EP 82: NuFace Founder Tera Peterson on Bringing Microcurrent Treatment to Customers At Home

 Mimi MacLean:
Welcome to the Badass CEO podcast. This is Mimi MacLean. I'm a mom of five, entrepreneur, Columbia business school grad, CPA and angel investor. And I'm here to share with you my passion for entrepreneurship. Throughout my career, I have met many incredible people who have started businesses, disrupted industries, persevered and turned opportunity into success.

Mimi MacLean:
Each episode, we will discuss what it takes to become and continue to be a Badass CEO, directly from the entrepreneurs who have made it happen. If you're new in your career, dreaming about starting your own business or already an entrepreneur, the Badass CEO podcast is for you. I want to give you the drive and tools needed to succeed in following your dreams.

Mimi MacLean:
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Mimi MacLean:
Welcome back to the Badass CEO. This is your host, Mimi MacLean. Today we have on Tera Peterson and she's a co-founder of NuFace, the leader in at-home, microcurrent skincare. They offer a range of award-winning devices and topical skincare products that deliver clinically tested professional results and skin confidence to the clients everywhere. In 2005, Tera launched NuFace and successfully launched NuFace Classic, the first handheld, home-use micro-current device cleared by the FDA. She started this company with her mom and her sister. We talked nitty gritty today about doing business with family, how to get the FDA approval and everything in between.

Mimi MacLean:
To get your top 10 tips every entrepreneur should know, go to the www.badassceo.com/tips.

Mimi MacLean:
Thank you so much, Tera, for coming on. I'm excited to talk to you. You're the co-founder of NuFace. I would love for you to talk about why you just decided to start the company and what you were doing before and all that good stuff.

Tera Peterson:
We're a family-owned company. It's my mom, my sister and I, and we started the company in 2005. I was five years out of college. Very fresh and new to the business world and really didn't know what I was doing, perfectly honest. I say that NuFace has been my MBA because I learn as I go. Luckily I have a spidey sense for business as well as just a love for the beauty industry and NuFace. Long story short before NuFace, I was doing sales and I had some great training out of college.

Tera Peterson:
I got my business degree from UST and just loved business, everything about business, just so fascinated with it. I was doing sales for a temp agency and I was just unsatisfied with where I was the going and what I was doing. Again, I was 23... 24 at the time. I called my mom up one day and said, "Hey, let's create NuFace together," which by the way, my mom's an esthetician as well. She's been working with microcurrent since the 1980s. She would take her big professional machine from San Diego all the way up to LA, three days a week and treat the most beautiful faces in Hollywood. She did this for almost 20 years, of going, traveling from San Diego to LA. During this time she really realized the need for at home microcurrent, because you're not familiar with microcurrent.

Tera Peterson:
Think about it as fitness for your face. So microcurrent is a low-level, electrical current that goes in and stimulates the facial muscles. It's very soothing, very relaxing. It's actually very therapeutic and meditative, clients tell me. But it instantly lifts tones and contours your face. Some of us don't realize that on your face, your skin and your muscles are connected. So what microcurrent does is, it stimulates the facial muscles. In turn, it takes the skin with it. So it gives you a noninvasive facial lift. She was playing with the idea of creating an at home device that her clients could use in between her professional treatments. That's when I had called my mom up and said, "Hey, let's do this together. I'm going to go to aesthetician school. I want to learn the industry inside and out, and so we did it.

Tera Peterson:
As I was practicing as an esthetician, I was writing the business plan for NuFace. So we launched our first device in 2005.

Mimi MacLean:
That's amazing. There is so much restriction, right? You got to do the FDA financing. You're making it sound so easy, but there are so many hurdles to come over, to get that. Can you talk about the legal part of it and then also the financial part of it?

