needs to be done. And I can see myself branching into that side of things and then just offering more of a mentoring program or training program to nurses.
I’m very excited to see what happens this year with networking in the community and where we can go from there. But I’m always having ideas. There are always things in the works behind the scenes. Right now, I’m just kind of enjoying where we’re at with this new clinic and taking it in. But, yeah, I think some more trainings and doing more education and talks and whatnot on the side is going to be something I’m hoping for. And maybe opening up another location.
We’re going to maybe in the next year or two maybe open up another clinic. And I don’t, I don’t know, maybe franchise, but open a couple more locations and multiply. I think that would be cool because I think we got a pretty cool thing going for us now. And I’d love to see more of it.
Where can we find out more about your business?
Of course, you can find us on our website, www.subtlyyou.ca. We are on Instagram. I’m always trying to pop on there and share a little bit of information for you, some education.
You can also stop into the clinic. We would love to have you in for a free consultation. We are at 95 King Street South, Uptown Waterloo.
And, or you can always give us a shout at 519-998-5043.
