Finally! A non-surgical skin tightening treatment that works for all skin types [Kim Laudati, SomaCell]

Eva Sheie (00:00):
You're listening to Where Before Meets After. Welcome back to Where Before Meets After. I'm Eva Sheie, my guest here at the Aesthetic Meet live in Austin, Texas is Kim Laudati. She's the founder of a very innovative new company called SomaCell, and I'm excited to hear more about that. Hi Kim.

Kim Laudati (00:16):
Hi. Thank you for having me on the show.

Eva Sheie (00:18):
Sure. Tell me more about what you're doing.

Kim Laudati (00:20):
Okay, SomaCell is the US first time entry into medical facial aesthetics where we have a skin tightening device that is not using heat to wound your skin. So just to clarify that in a layman's terms, everything that we have for facial skin tightening right now uses heat to cause a wound and therefore create the wound healing response to accelerate skin tightening.

Eva Sheie (00:44):
I hear all of those are painful too.

Kim Laudati (00:46):
Absolutely. So some can be just mildly uncomfortable all the way up to wildly painful depending on which it is.

Eva Sheie (00:53):
Yeah, usually we hear about wildly painful.

Kim Laudati (00:56):
Exactly. And then there's a lot of restrictions that come with heat based devices like lasers. You can't be out in the sun, pre and post-treatment and you have to change your lifestyle, depending on how aggressive the laser is, you're going to have downtime. Ultrasounds or HIFU, it's the same term, or I should say it's the same thing with two different terminologies. So ultrasound, HIFU, same thing. Again, you could have bruising, it could be wildly painful. That's the one that patients will clinging to the sides of the bed when they're on painkillers.

Eva Sheie (01:26):
Really.

Kim Laudati (01:26):
And yes, so just to get skin tightening, a lot of patients are like, no, this is too much. And then radio frequency, radio radiofrequency with muscle stem, radiofrequency with microneedling combinations, they're all heat based devices. So your higher Fitzpatrick, which means your higher ethnicities, like the darkest skin types and even the medium to dark skin types, they're contraindicated or have high risk to do those treatments. So there's a lot of issues, like I said, between pain, lifestyle changes, downtime, or you can't do it at all, and SomaCell has none of those concerns.

Eva Sheie (02:04):
So it is a device.

Kim Laudati (02:05):
Yes.

Eva Sheie (02:06):
And so what is the technology behind it?

Kim Laudati (02:08):
Great question. It's a acoustic wave therapy, and like I said, it's the first time in medical facial aesthetics in the US that acoustic wave therapy is being used for facial skin tightening.

Eva Sheie (02:19):
How did you even fall into this?

Kim Laudati (02:22):
It's a funny story that I was hired by a New York City, where we're based, a New York City College of Health Sciences to create and then conduct for their first year a medical aesthetic training program for other doctors and nurses. So that was heavily based in laser training. However, I was looking all around the world doing Google searches, talking to colleagues, what's happening outside of the US and I stumbled across this in Europe and I couldn't understand why it hadn't been used here. But the reason is because worldwide there was only really one facial protocol by the global leading manufacturer, and I hooked up with them. I received a treatment. It was not any better than anything we have in the US already. So I almost walked away from the project, but instead something nagged at me, I jumped in, did a deep dive on the research and spent a year in hardcore R and D to come up with my majorly, wildly advanced protocol. And even the manufacturer is like, this is light years ahead of anything our R and D department since 1985 has ever come up with.

Eva Sheie (03:28):
Did you have an R and D background somewhere or a science background?

Kim Laudati (03:32):
No, I'm just, I'm aging with every day that goes by. I'm Korean and Italian. I have very sensitive skin and I want to try to find something, that was my point.,I wanted to find something that could work selfishly on me, which means it could work on so many other patients if I could actually crack the code and find something that would work without heat, so we wouldn't have to change our lifestyles or deal with scary faces of recovery for a number of days or say, this is amazing treatment, but I'm sorry you can't do it because of your ethnicity. I wanted to eliminate all those problems. And then as a provider, I know it's hard for me to have devices that might work okay, not tremendously well, but they work okay, but they have a very high disposable per patient cost. Maybe it's the tip or whatever piece it is that you have to keep replacing. You can never get ahead on the ROI and with every year that goes by, the cost of the supplies goes up, but you can't really keep raising cost of that treatment. So you're like, oh my goodness, between the device payoff and the disposable, when am I making money?

