Love Your Skin

After 8 years in medicine, Nurse Practitioner Shauntavia Ward craved a deeper connection by inspiring people to feel good about themselves. In 2019 Shauntavia opened her own space, eleMINT skin health & wellness studio. She wanted to create a place where her customers can show up in their most natural state, beyond the needle.

Shauntavia starts the conversation by talking about her favorite snack, chocolate chip cookies. She discovered her love of cookies at the mall, specifically at Insomnia. Her husband even included in his wedding vows that he promises to always give her the last cookie. Now that is true love. I decide to switch gears a bit. From talk of desserts to dharma.

Ciara with Decussate: What makes you your highest-self, what’s your dharma?

Shauntavia: Being grounded in knowing who I am. And that’s new. I’m 33, I’ll be 34 this year and I just really started to dive into who is Shauntavia? To take up space for who that person is and be present more. Connect more deeply with every experience. When I feel most comfortable in my skin. Showing up for me, and not to people please.

Do you feel a connection that giving to yourself is the ultimate way you can give to others?

S: It is the only way. I had someone ask me years ago, “What do you do for self- care?” and I was mind boggled. I said go to work and I love skin but what do I do for myself? I do everything for everyone else’s self-care, but not my own. So I started to completely change the narrative and started to focus more on what I can do to ground more and pour into me so I can show up for other people. It did not always look like that for me. I used to always overextend myself to help others, which led to anxiety and the inability to control my emotions. All I needed was to take some more time to focus on me.

What are some things you do for self-care?

S: A girl’s got a thing now! Self-care starts at night. Sleep is important. I sleep seven to eight hours a night. I love my sleep! If I sleep eight hours a night I will be happy. Once I wake up, I stretch. Just waking up my bones and muscles and saying “HELLO WORLD I AM READY!”.

Another thing I have started is hot yoga. I just feel like it gets rid of all of the things. It is a symbolism of me detoxing the drama from the week, or any negative energies. It is a place where I can go to just not think about anything and be present. I have so much going on in my life right now, but I leave it outside of the yoga studio.

I also just started seeing a therapist, which I think is going to be my ultimate self-care! Team therapy. It is

so important— especially in the black community. We have grown up learning to just sweep things under the rug or we don’t tell people what is going on inside of the family. I think breaking those types of generational beliefs is so important to our well-being. Not even just for right now, but for our future generations. I want my future children to grow up knowing mom has a therapist and there is not a taboo about getting help.

Putting myself on a social media schedule. Sometimes you just go down a hole with social media. Comparison Syndrome. It can be really awful if you’re not taking breaks from it. If I feel someone’s presence makes me uneasy - I unfollow. I do not engage with the drama. I am starting to follow certain pages that focus on self-help, empowerment, or entrepreneurial things.

Self-care is a journey. It’s nothing that you just wake up one day and do perfectly. It is a process.

If you could have one day of solitude, how would you spend it? Where would you go? Any place in the world?

S: It’s funny because when life gets busy and things happen with family work, you forget about you. You are centering me back to me. Where do I want to go? What do I want to do? Great question! I really love Marfa, TX. It’s the kind of place that slows you down no matter what. They have great food (I am a big foodie)! Something about Marfa is really peaceful and makes you feel disconnected. I am really big on believing you disconnect to reconnect. I think all too often I get so busy - that I need to disconnect. Marfa is truly special. Its got such a rich artistic West Texas culture. Art keeps me inspired in everything in life.

Where do you feel that there was a big turning point/defining point for you to start eleMINT?

time I tell this story I feel like it is more profound to me about why I decided to do this. I was not feeling like I was getting quality skin care and the experience I deserve at any spa regularly. Especially as a woman of color! I have worked in many different esthetics and plastic surgery and the message they are driving is treatment. “We can treat that. We can fix that.” There wasn’t enough prevention. Too many people would come in (super young) wanting to look like the next IG filter. It just wasn’t okay with me. We have to create a space where we can prioritize skin care and make it about selfcare, self-love, and well-being. Make that fun! Help educate people on how to take care of their skin. So if they did decide to look into cosmetic adjustment/surgery they would only enhance their own natural beauty.

