Most people book a consultation already knowing what they want to buy. They say the word out loud when they sit down. Botox. Lip filler. Whatever their friend got.
I understand why. It feels like being prepared.
But it means the appointment starts at the answer, and nobody ever checks whether it was the right question.
Most of Your Result Is Decided Before the Needle Comes Out
I have been injecting for over twenty years. I have watched a lot of people do this work, mine included. And I have landed somewhere that surprises people when I say it out loud: technique is maybe 20 or 30 percent of what makes someone good at this.
The rest of it happens in the chair, before anything is opened.
That is not me waving off technical skill. You should absolutely care whether the person treating you knows the anatomy cold, because that is a safety question and it is not negotiable. But technical skill is the floor. Everybody good has it. It is not what separates the result you love from the result that is just fine.
What separates them is whether anyone found out what you actually wanted.
What I Found When I Watched My Own Team
At the end of last year I went through every provider on my team. I started with the numbers. Did patients come back? Were they being told about anything besides what they walked in asking for?
Then I got in the room and watched each of them work on a live face. They picked the model. They used whatever product they wanted.
Not one of them needed a correction on technique. Not one.
Their hands were fine. The gap was the conversation, and almost all of it sat in the first few minutes, in the part where you are supposed to find out why this matters to her.
I had a patient come in with $4,000 she was ready to spend on her face. She left with Botox, because Botox is the word she knew and nobody asked her a second question. She did not get a bad treatment. She just did not get what she came in for, and there was no way for her to know that.
That one still bothers me.
Six Things a Good Cosmetic Consultation Covers
Here is what should happen when you sit down with any injector. Mine, or anyone's.
- She asks what bothers you, not what you want to buy. "I want lip filler" is a solution you brought with you. "My lips look thinner than they used to and my lipstick bleeds" is the actual problem, and filler may or may not be the answer to it.
- She asks about your timeline. A wedding in six weeks and a general wish to age well over ten years are two completely different plans. If you get the same recommendation either way, nobody was listening.
- She looks at your whole face. Faces do not age in sections. The line you are pointing at is very often the symptom of volume loss somewhere else. If nobody looks above and below the thing you named, you are getting a treatment instead of a plan.
- She tells you what she would not do. This is the one I would hold people to hardest. A provider who has never talked you out of anything is selling, not assessing. I tell patients no regularly. Sometimes the honest answer is that what you are asking for will not do what you think it will do.
- She gives you an order, not a single appointment. Good outcomes in this work are built in sequence and over time. You should leave knowing what comes first, what comes after it, and roughly when.
- She is honest about downtime. Not the soft version. The real one. If something is going to have you laying low for a week, you deserve to hear that before you commit, not after.
Ask to See Faces That Look Like Yours
This is the part patients almost never ask for and should ask for every time.
Before-and-after photos are not decoration. They are the only real evidence you have. And the ones that matter are not the most dramatic ones on the wall. They are the ones where the starting point looks like your starting point.
Similar age. Similar skin. Similar concern. Someone with 15 years of sun on her chest is a different case from someone who has stayed out of it, and a beautiful result on the wrong starting face tells you nothing about what will happen to yours.
So ask. Ask to see several. Ask what was used and how many sessions it took to get there. Any provider who is proud of her work will be glad you asked, and you can look through ours before you ever come in.
Come With the Problem, Not the Solution
If you take one thing out of this, take how you open your next appointment.
Do not lead with the treatment you researched at midnight. Lead with what you see in the mirror that you wish were different, and how soon you want to feel differently about it.
Then let the person across from you do her job. Sometimes the answer will not be the thing you came in for. That is the appointment working.
We see patients in Gilbert and across the East Valley, and every new patient starts with this conversation before anything else happens. Contact us today for a consultation.
Rechelle Trejo, FNP-C
Owner and Aesthetic Provider, Auri Aesthetics
