In a recent episode of the Beyond Beauty Podcast, the host engages in a compelling conversation with Dr. Jessica Combs, MD, the CEO of Doctor Diamond’s Metacine. Dr. Combs shares her remarkable journey from a career in general medicine to becoming a leading figure in the aesthetic skincare industry. This blog post delves into the key themes discussed in the episode, offering valuable insights and actionable advice for those interested in the beauty and skincare industry.
Background and Transition to Skincare
Dr. Jessica Combs’ journey is a testament to the dynamic nature of career paths and the potential for growth and innovation in the beauty industry. Originally from Kentucky, Dr. Combs graduated at the top of her class and served in various medical roles, including teaching and running her own private practice. Her move to Beverly Hills to support her husband, Dr. Jason Diamond, a renowned facial plastic surgeon, marked the beginning of her transition from primary care to aesthetic skincare.
Learning Curve in Consumer Goods
Transitioning from a medical practice to managing a consumer packaged goods company presented unique challenges for Dr. Combs. She likens her role as a physician to that of a CEO, emphasizing the importance of guiding patients (or consumers) in making informed decisions.
Consumer Education and Ingredient Transparency
One of the central themes of the conversation is the need for consumer education regarding skincare ingredients. Dr. Combs highlights the shift in consumer behavior towards seeking products that are both environmentally friendly and effective.
Expanding the Brand’s Reach
Dr. Combs discusses the brand’s target audience and future growth potential. While the initial product offerings are positioned as luxury items, there is an awareness of the need to reach younger consumers and offer products at various price points.
The Role of Social Media in Skincare
The impact of social media on the beauty industry is a significant topic of discussion. Dr. Combs reflects on how platforms like Instagram and TikTok have transformed consumer behavior and marketing strategies.
Conclusion
Dr. Jessica Combs’ journey from medicine to skincare exemplifies the intersection of science and beauty. Her commitment to educating consumers about skincare ingredients and the efficacy of her products reflects a broader trend in the industry towards transparency and informed decision-making. As the beauty landscape continues to evolve, Dr. Combs and her team at Doctor Diamond’s Metacine are well-positioned to navigate the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, all while maintaining their focus on delivering high-quality, effective skincare solutions.
Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:01 Welcome to the Beyond Beauty podcast, a platform to highlight the beauty industry talent, deconstruct their learnings and spark ideas for your own business. The Beyond Beauty podcast is created by daily, the leading creative agency working with the fastest growing brands in the industry. Here, we’ll interview guests from major beauty corporations, creative directors, influencers and founders, and even risk taking entrepreneurs. Our guests are not only changing the traditional beauty landscape, they’re also innovating in e-commerce, branding and digital marketing. Join us as they share valuable advice, how they launch their business and most importantly, ignite thought provoking conversations across beauty, tech, and marketing. Hey everyone! We’ve got with us today, Doctor Jessica Combs, MD. She graduated from medical school at the top of her class and was president of Alpha Omega Alpha medical Honor Society, one of the highest honors bestowed upon med students to practice general medicine for many years before shifting focus to the practice of aesthetic skincare and the growth of the Diamond Face Institute. Doctor Combs is married to Doctor Jason Diamond, MD, faces perhaps the most renowned facial plastic surgery in the world.
Speaker 1 00:01:13 Together, they founded Doctor Diamond’s Metacine, a prestige skincare brand launched in May of 2023 with the Insta facial Collection Plasma Growth Factor Serum and its The Facial Collection Emulsion Nightly Retinoid Cream. Inspired by Doctor Diamond’s cult favorite in-office procedure, the diamond is official today. Doctor Combs is the CEO of medicine, which launched direct to consumer and now sells on Modus operandi.com google.com and is exclusively available in store at Blue Mercury. So thank you for joining.
Speaker 2 00:01:45 thank you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 00:01:47 So we’re super excited. I think one of the good ways that that we tend to start these conversations is hearing a little bit of your background story. You became a doctor eventually moved into skincare. Tell us a little bit about how everything started.
Speaker 2 00:01:59 Yeah, sure. Yes. I’ve been a doctor for many years. I started out I’m from Kentucky originally and I started out in internal medicine and pediatrics many years ago, over almost 20, over 20 something years ago. And yes, I started out in primary care and then I ended up marrying my husband, Doctor Jason Diamond.
