Last month, Dr. Rosalyn George and Wilmington Dermatology Center generously hosted The Inspiration Lab’s Galentine’s Day party, complete with champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries. Now Dr. Roz and WDC are gearing up for an even bigger party on March 11: the 2020 Star Event. Read on to find out why you should attend this can’t-miss open house, and be sure to scroll down to learn about Inspi Lab founder Stephanie Lanier’s own experiences with Dr. Roz and WDC.
Your annual Star Event is coming up on March 11. Why did you start the event?
We started to get all of these different tools in our toolbox of things and procedures and offerings for our patients, and it just became a lot for us to be able to talk about in our brief time that we have a patient in the office. People are nervous generally when they're coming to see a doctor. So we thought, why don't we have an event that’s an open house, that’s fun, that people can come and learn and ask questions in a, you know, very welcoming environment where there's no pressure, and they can just learn about everything that we have to offer? There's so many different things we can do. There just wasn't enough time in the day to educate everybody.
What makes you particularly excited for this year's event?
I'm excited for this year's event because we have a couple of new things in the office. I’m very excited about this new device we have called CoolTone, which is a muscle stimulation device that will help define your abs and lift your butt. I’m awfully excited about it from a performance standpoint. I'm doing training for some races and being able to have that extra muscle definition is helping with training. So I'm excited to share that with everybody. And I am just excited to interact with people in a fun environment and have the time to talk to people.
You’ve been doing the Star Event for several years now, and it seems like it gets bigger and better every year.
We keep making little tweaks to it. It’s also a way to show our appreciation to our clients by allowing them to lock in a lower price so they can put a credit on their WDC account and then they can use that credit for all of their beauty needs throughout the year. They don’t have to choose what they want that night. They can say, “Oh, I have a budget of X and I’ll put that down,” so that way they lock in our best pricing of the year as well.
At The Inspiration Lab, one of the things we are always reminding our members to do is to take care of themselves. What are easy ways women can do that as it relates to skin care, especially in a beach town?
I think investing in those product lines that are going to make a difference in their skin and just kind of picking those products and carving out a little bit of time in the day to take care of your skin. I am notoriously terrible about it because I get really burnt out at the end of the day; you're kind of emotionally drained. But you want to make sure that you remind yourself to just take care of your skin because your skin shows a lot of your stress and, obviously, the sun damage living around here. And my nurse here kind of changed my thoughts on this because I was like, “I’m so tired. I'm not going to do anything.” And she said, “You know, what I started doing was when I got home from work, I took 10 minutes to wash my face and put my skin care on. So then that gave me a little bit of time to decompress from the day, take care of my mental health, get myself in the game, and then do all the family obligations that we have.” So that's kind of been a changer for me because I thought, “Oh, I’ve got to do it right before I go to bed.” But I've got to get kids in bed and finish making dinner and cleaning up. It was always a lot. So I think that's a little bit of a quick tip for people.
That's great advice. And how do you think living in a coastal area like we do affects things?
We’re so lucky that we live in this great place, but we're able to be outside a lot and notoriously people are terrible with protection, and about 80% of our photo aging comes from the sun. So when we're not being good about the sun and enjoying all the great things about living in a coastal community, we start to see not only aging of the skin, but also increased risk of skin cancer. So making sure you protect your skin not only can make you look great as you age, but also prevent you having to be cut from skin cancer.
As a busy working mom of two teens, how do you fit skin care into your own routine besides that nightly ritual?
Just making a simple regimen and putting it into habit. You know, this is my habit — I do it in the morning, I do it in the night — and kind of making it a non-negotiable in your routine. But certainly if you miss a night, don’t beat yourself up.
We as women tend to do that a lot.
I gave up the idea of perfection. I know it made my life a lot easier.
What’s a treatment people may not know you offer?
Other things that we get to talk about a lot is the use of Botox and fillers in places that we wouldn't necessarily know that they are used — the chin and the jaw line are kind of the hot areas right now. We spend a lot of time rejuvenating the lines in our upper face, but we have neglected our necks and our jaw. So that's an exciting topic. And then I'm also very excited there's a procedure that is one that people don't know about, miraDry, which is a procedure for under the arms to decrease sweating. So for people who have issues with underarm sweating, which can be very embarrassing socially and professionally, there's a quick one treatment that will basically decrease your sweating by about 85 percent. And you don’t need those sweat glands. Only three percent of your sweat glands are under your arms. Your body can cool itself off efficiently without those glands. It’s been one of the best things I've ever had done. I probably had it done about four years ago. I haven’t had to wear deoderant, my white blouses aren’t all ruined, I don’t have to worry about what color clothes I’m picking. It’s kind of a nice thing to not have to worry about.
What is the biggest misconception about Botox?
That it makes you frozen. I think we see all the bad work — that’s really easy to pick out — but there are tons of people who have great work. And it's really, for me, the biggest bang-for-your-buck beauty procedure because it's a great preventative maintenance thing, and if it's done in tiny amounts placed in the right spot, you would never know anybody had it.
The media tends to associate Botox with the “Real Housewives”-type.
Yes, I hear people all the time, “I do not want to look like a Real Housewife.” Most of the time, I would say it’s very rare for that to happen. It’s not the Botox that’s bad. It’s the people who are injecting it or over-injecting it. There’s really an art to it. People will go and take a weekend class and think they’re an expert, but there’s really an art to injecting it.
What is your favorite skin care product right now that people can get at your office?