Eva Sheie (04:41):
So the SomaCell, it doesn't have a consumable.

Kim Laudati (04:43):
It has almost a non-existing consumable. So a very busy practice would not even be replacing parts until the end of the year. And those parts quite often are under a thousand dollars. So very easy to keep money in your pocket. The buy-in price is also under 75,000, with the trade show special, the buy-in price for the portable device is 56,000. The standard device is 60,000. So to finance, you're usually under $600 a month. You're about $425 a month. So it gives the practitioner every opportunity to make money and actually keep it.

Eva Sheie (05:19):
It's I think, surprising to hear, and tell me if I'm right or wrong here, when someone who does this work, like a laser specialist, an aesthetician actually can sell the treatment, they can pay off that device very, very fast.

Kim Laudati (05:34):
Yes, absolutely. And we have something that we didn't even plan on. We're trending right now with natural beauty because natural beauty is such a huge thing, and we're not fighting the body with SomaCell. We're working with your body gently to get a really rapid visual response. Literally from week by week, as you go through your series, you can see your visual changes. Then that cellular response becomes cumulative. So over the next many months, 6, 12, 18 months later, you're still seeing benefit without having all of the issues and the cost to have to keep as a patient, keep coming back and coming back and coming back. Maintenance is low, once a quarter or you could do more often if you wanted to, or you could do by quarterly if you wanted to. It's very individual at that point.

Eva Sheie (06:24):
So is it a series of treatments or is it a onetime or can it be both?

Kim Laudati (06:28):
It can be both. So for patients that are flying in, for example, they will reap the benefit from a singular or just two treatments, but the actual initial series is six. If you're local, we do prefer to do once per week, but if anyone has time constraints, whether they're flying in or whether they're local, but they just want to get done faster, the one expectation I manage is to let you know your cumulative benefit and your end result is going to be the same no matter what. But when we push the body a little bit faster, your wow factor from week to week, you don't see that. It might take two or three weeks before you really start to see that, oh my goodness, look at my skin, look at my face, look at my jawline, everything is tighter. The response comes through very quickly on week to week. But again, when you're cumulative, give your body a chance. 14 days, three weeks, and then we always get the phone call without prompting. I see it now and we're like, yes.

Eva Sheie (07:25):
Well, we didn't get the wrinkles overnight.

Kim Laudati (07:27):
Right. Right, exactly. So like I said, it's exciting. I still get excited. I'm almost four years into the project from start to today. When patients come out of the treatment room as an energy-based device provider, I'm used to telling you, oh, if I laser your face, it's going to be about three months before we see the full effect. We're probably going to do two one month apart, et cetera, et cetera. Or with radio frequency and ultrasound, that also takes two to three months for that collagenesis to happen. But I wait at the reception once, or my aestheticians wait, or my doctors wait at the reception, whoever's providing the treatment, and it never fails, literally never fails. The patient comes up the hallway and is raving and they're telling you, did you see my skin? This is amazing. And we get so excited. We're still little kids in a candy shop, even though that's the response we're expecting. But to hear it every single time, we're still like, yay.

Eva Sheie (08:24):
And if you didn't, then what would you do?

Kim Laudati (08:26):
I would've gone back to the drawing board.

Eva Sheie (08:27):
Take 'em back.

Kim Laudati (08:29):
Right. No, I would've gone back to the drawing board. So first year was hardcore R and D to nail my protocol, and then I applied for the US trademark and spent the entire second year treating patients under NDA to make sure that this long list of promises we're making with no pain, no downtime, adult ages, all ethnicities, no sun withdrawal, we can work over short facial hair, which none of the other devices can do. I wanted to make sure we were giving you all of that. So that was all of year two. So now this past year, year three was prepping. I built out a new brick and mortar on 57th in Manhattan, hired a PR agency after vetting them, new websites, and this is our first trade show.

Eva Sheie (09:12):
And how's it going?

Kim Laudati (09:14):
It was great. We've had a great turnout so far. A lot of interest from the plastic surgeons. We have a lot of lead captures that we have. So my sales person in New York, which she knew she was getting that funnel as opposed to some of our other Salesforce. So she's very excited. We're all excited. We're like a pile of little kids.