Speaker 2 00:02:21 I moved to Beverly Hills. I was working actually at USC in primary care. I was teaching medical students, and I was teaching residents, and I also have my own private practice. And then his career was starting to take off. And after a while and as we got ready to have kids, we started to think it would make more sense for me to somehow be involved in his practice and really help him. And so I ended up leaving my own private practice, and I came to his practice, where I was just at the beginning, helping him to run his office. I was doing some of his pre-op physicals for his plastic surgeries, and then eventually that all really grew and grew to where I was the CFO of what’s now the Diamond Face Institute in Beverly Hills. And throughout the years, I became a laser specialist in the office. I was doing all the lasers in the office for a while, so I learned a lot about more about skin care as I was doing that. And for many years we thought about doing a skincare line, different people had approached us.
Speaker 2 00:03:19 They wanted to license his name and do different potential things with him, and it seemed every time we thought about it just wasn’t the right time or the deal wasn’t the right deal. And in the back of our minds, we were always thinking we should just do this ourselves at some point. And so really, right before Covid, the opportunities came up that just the right people came into our lives and the right timing, and also what was going on in the office with the different procedures that he was doing and trademarking, that the timing just came, that we decided now was the time to launch our own skincare line. And with that, I transitioned into running the skincare line. And that’s how I am here today.
Speaker 1 00:03:59 So this is running consumer packaged goods company. Almost a skincare product line is very different than running a practice, right? It seems like you scaled over the years from being a doctor working directly with patients into different skin care procedures. Now, running the, medicine. how what are some of the things you’ve learned that you’ve had to learn, perhaps over the years as you went from interacting with patients to now obviously selling one of the most exclusives can go products in the market.
Speaker 2 00:04:29 Yeah, to say that this was definitely like it took a lot of time and a lot of changes over the years, that’s for sure. I look back and I say that when I was a physician, in a sense. You’re like a CEO of people’s health and your own health, and you learn a lot of skills. It’s a lot of life skills that you get from going through medical school and then getting out and practicing. And so I took a lot of those, and I applied them to the Diamond Face Institute. As far as running that, dealing with people and learning, we did sell skincare products in the office from other science backed brands, so I just took all of that, learned a lot, was learning as well. When I was doing the laser part of the laser practice, learning a lot. I always love dermatology. Actually. When I look back when I was in my medical school career, I had already decided to go into med PS, which is what I did, but at the very end of my medical school rotations, I did a month in dermatology and at the time I was like, I think I made the wrong decision, I love this.
Speaker 2 00:05:27 Fast forward to going into Jason’s practice and doing the laser on patients. I just learned I loved skincare anyway, and I learned dermatology, I love dermatology and then getting to use it. And I began to learn a lot about products as we thought about doing a skincare line and just applying all this scientific knowledge to ingredients and how things work, I think all of that sort of led me to where I am today. And then taking that and then turning over right into being a CEO of a consumer goods company. Yes. Had to learn a lot quickly, but I think, again, I applied the same basic principles that I used, even back being a physician, which was getting as much information as possible and then trying to make the best educated decision. Trusting your instincts a lot in medicine as a physician, that’s called the art of medicine, where you know as much as you can, you learn as much as you can, and then you have to apply a certain amount of like your instincts and your ability to think on your feet.
Speaker 2 00:06:25 And so I took all of that, and I think that’s it’s been very applicable to what I’m doing now as the CEO of this brand. And I’d say I use a lot of that same general ways of doing things, even as the CEO of this brand.
Speaker 1 00:06:39 I love what you said earlier about doctors being CEOs of people, almost. it’s almost like you’re in charge of taking care and guiding and making sure that they make the right decisions. It’s almost like you’re coaching a team instead of a company, right? But in this case, you’re coaching a patient or someone that comes to you for advice or help.
Speaker 2 00:06:59 Yeah, no. It’s similar. You can definitely apply it. It seems like completely different things, but you can definitely use that and apply it to other aspects of your life and to other businesses for sure.
Speaker 1 00:07:09 Obviously, the institute is one of the most famous plastic surgery obviously practices in the world, if not the most You venture into launching this product, which is a high end product, definitely on the upper end of the market as far as pricing and quality.
Speaker 1 00:07:26 One of the things that we find consumers are trying to do better is to get educated on what quality actually means, because many of them are not familiar with how ingredients work, what kind of ingredients are good or bad for them? What are some of the things you guys have learned about how to educate the customer through the practice that you’re bringing into the product?
Speaker 2 00:07:46 Yeah, it’s fortunate that the timing of how the consumer beauty market is going has worked out in our favor, because I think what happened was a lot of people, a lot of consumers got into buying beauty products and not really knowing, like what kind of ingredients were in there. And I think what the consumer is just getting smarter and starting to learn that it’s great to have things that are good for the environment. But it’s also like people really want things that work. And so I think for us, being a science backed, doctor backed brand, it’s our timing could not be better that we’re using, like all the things that we’ve learned throughout Doctor Diamond and my career over the past 20 years to really educate the consumer about ingredients and like you said, like what things really work.