Vitamin C is my favorite, and there are several different variations. So what vitamin C does is it protects against the sun and it protects against the environment, so it's a little bit of extra [help] just above sunscreen. Vitamin C's are my favorite, favorite splurge products for sure. And then, of course, sunscreen. We got some really great sunscreens in, and you have to like putting it on if you’re going to use it, right? If you're gonna have a big, white, clunky thing on your face, nobody's going to want to put that on. There are really some nice, cosmetically elegant new sunscreen technologies that are not super expensive that we offer in the office that people really like.
How did you and Stephanie, the founder of The Inspiration Lab, meet?
Stephanie and I actually met through Make-A-Wish of Eastern North Carolina, which is a local charity, and actually during the Star Event, we do a raffle, so there's a chance to give back to Make-A -Wish. That’s actually why we called it the “Star Event,” for Make-A-Wish, because their emblem is the star. So that's how I met Stephanie, but I had actually met [her husband] Andrew just in the office.
Why is Make-A-Wish a cause close to your heart?
Well, one, I love children, and two, I wanted to make sure that when I was investing in the community that it was staying in the community and that my money was actually going to help people versus not, you know, just going to administrative costs. With Make-A-Wish of Eastern North Carolina, all the money we raise goes directly to granting wishes for children in our area. So that's one of the reasons that we partnered with Make-A-Wish.
That’s wonderful. What do you like about working with The Inspiration Lab?
Stephanie asked me to join a long time ago, but just with the busyness of life, I never got to do it. It's just an awesome environment for women to get together and find support. And I think it's so important, because I think we try to do everything ourselves and we don't always ask for help. So I think it's an awesome thing to have that network of people.
You kindly hosted The Inspiration Lab at your office last month. What was the highlight of that for you?
It was just meeting all of these really cool women with different backgrounds that were so accomplished and very intelligent, and getting to have those types of conversations with people that I normally wouldn't get to have.
Below, Stephanie reveals why she and her family are dedicated patients of Dr. Roz and Wilmington Dermatology Center, and why discussing skin care is important for Inspiration Lab members.
How did you first learn about Wilmington Dermatology Center?
I think I saw a commercial on TV or I saw an advertisement. It was something where I remember Dr. Roz and maybe — maybe it was just her back then, I'm not sure; there might have been a handful of other ladies — but I was going to the dermatologist that Andrew’s family had gone to because, you know, he grew up here and we had just gotten married right when I got out of college, so I really didn't have anyone. But then when I saw her and saw her beautiful marketing and started seeing her stuff all over the place, I was like, “I want to go try them out.” So I've been with them a really long time.
Why did you partner with Dr. Roz and WDC to host The Inspiration Lab’s Galentine’s Day party?
I thought it would be really great to hear from her, first off, as just a working mom who's running a really respected and awesome business in town. I really love that they are focused on Make-A-Wish and that they give back to that organization. Our son Oliver is a Make-A-Wish kid. And their offices are really beautiful. Honestly, the idea for our Inspiration Lab event came from the Star Event that they're doing in March, and I've been to it for two or three years. I just thought it was such a great way that was really approachable and easy to understand to learn what's out there. There's so many dermatology things that I didn't even know existed. So you get to walk around in the rooms and talk to people and nobody's trying to sell you on anything. They're just trying to educate you and I love that. And I felt that our Inspiration Lab members would really enjoy and benefit from it and they were up for it. So we just designed sort of a mini Star Event and I think it went pretty well.
Why is it so important for skin care to be part of women’s self-care routines?
I think the main thing, because we're always talking about this at The Inspiration Lab, is from a skin cancer prevention standpoint. We live in a beach town. I think we're in the sun more than a lot of other communities, which is great. I mean, we all live here because it's beautiful, but we have to be really careful about that. And I've had friends who've had skin cancer behind their ears, in places they would never be able to see, on their scalp, on their toes — like there’s just random places where even if you're trying to be vigilant, you can't look, so I think at a bare minimum, going to the dermatologist once a year and having your moles checked is kind of the basics, but then I think, you know, taking care of your skin and not having to deal with this [issue]. I think everybody has different issues that they're dealing with. And I think the other kind of key to good skin care, which we're always talking about at The Inspiration Lab, is hydration. I'm crazy about telling people to drink water. It's just one of those simple things that we can do that’s so good for our skin. Dr. Roz is always saying that — there's no easy fix for this stuff; you have to be in a healthy place in order to have healthy skin. It's not just treatments or pills you can take, and so I think it's important to just sort of have that overall health mindset and then, again, thinking about prevention. Prevention is so important.
Do you see The Inspiration Lab possibly partnering with or exploring other areas of women's health in the future?
Yeah, absolutely. One of the things we hear a lot from our members is that they want us to [focus on] health or maybe working out or nutrition. I'm a newbie on my journey. I feel like from a book club perspective or talking about leadership or business, those are things that I understand very well. But I think my own health journey has really just begun, and so I'm learning alongside people. I really love bringing people like Dr. Roz and Wilmington Dermatology to the forefront because I've been with them forever. I have a huge amount of trust. They've taken care of myself and Andrew, and so those are the kinds of people that I want to point out members to: folks who are well-respected and who can educate and serve different needs women have. Anything that empowers women to say, “I need to go to the doctor and get this checked on.” No one else knows what your body feels like, no one else knows what's normal or not normal for you, so you have to speak up. Women often put themselves last, and the unfortunate thing about that is if you get sick and you put yourself last, it actually impacts all the people that you love, and you're actually doing the opposite of what you wanted to have happen — like now instead of being able to take care of people, you're in a place of need. So I just think it's so important. We tell our Inspiration Lab members they need to be seeing their gynecologist once a year, they need to see the dermatologist once a year, and they need to see the dentist twice a year. That's just sort of basic self-care.
For more information on Wilmington Dermatology Center’s Star Event, click here.
Disclosure: Wilmington Dermatology Center is an Inspiration Lab sponsor.