Eva Sheie (09:33):
So is New York the only place you can get this right now?

Kim Laudati (09:36):
Currently, yes, but I have my CMO is a plastic surgeon in Center City, Philadelphia, so I believe within the next two months he also has been traveling for work and some other work related projects of his. So I believe within the next two months, he'll be a provider in Center City, Philly. He's already well trained. He's been on this project with me for two of the last three years. We have other doctors currently in Florida and California just before this show that we started talking to, placing a device with.

Eva Sheie (10:07):
So you're looking for plastic surgeons or any specialty people who work in aesthetics?

Kim Laudati (10:13):
Excellent question. Yes. So the portable device, which does the entire SomaCell protocol for face and also for body, for skin tightening, but obviously you want it for the face first and foremost is a class one device. Aestheticians can use it, also, of course, medical staff. The standard device, which is a little bit bigger than the portable is technically a class two device. So that would be licensed medical practitioners, so MAs, nurses, but you can still hand it to staff because under a doctor's orders and most states that I know of an MA would be able to do this treatment.

Eva Sheie (10:49):
I still am really curious about what you were doing before this amazing project came your way. So give us a little bit of who you are.

Kim Laudati (10:58):
I came into medical aesthetics in 2007. It was second career for me, and my first career was in horse racing. My home base was in New Jersey, New York, Monmouth Park racetrack and the country's premier track at Belmont Park, and it was to the horror of my parents after high school. I was like, I'm not going to go to college, I'm just going to work at the track because I was born like horse mad. So I had my working papers when I was 16 as a sophomore in high school, and I worked two summers at the racetrack. So that's why I told my parents, I'm just going to take a year before you go to college. My mother's Korean, so I was of course expected to be in the medical profession, so I was like, don't worry, don't worry. And then 30 plus years later, I was still in horse racing, but I was getting ready to get out at that point.

(11:46):
And at that point, honestly, I have no great math skill. I didn't do preliminary college of any sorts. I would've had to start from scratch, which meant I would've needed a full-time math tutor and started year one and then trying to be competitive to even get into a medical program after I did my base two years first. And then I was like, how am I old am I going to be when I graduate? That's what I was thinking. Let me look around. Do I want to become a nurse? What's the fast track? I'm really ready to get out. How can I get into aesthetics, which was very close to my heart because of my own skin experience. Going into medical aesthetics as an aesthetician and continuing my education for the rest of my career, which I've done was what resonated with me the most. And that's how I got here.

Eva Sheie (12:38):
Did anything translate over, I'm just surmising here, that working in horse racing required discipline and commitment.

Kim Laudati (12:47):
Absolutely. Seven days a week.

Eva Sheie (12:48):
Did that sort of fortitude carry over to your willingness to take this project on and not give up until it was figured out?

Kim Laudati (12:56):
You know what, you have such an excellent point that a lot of people miss because that discipline and control, that work ethic that gets driven into you when your work 365 days a year, because horses can't take care of themselves. So there's no Christmas, there's no holidays, there's barely a day off, and we're happy about it. So to jump into an entrepreneurial startup project like this one has given me gray hair. I'm not going to lie about that. I've had stress hair fall out, so I'm not going to lie about that also. But I had my heels dug in and the bit between my teeth and I was not going to give up. There was something scratching at the back of my brain in the beginning when I discovered this technology, like don't let this go. I've poured everything into it and I'm just really happy that I have. But like you said, you learn that grit and that toughness that you need mentally to get through a startup.

Eva Sheie (13:46):
Win the race.

Kim Laudati (13:46):
Yes.

Eva Sheie (13:46):
You won the race, or you're winning the race, you're about to.

Kim Laudati (13:49):
Thank you.

Eva Sheie (13:50):
Did your mom, was she around to see you make it into the medical field?

