Clinic profile: KL Aesthetics
Kirsty Whitworth’s journey into aesthetics and opening her clinic KL Aesthetics isn't the usual story. She admits she didn’t have a passion for the specialism when she started her training in 2011 – rather, it was through traumatic personal circumstances that she ended up embarking on the career she now loves.
“My dream was always to be an oncology nurse,” says Whitworth. I qualified in 2003, and by 2010 I was a haematology nurse specialist. In 2011 I had a baby boy and at six weeks old he had a spontaneous intraventricular brain haemorrhage. Miraculously, he made a full recovery after two weeks in intensive care and through close observation on a neuro-science ward.”
Her son’s illness meant Whitworth was unsure if she’d be able to return to the NHS as a nurse; doctors told her she’d likely need to be his full-time carer. So, she began to think about what she could do to work for herself and around his needs, and that’s where aesthetics entered the picture. “I actually tried to cancel the course the night before because I booked it spur of the moment and didn’t really think about what I was doing, but they wouldn’t let me cancel at such short notice,” she says. “I hated every minute of the training because I went into it for the wrong reasons.”
Career change
In 2012 and while still on maternity leave, Whitworth’s son was developing amazingly well. She was performing aesthetic treatments for friends and family but decided to return to her job as an oncology nurse, as it was where her lifelong passion lay. However, not long after she returned Whitworth’s mother was diagnosed with bowel cancer, and this combined with days and nights spent on the oncology ward quickly became too much. “It became awful. I remember walking into work and thinking, ‘I hate this’,” she says. “My passion just drained from me all of a sudden with my mum being diagnosed. In about nine months, I went from being full-time to three days, and I started to put everything into aesthetics.”
Whitworth says her passion “transferred overnight”, realising she had the skills to make people feel happier and better about themselves and help to improve their confidence. "I wanted to be making people happy. My view on aesthetics shifted and I realised how much treatments affect people’s lives. It’s so much more than lines and wrinkles; it makes such a difference psychologically and, as I’ve developed as a practitioner, I understand the emotional side of aesthetics,” she says. When she left the NHS after she wasn’t able to reduce her working days beyond three, Whitworth began slowly building up her client base, treating patients in the outhouse she had converted into a treatment space for family and friends on the side while she was still working.
“Because I’d worked behind the scenes for a couple of years, just on people close to me, I learnt slowly. I didn’t rush. A lot of people complete their training and then the next day they’re offering treatments to patients. But I took my time and was slowly starting to enjoy it, and that really helped me. I had a client base big enough to justify me working full-time about nine months after qualifying ,” she says.
New home
Her mum and son now both recovered and healthy, in 2017 Whitworth decided to move into a proper space and open her own clinic. Based in Armthorpe, Doncaster, KL Aesthetics is housed in a large, semi-detached house which Whitworth noticed one day on her way back from viewing other premises. “We bought the house and converted it into a three-room clinic. It was on the market for about two years because it has a huge front garden on a main road but no back garden,” she says. “This was perfect for us though, as it meant we could offer lots of parking for patients in the walled front garden.”
Whitworth admits that with no previous experience in renovating a property for business purposes, the project ended up costing a lot more than she originally thought. “When we looked into the regulations to pass for inspection – fire doors and alarms, disabled access, emergency lighting, etc. – everything had to be redone, it all had to go back to the bare brick and it’s basically a new house inside. But it’s up to the standards it needs to meet, and that’s the most important thing,” she says. In terms of the clinic’s interior, Whitworth says she knew exactly what she wanted. “I want patients to walk in and to feel like they’re walking into a luxury hotel, and not be intimidated by a hyper-clinical atmosphere,” she says. “I’m a very relaxed person and we’re a family-run business, which I actually think is partly why my client retention rate is so high.”
Solid foundations
The KL Aesthetics team consists of Whitworth, her sister, who is a skin therapist, and one other full-time aesthetic nurse. When the UK went into lockdown in March, Whitworth was looking to hire an additional nurse to work from the third treatment room and help manage the (then) waiting list of over six weeks, which is sure to have grown during lockdown. As a top Allergan account in the north, Whitworth says she received a lot of help from her business consultant when she was recruiting her existing aesthetic nurse.
“They get to know new practitioners in the north, so they recommended some new nurses to the industry. I needed help with the recruitment and management side, which Allergan gave me,” she says. Whitworth performs the more advanced injectable treatments such as non-surgical rhinoplasty, temples and full-face rejuvenations, while for the time being, nurse Hannah injects lips, cheeks and jawlines while she continues to be mentored by Whitworth in other procedures.
In addition to Allergan, KL Aesthetics also works with ZO Skin Health for skincare, sales of which Whitworth says have really taken off during lockdown. “People are just loving it. I’ve started using it – I’m on the brightening programme for pigmentation – and I’ve been posting my progress on our social channels, so people can see how quickly and effectively it’s transforming my skin.”
Alongside promoting and processing skincare sales, Whitworth has used the downtime to focus on achieving CPD certification for the training courses she plans to launch when the time is right; one or two-day courses for fully-qualified nurses and doctors where she will teach foundation toxin and/ or dermal filler. The clinic’s double garage will be converted into a training space. “I was hoping to start the training around September time, but we’ll have to see, and with social-distancing measures it will probably now just be one to one,” she says. Despite the uncertainty cast by the pandemic, Whitworth has a positive outlook and is keen to start seeing the patients on her lengthy waiting list when it’s safe to reopen the clinic’s doors. For someone who had a shaky start in aesthetics, it certainly seems like smooth sailing from here.