Speaker 2 00:08:34 And I think the number one thing that we’ve heard about our skin care brand is how people can’t believe how efficacious it is. And we knew that it would be based on we knew what we were putting into the products. And we our philosophy being physicians and knowing what ingredients are. It was always like, we want to basically provide the consumer the very best. We want to give them things that really work, that are really at the top of top level, of being effective. And so I think that’s what we brought to this, to the beauty world is really going and looking and finding the best ingredients, the things that really work, putting them together in a way that maybe they hadn’t been put together before, really Curating ingredients doctor Diamond likes to call. Like the way he formulated these products. Molecular synergy. He likes to talk about that. Number one is these products are loaded with super powerful bioactive ingredients. But they were also put together, designed in a way that they work together instead of competing against each other and that they actually create like an exponential effect.
Speaker 2 00:09:42 And that was really important in the way that he put these together. So I think it’s been really cool and interesting to see, like how we’ve utilized like our scientific knowledge, but also thought about like, how do you educate like a consumer who maybe doesn’t know everything that we know about ingredients? And it’s been really neat to see how people are responding to what we’re saying. And we’ve gotten a lot of feedback from people saying, we love how you’re telling the story. We love the way you’re explaining, like scientifically, like what’s happening. And so it seems like that people really are responding well to the way we’re explaining the story. And as a physician, this is what I did my entire life. This is what Doctor Diamond does every day as he talks to his patients, and he helps to educate them about their health or like a specific procedure that he’s doing. And so for us, it’s been really it’s been easy in a sense, but also really nice to take our knowledge base and then use it to educate, like just a general consumer out there about what we’re doing and what types of ingredients we’re using and what kind of science that we have behind the brand.
Speaker 2 00:10:46 So for us, it’s been really fun, but also very rewarding to see, like the feedback that we’re getting from the way we’re doing it.
Speaker 1 00:10:52 Yeah, we always find it’s interesting, you see the sometimes when you have doctor backed or doctor supported brands, you get so much from discussing your treatment with the physician, from getting that explanation, the breakdown of why is this good for you, why it’s done this way, or why we use a certain type of ingredient. And sometimes when those things go into a product, they get lost, right? Because you don’t have as much opportunity to interact with every single customer. But it seems like you guys have done a very good job, and you’ve been very intentional about communicating that and how you talk about the product and how you present the product to the consumer. Is there a world here where the footprint of medicine continues to expand into other products that are perhaps targeted at younger generations, or different kind of budgets in this world?
Speaker 2 00:11:40 I do think we originally we debated like, how do we what kind of brand do we want to be? And our thought was, again, that we wanted to give the best of the best, because that’s the type of procedures that Doctor Diamond does in office.
Speaker 2 00:11:53 And so that’s where we started in this sort of prestige science backed skincare brand, for sure. We know there’s products on the horizon that are coming out. These first two products were treatment based hero products that were based on a procedure that I’m an Insta facial. That Doctor Diamond trademarked and curated a group of procedures that he’s been doing in office over the past, probably ten, 7 to 10 years. But as far as we know, the next product is going to also probably be a hero product. There will be, I think there will intentionally be areas where younger consumers can get into the brand, whether it be like discovery sizes, trial sizes, things like that, there will probably be some other products that will fill in the brand at some point. That will be at a maybe slightly lower price point that people can get in. But as far as like where we go in the future, yeah, this brand right now, so far, our learnings of who’s buying the brand in general, the average age of our direct to consumer, customer is about 48.
Speaker 2 00:12:51 So it’s people I’m 52 years old. So it’s a lot of people my age buying the product. But also the older millennial is buying the product as well. And it’s also interesting to see on our email marketing, I think we’re slightly speaking to the Gen Xers, but in our social media, we’re definitely speaking to millennials. And the question is, right, like, how do we really Doctor Diamond’s patients in his office and the people who come to get his treatments really go anywhere from age 20 to 70 5 to 80 year old. And so when we originally started the brand, we’re like, we want to make something that is applicable to everyone. And so these products are both like youth preserving and anti-aging. So they can’t are for everyone. But but it’s more about the price point and the luxury perspective. Right? At some point in the future, do we try to do something that’s more targeted to maybe a millennial generation or younger? Even right now, people are even targeting even younger people than that.