I felt like spas were just too expensive to go all the time. They weren’t very personal and felt pretentious. You couldn’t just walk in and ask the esthetician about products without feeling like you were interrupting. The spa setting isn’t where facials should be. Facials are too unique and too personal. I wanted to make skin-care more of a lifestyle than a luxury. When we don’t get facials - our skin suffers. I wanted to create a space that is inclusive, accessible, and affordable.

to you for service, because the beauty industry always intimidated me. But this very quickly changed being in your studio.

S: I need it to be different! I want to create a community. We give this exclusionary feeling to skin-care. When it is closed and behind a door, we don’t know what is going on. People become intimidated and might not try out something new. Even you admit you were intimidated. But when you know you aren’t the only person with acne or the only person with acne who is embarrassed about it - it’s okay! I want it to be a safe space for all.

With a focus on preventative care do you feel that you have a goal to take the pressure off of people having to come as regularly?

S: Absolutely. When you are on a good skin-care regimen and you have a good esthetician, a lot of people do not need to come once a month. To be realistic a lot of people can’t afford once a month. It is important that the message I bring to my clients is that we are going to pick the best regimen for you. It’s not just about your skin. It’s about your diet, your lifestyle, and what your financial well-being is like. I want to see you thrive, but I do not want to see others go broke trying to keep up.

I personally never thought skincare was something I could afford in my life at this level. When I heard of the message you put out about preventative care I felt a lot more comfortable with spending the money, knowing I wasn’t expected to schedule something regularly. Do you feel like this brings others to feel like they can actually afford to put money back into themselves?

S: It helps people understand their self-worth. It helps them prioritize themselves PERIOD. It is beyond skincare. That is just part of the puzzle. When people come into my space it is about the experience. Having someone to talk to, who understands your needs. Even your ability to just walk into a space that may be intimidating. We are going to make this whatever you need it to be. It is not about me or eleMINT, it is about creating space for you and your skin to thrive - whatever that looks like for you.

Something that makes you multi-dimensional that I want to highlight is that you are a nurse practitioner outside of skin-care. How do you feel this ties into what you are doing?

S: I have been a nurse for about 10 years. I think the overall message in nursing is preventative health. The overall mes-

It’s not just about your skin. It’s about your diet, your lifestyle, and what your financial well-being is like. I want to see you thrive, but I do not want to see others go broke trying to keep up.

sage in retail skin care is more of a “let’s fix that, let’s treat that, let’s cover that.” I think medicine has provided a guide to me to treat my clients differently. I see it as the medical preventative aspect— not so much medical grade products— that’s not my cup of tea. But it helped me understand people as a whole. I look at someone and see all the systems. I see you emotionally and spiritually. We are trained to see people holistically. I took all of my knowledge and brought it together. Nursing helped me have a solid foundation to how I wanted to structure seeing clients in a skincare setting. I always say my nursing career and skincare have been mashed together. This has really brought me so much freedom. To create the most amazing skin care experience for you.

Do you feel there are some beauty misconceptions people have that you want to debunk?

thing as perfect skin. I see it all too often. Social media and society have trained people to think there is something wrong with their skin. That is the biggest misconception. Your skin is so unique. It is your skin. Nobody else has this skin. It is going to go through changes. It’s a part of life. Skin is the largest organ on your body and it is exposed to all the elements all the time. There is no such thing as perfect skin. Once you understand that, you can truly treat your skin. There is no cure for fixing changes in your skin. I am trying to transform how my clients associate with their skin. We try not to call anything good or bad. Just connection with how we identify with our skin. We could do a lot better as a society.

What do you want your clients to take away?

S: The top two takeaways are written on my walls. I want people to “love the skin they are in.” It is much deeper than skin. If you think about it, skin is surface level. It is what you see on the outside. When you go home at night and look in the mirror after a shower, you see yourself better than anybody. I really want people to love that person. No matter what you look like or what season you are going through. I also want people to feel confident. On the ceiling in the treatment room it says “Your confidence is about to evolve.” That is because I want to give you the knowledge base, the tools. I want to empower you to be confident in whatever is going on with your skin. If your skin is being moody and you are getting a breakout - own it. Show up in it, this is what you are getting today. You are human, we aren’t perfect— and your skin is not either.

Also I want people to remember how they felt when they were here. That is what you connect with. It’s not all about how you look. Did you feel excited, empowered, confident, like you can go out and do anything? That’s what I want people to feel so

they can take that back out into the world with them.

