What’s Your Signature?

By James Vivian

Recently I was asked to speak to two groups of Fresh Clinics nurses in Melbourne and Sydney on behalf of Advanced Skin Technology (AST). When AST first reached out, they asked me to talk about the topic of creating a signature stye. The first question I asked both myself and Rochelle Akhavan from AST was ‘what’s a signature style?’ and then ‘do I even have one?’. Rochelle’s reply was emphatic when expressing that we absolutely have a signature style and she was quite surprised that I wasn’t aware of it.

So, I agreed to the presentation for two reasons. The first, because I love an audience (have you met me?) and the second because I wanted to explore what our signature was and where it came from.

When it came to titling my talk, I toyed around with a few titles – from breakdowns to breakdowns (the highs and the lows), from blackheads to blackouts (too many boozy nights) and from melodies to microneedling (a nod to my musical background). But as I created my presentation, I realised that our signature style had been created over 25 years of personal and professional experiences – some even before I gave my first facial – that had led us to where we are today, almost completely by accident.

So, I titled the presentation ‘an accidental journey’.

Next year, we celebrate 15 years in business and the values, the systems and our signature style that our clients, our colleagues and even myself can hopefully see is engrained in the James Vivian spirit, if I look back to when we first began, these have grown and developed since the first day we first opened our doors (and in my case it was my car door as I was a mobile business AKA The Travelling Peelsman).

Just like with our clients, where the journey is about constantly improving our clients complexions and experiences generally, the process of building your own personal signature so too is a journey.

For us, it’s been a journey of commitment to our clients to create the best experience we can offer, paired with finding our niche when it comes to a treatment offering, a bucketload of hard work and also lots of trial and error.

When it comes to creating one’s signature style, I think the emphasis really is in the word ‘one’s’. To me, it denotes a uniqueness that doesn’t exist in any other clinic or belong to any other offering. It’s yours and yours alone. And whilst other people may try to emulate your own signature, let me tell you why it often doesn’t work.

There should be a clear intention as to why every process, every value, every signature flare that exists in your business exists. They should be choices that are made to suit the style of clients you have, the calibre and skill set sets of your therapists, the reasons you went into business in the first place and why you stay in business. They should be directly related to your own personal wins and losses, trials and errors and personal and collective experiences that are unique to you and because of this, no one can replicate this.

And if you do find that people are trying to emulate your personal signature, whilst this might feel a little frustrating, just remember that no one does it like the original. You know why these signature moments exists, you tailored them to you to suit your business, as opposed to someone trying to retrofit your signature into their business.

So, what’s your signature? What differentiates you from the clinic down the road?

For us, our Signature style is steeped in us considering that we are a customer service business first and foremost. Yes, we are a dermal therapies clinic but we are people performing treatments on other people. We understand that everyone does skincare differently. We love creating a space that is warm, welcoming, colourful and interesting.

We have built a team of professional, talented and quirky therapists that not only reflect our signature style but help to build upon it. We don’t claim to do everything and we know what we do well, and for everything else refer to other people. We invest in great therapists, great equipment and place the same high standards on ourselves that our clients expect from us. We make mistakes but it’s about how we fix them that matter.

We also use social media to further our reach, be it educational or creative, to help people find us and help people who cannot make it our clinic with their skin. We love bringing joy to people not just in the treatment room but also digitally. Our social media presence, again an accident that occurred over COVID, is now a big part of the James Vivian signature and we continue to nurture our community and stay connected.

A signature stye is an evolution. Just like our industry. Constantly changing, improving, shifting. When it comes to running a business, there are often different stages of passion and intensity that I think we can all feel from time to time. For me, I oscillate between wanting to grow; wanting to stay exactly where I am and, on a bad day; burning the whole thing to the ground. Whilst we have some signature moves that will never change, just like with our clients skins, there is always room for improvement, and I am always looking for opportunities to refine our processes and signature style.

So, a big thanks to AST for asking me to consider our signature style. I encourage you all to look back through your journey and what events have occurred to make you make changes to your business that have helped separate you from the herd and help build your unique signature style.

@jamesvivian