Speaker 2 00:13:44 And so I think that’s a good question. I don’t think we have the answer yet, but it is something we’re definitely talking about. And again, we’ve seen recent brands who are also luxury brands put some products out there that are more appealing to a younger generation. Some examples I can think of are lip products that are fun and interesting and maybe have unique. They are still a bioactive, but they have like interesting color to them, combining cosmetics with skincare. And I think that’s a really interesting area that we’re looking at now. So I think we know for now that this brand is going to be, like I said, a very like science backed, prestigious brand. But I think as far as where we go, I think anything is possible.
Speaker 1 00:14:26 Let’s switch gears a little bit. I want to keep talking about skincare and obviously you’ve been in this industry for a number of years. It seems like things have changed a lot in the past, say, decade, with social media becoming a driving motivator for a lot of these consumers, especially the millennial, the Gen Z and etc. to make purchasing decisions and to get informed about what kinds of products and procedures they should be paying attention to, it should be considering how have you seen this evolution, especially from the point of building a practice and now building a product? Like, how has skincare changed in the past decade? And perhaps where is it going after this?
Speaker 2 00:15:02 Yeah, we really were.
Speaker 2 00:15:03 We’ve seen the whole spectrum because I don’t know if, but Doctor Diamond, originally, when we first came and started his practice in LA, he’s always been an out of the box type thinker. And so one of the very first things that we did was we were on a television show called doctor 9021 90210. That was on E! It was a reality show. And I remember at the time going, are you crazy? Why would we do this? And even other physicians who knew what he was going to do, they were like, don’t do it. It’s a really bad idea. But again, he was always an out of the box thinker and he was like, I really think this is going to be this is really going to be something that’s really going to help plastic surgery in my practice. And it was he was totally like, spot on. So we saw that from the very beginning, because facial plastic surgery at the time wasn’t even well known. And after he was on that television show, so many facial plastic surgeons across the country emailed him, texted him, he ran into people who said, wow, we really love what you have done for the practice of facial plastic surgery.
Speaker 2 00:16:00 Like they now are more well known and people are searching them out. So we started really early on with all of that. Then we moved into right when social media. At that time there was no social media. So we saw the advent of social media and how it evolved from the very beginning in his practice. And it really did take on, I would say, a similar type life of its own, similar to how those reality shows did years ago, where it became, as it is now, such a marketing tool, such a way to get your name out there for a plastic surgeon to show results so quickly to so many people. And so I think we were definitely on the forefront of that as well, like a plastic surgeon using social media to really be able to show results, to showcase what was going on in a practice, and it really took off. We have a really amazing person that works in our office. She’s also one of the co-founders of the brand. Her name is Tammy Godsey, and she was right at the beginning.
Speaker 2 00:17:00 She really helped Doctor Diamond to use social media as a tool for his practice, and it really went. It was an amazing to watch what happened with influencers following us, but also celebrities. I think it just connected him. He always had amazing results as a plastic surgeon. He was building his own facial plastic surgery practice through like typical means, which is usually by word of mouth. People are really good and it was just was something that like escalated everything so quickly. And then now to see and we know that things have gone. They’ve changed even within social media about how things work and how you can utilize it. And I think now seeing it from a totally different perspective in the consumer goods industry and how it works there, I think that has been really interesting to see how it works. And it’s also, as a company, you have to be always thinking, always testing different ways of doing things. And I think for us, always having that background of seeing all these different ways of doing things, the sort of out of the box type thinking that Doctor Diamond Jason, my husband has always done, has really helped us to be like more open to all the different things that are happening in social media.
Speaker 2 00:18:13 And as far as where I see it going, I don’t know for sure. I do see that it always evolves. It seems like it’s always changing. And right when you think, oh, that’s not really that effective anymore for selling consumer goods, something will change and you’ll find like a different avenue of like where something really resonates for your brand. And I think we’re there right now. Like the first year, we have such great, amazing, like VIP type influencer celebrities who just love Jason so much. That and they love the products and they really just were such an organic way of getting the word out there. And now I think we’re starting to see like that evolve more in so less of those people and more people who just are like macro to micro-influencers and what they are doing. And that’s been so interesting to me to see how this whole thing has evolved and, and the way that your brand grows based on different influencers, their audiences. So it’s just it’s been really cool to see. And I think I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon.
Speaker 2 00:19:19 I think it’s just going to keep evolving. TikTok, as was such an interesting area and with the advent of TikTok shop, I think I think we’re also probably just on the forefront of what’s going to happen there and how that’s going to be utilized with brands, even potentially luxury brands like ourselves. So I think that’s a very interesting area. So I’m interested to see where all of this goes.