It is super cliché but beauty is really more than skin-deep. I love that! But it is real. It is so much more. It is your mental health. Your physical health. When I look in the mirror and I feel beautiful, it has nothing to do with what my skin looks like. When people realize this, they can really show up as their best self.

Something you mentioned in a Bossbabes interview is that you are not taking any profit with eleMINT to put all the money back into the business. You are still working your career as a nurse practitioner to help sustain this, correct?

S: At the end of the day - passion does not pay the bills right away. Ultimately it will, but it takes a lot of work to get there. I still work in family medicine two days a week. I have to support my household. There will come a time where I walk away from my career to focus solely on eleMINT. It is not realistic to quit your job to start a business. You still have to support yourself. I decided I wanted eleMINT to be more than what it is today and more than it will become tomorrow. I knew to be able to make big dreams come true, not only for the business, but to service people, I would need to put as much money as I could back into the business. So I do not take a profit at all - which is allowing me to grow the business. Which works for me right now.

It is important to outline the realistic nature that not everyone has money to just do their passion. Which I think also stops people from doing what they are passionate about.

S: It does. You think you have to have all this capital to go for your dreams, but you don’t. You have to focus on your passion, and don’t ever stop. You will get to a point where you can eventually start putting more work into your passion but it takes time and a plan. Not just a business plan. A self-care plan. A life plan. To know what you want and how you get there. It all starts to make sense in the end. You can’t just jump into something and quit your job.

And you can’t go in thinking you’re going to make a lot of money

S: If you’re doing it for the money, are you really passionate about it? It’s about doing your passion until it becomes second nature and then you are able to monetize it.

Don’t get it twisted though. Your girl doesn’t do it for free. Maybe you start off doing some free services, but then you realize how much value you add to the space you created and then the price tag goes up. It’s a balance.

Do you do worth and value checks as your business is newly growing? It’s a fact that as you grow your worth grows!

S: Being so new I am at a steady pace right now. So I haven’t checked-in and changed the pricing structure yet. But I am sure it will change. I have had a lot of people reach out for entrepreneurial direction and guidance. The people who reach out want to have a mentor and someone to learn from. I love it! I’m like “Oh yes girl, let’s do it. Let’s go get coffee.” But then I am like, “do I have time for this?” So then you think about how valuable your time is. Do you put a percentage on that? But I love to give back so much, so right now I’m just doing it. Talking about boundaries may be the first thing I talk about to my therapist haha. My weakness is I am too sympathetic and care too much. I can’t help it though! I want to help everyone out. It is such a care-giver trait.

Something that people always question in the beauty industry, how do you tip?

clusive and affordable is so important. I’m not even sure the proper amount because we do not take tips here. We prefer if you tip that you donate to your favorite charity, or one we support. I want people to make skincare a lifestyle. If I tell you that your facial costs “X amount of money” and you show up with that, but then you are expected to tip. Maybe you don’t have the extra money to tip? How have I just empowered you as a human but then at the end of your visit I made you feel embarrassed? I have so many clients when we get to that point that don’t know the policy. People literally take a deep sigh and tell me how much that helps. I’m not here to be judgemental, make you feel embarrassed, or like you can’t afford your facial. I am big on the price you see is the price you pay. I would not sleep well at night if I knew I was creating financial problems with my clients.

I actually thought about doing where they can leave a beauty tip for the next person coming in.

What is your favorite aspect of yourself ? What do you love about you?

situation or conversation. I am here and I am like let’s talk about it and be about it. I am so impulsive and I love that about myself.

Right at this moment someone walked into the building and Shauntavia recognized their voice and had to go say hello. I could hear her shouting downstairs saying hello to her clients. If this doesn’t show you how amazing and outgoing she is - then I don’t know what does. At eleMINT, people are paying less than they would at a high end spa - but leaving with so much more.

Currently, Shauntavia is working on expanding her business. She is working on bringing eleMINT to a larger space where she can bring all of her new ideas for her business to life. She is crowdfunding through iFundwomen and has already raised $9,557 as of April 1st. If you would like to help Shauntavia reach her goals for 2020 you can visit https://ifundwomen.com/projects/elemint-skin