Kim Laudati (13:53):
No. The very beginning, but that was it. But I was the youngest of five, so there was a good spacing between all of us. My mother was already 40 by the time she had me, so she got to see the beginning of it, and that was when she finally stopped telling her friends in front of me that, I wish she would get a real job. And I spent my whole horse racing career for 30 plus years telling her, there's nothing more real than never getting a day off. We get to the born at 5:00 AM There's nothing more real than that. But it was amazing because in horse racing, technically I don't have any regrets looking back, of course now, I wish I was a surgeon or a dermatologist or something, but in horse racing, especially at that level that I was privileged to work at, we did a lot of testing for human products in the beginning down at Palmetto's in Florida, in the West Palm Beach area. There were hyperbaric chambers that we were using for the raise horses and sending those studies back to translate it to move into human studies. Same with radio frequency. I've known shockwave for at least the last 12 years when Zimmer came out and when BCL came out with their shockwave devices, everybody's like, oh my goodness. And I'm like, yeah, it's shockwave. We all know about this, don't we? The same thing with radio frequency. We used radio frequency with race horses and EMTT. So all of these techs to me, the only switch I had to change was the parameters. So now

Eva Sheie (15:23):
This might be the most unusual crossover I have ever heard of.

Kim Laudati (15:27):
But it's funny, right? It really was a crossover because all you have to do in your mind is change your frequencies, change your power levels, and you're like, oh, I know how to do this. So it was really super cool to make that connection.

Eva Sheie (15:39):
What a neat story.

Kim Laudati (15:40):
Thanks.

Eva Sheie (15:41):
I am so glad you came to share it with us. I had a feeling it was going to be good, but the horse part that I was not expecting.

Kim Laudati (15:48):
Thank you. Well, you know what? There was good and bad with that though, because when you're on a grind like that and you're young and you're headstrong and you're not listening to your mother who really did know best, I was more soda than water back then. Everything that I stand against now, high sugar, you're on the run all the time with work, so it's fried food and it's fast food, everything just not healthy. So of course, I had cystic acne. Of course, I ended up with full face, low grade rosacea, and it wasn't bad enough technically to be teased, but compared to even now, my skin was really bad. What turned it around for me was I was about 24 years old and a friend of mine, I was working with dermatologists and not really getting anywhere for about three years. And a friend of mine said, go to see my aesthetician. And that person said, stop scrubbing, stop doing chemical peels. Stop your diet, back off in the sugar, back off in the salt, drink more water. And a year later, I went through my menstrual cycle and realized afterwards that I had only gotten one pimple. And I never forgot how great that felt. And I was like, when I'm ready to leave horse racing, I'm going to figure out how to get into aesthetics. And that was it. That's the whole story.

Eva Sheie (17:05):
Well she changed your life so you could turn around later and do this and change other people's lives.

Kim Laudati (17:10):
Well, that's why I think SomaCell is so exciting. Also, besides the fact that it gives real results without all the pain in the downtime, et cetera, et cetera, it is a way to pay it forward because we're giving back to the patient. I had a patient from the first year, she wasn't in the control group at that point. It was like my first pile of actual real patients that were still under NDA. But again, I thought I nailed my protocol and it did turn out to be the protocol we're using right now. So about a month after her sixth treatment, I had been asking patients to come back for informal video testimonials, and she sat in the chair and I said, please introduce yourself. And then I had told her ahead of time, don't tell me the answer, but my first question after you introduce yourself is going to be how do you feel about your results? And I asked her, and she looked me dead in the eye without blinking and welled up in tears and said, you gave me my face back that I remember from years ago. So of course everyone cried and it is just like that's the kind of response we get all the time, and it's just amazing to be able to give that back.

Eva Sheie (18:14):
That's a wonderful story. Okay, so right now we can only come to New York and get it.

Kim Laudati (18:18):
New York and Philadelphia shortly.

Eva Sheie (18:21):
Philly.

Kim Laudati (18:21):
Yes. And then I believe SomaCell belongs in every medical aesthetic office in the country.

Eva Sheie (18:26):
I'm probably going to agree with you. Where can we find more information about SomaCell and is there anywhere we can follow you on social media?

Kim Laudati (18:35):
Yes. Thank you so much. All the social media is @SomaCellSkin, so S-O-M-A-C-E-L-L-S-K-I-N. And the website is your typical www.somacellskin.com.

Eva Sheie (18:49):
Perfect. Thank you, Kim.

Kim Laudati (18:50):
Thank you. It was such a pleasure to be here and such an honor to be on your show. Thank you so much.

Eva Sheie (18:55):
You're welcome. Thanks for listening. I'm your host, Eva Sheie follow the show and submit questions for our experts at wherebeforemeetsafter.com. Where Before Meets After is a production of The Axis.