Speaker 1 00:19:40 Yeah, I feel like it’s obviously distribution channels have changed over time. We focus on Facebook at the beginning. Then there was Instagram, then there was, TikTok. Now there’s shop. There’s all these other kind of micro communities that live out there. I think the interesting thing that we, we see is that a lot of these micro communities are almost like beacons as to what the future looks like a little bit. And if you understand how those super specialized communities utilize these products and purchase these products, it really is a window as to how people perceive skincare and how they perceive a specific type of solution. Have you seen a dramatic change in how people think about skincare, especially in the last decade with the advent of social media, before perhaps it was more focused around treatment or more focused on a smaller number of individuals that were more influential.
Speaker 1 00:20:31 You mentioned earlier things have democratized into smaller and smaller influencers. How are they? How is the typical customer making a purchasing decision, say, for a treatment today versus ten years ago?
Speaker 2 00:20:43 Yeah, it is interesting. I do think yes, I think years ago, like we said, it was more word of mouth. It was more localized in the sense of probably people, wherever they were, whatever was available to them is either a treatment or a product. And I think it was throughout the country. It was probably different in different areas. I think what was available to people like in New York and LA was very different than what was available to people in the middle of the country, like where I’m from in Kentucky. So I don’t think, you know that everyone had access to everything. And I think now with the with social media and with people having access, I think probably what’s interesting is beauty treatments in general have become more mainstream, probably all across the country. We know that for sure.
Speaker 2 00:21:29 I think people’s ideal of beauty has become, and I guess in a way they see the things that are happening in New York and LA, what celebrities are doing. And I think that’s becoming, you know, it’s going across the country. And as far as products, I think for sure, you’re right. Like years ago, people probably were very limited in what products they used because they only knew what was either in front of them in a store or what someone told them about. And I think now the fact that people really have access to almost every product out there almost instantaneously. I think it definitely is educating the consumer. It’s helping them grow in their decision making and what they purchase. And I for sure see these influencers who are these, like we said, macro influencers who have their own community, like how important they are to the people that follow them in the sense of people will literally just do what they say. So if someone if they feel confidence in that person and they feel that they can trust them, it’s really powerful, like the influence that they have over people’s buying choices, for sure, which is it’s I think it’s really interesting and it’s really neat to watch, actually.
Speaker 2 00:22:47 I’m really like in awe sometimes of the people I see and like their power and their influence of what they do, but and also to talk to them because we’ve reached out to some of these people. And when you talk to them and you hear not everyone, but a lot of them are very ethical in a sense about the way they’re doing things. They’re like, I really care about the people that are following me, and I try to only promote things that I really love and that I think are really effective. And so those are the kind of people I love to talk to because they’re the way they do things. It’s really neat and I love to see like the influence they have. And I think that’s one major change of how things are being done, what products are being purchased. And so I think it’s a really interesting and fun time.
Speaker 1 00:23:30 It seems like these influencers are a great filter as well for the high versus low quality products, right? Because if you try a product and it doesn’t perform, they’re not going to feel as comfortable pushing it out.
Speaker 2 00:23:41 Until I think that’s really true, for sure. And so what’s been great for us and been so rewarding is to see that people are saying, well, we knew this because, again, like we knew what we were creating, we knew what we were basing it on, and we did clinical studies to back up like what we knew were in the products. But what’s been so rewarding is to see, like the consumer and what they’re saying about the products and just right, because it’s expensive, it’s not inexpensive. And so to see people say, this is so worth it. And people saying, I’m panicking because I’m running out of this, I think it’s really been so rewarding to, like all of our hard work has come to fruition, to see people really loving our products, people really saying it’s worth it. These products are expensive, and there’s a reason why. It’s not like we just decided, oh, let’s charge a lot of money for these products. It’s really based on the knowledge that we have Doctor Diamond’s experience over the past 20 years, trying lots of skincare products from very science backed brands, and then really understanding the science behind the ingredients, how to put them together, and then coming up with something that we knew would be really efficacious.
Speaker 2 00:24:51 They’re super powerful. They’re packed with potent ingredients And seeing, like you said, people responding to that has been really neat. Doctor Combs.
Speaker 1 00:25:00 Thank you so much for taking the time to to join us. And to this, I feel like this has been a bit of a masterclass. so really appreciative. Where can people find out more about you and about Metacine?
Speaker 2 00:25:12 Yeah, the best way, I think is to go to our Instagram, which is Doctor Diamond’s Metacine, and or look at our website, which is Doctor Diamond’s Metacine. Com. I do have a LinkedIn profile, but I think those are the best ways to find us right now and learn more about the brand and about myself.
Speaker 1 00:25:30 Fantastic. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 00:25:34 Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. It’s been fun.