Tera Peterson:
This is 2005. So the beauty industry was very different. There was no social media. So the competitiveness of the beauty industry wasn't, but it is today. We didn't come from money. We also didn't have access to money as well. So my mom actually just tapped into some of her clients and we raised a couple of 100,000 dollars in 2007 to help grow the business.

Tera Peterson:
Even to this day, NuFace hasn't raised any money. In 2007, we raised some friends and family and that's all we've raised in the last 17 years.

Mimi MacLean:
That's amazing.

Tera Peterson:
We've done at very homegrown grassroots. I always say we live within our means. However, we're able to do a lot with a little. Of course, as we've grown, we've been able to invest more and more and more into marketing of NuFace. But really how NuFace grows is by word of mouth. It's our clients that tell their friends about NuFace and their friends tell their friends about NuFace. In 2007 we actually got FDA clearance. So that's a whole story in itself. But I had approached the FDA and said, "Hey, I believe the FDA clearance could be a really pointed difference for NuFace as a company." One is it could be a medical device, has the stamp of approval by the FDA.

Tera Peterson:
But what I didn't realize is there's three different categories of the FDA. You have a Class I, a Class II and a Class III. I was thinking, "Oh, I can just send a letter and maybe fill out a little application online." I always say I was and dumb.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, that's the best way to be because sometimes you wouldn't have done it if you knew what you had to do.

Tera Peterson:
Perfect time to start a company. You have no risk, right? Anyways, six weeks later they came back and said, "You are Class II medical device, stop selling your device immediately in the US."

Mimi MacLean:
Oh shoot. So you totally gave him...

Tera Peterson:
We stopped selling NuFace. We thought it was the end of our world. My mom's like, "Let's go move to Switzerland."

Mimi MacLean:
She might be mad that you tipped them off. She was probably like, "They would never have known if we didn't ask for the approval."

Tera Peterson:
She was never mad at me for doing...

Mimi MacLean:
Okay.

Tera Peterson:
She was never mad at me. I think that's probably one of the reasons why NuFace has been successful. She's really kind of let me do my own thing with NuFace and growing as a business. We make mistakes, but the mistake is actually not a mistake and making NuFace the first and only handheld device that was FDA cleared, we really paved the way for all future devices. Because if you're creating a biological change in the skin, you have to have FDA clearance. It really becomes a staple of... All of our partners ask, "Is there an FDA clearance?" Because it really gives the consumer, our client, that stamp of approval, that NuFace is safe and it's effective.

Tera Peterson:
That's the same for any device. Again, that creates a biological change in the skin because you're putting technology into your skin, right? It's not a topical product. You don't want to do any damage. You want to make sure that the manufacturer is abiding by good manufacturing processes. They're documenting, they're doing clinical studies. The FDA clearance really gives our clients that stamp of approval that what they're buying from NuFace works and it's safe.

Mimi MacLean:
Now, how long did you have to wait between when they told you to stop to when you could start selling again?

Tera Peterson:
Six months.

Mimi MacLean:
Okay, that's not that bad, right?But that's it, but you couldn't do it.

Tera Peterson:
My mom's livelihood, my livelihood and my sister's livelihood.

Mimi MacLean:
So what did you do during that six months?

Tera Peterson:
Luckily we still had clients. So I was doing facials, my mom's doing facials and my sister was kind of the assistant and she was...we also had some international sales.

Tera Peterson:
So FDA is only a US FDA clearance. Not every country in the world requires FDA clearance. There was kind of some other sales coming in, but the bulk of what we were doing was by treating clients in the treatment room.

Mimi MacLean:
That's right. How is it working? You have an interesting... I actually haven't talked to that many... Out of the 80 people I've talked to on this podcast, I think there's only been a small handful of people that are working with family members. So how is that working with your sister and your mom? Has there been any hiccups, has it been seamless? Is it in writing? Any scoop that you can give us with that?

Tera Peterson:
Let's face it. If I said there wasn't any hiccups, I would be completely lying.If someone says that there's not hiccups when you work with family, like think of succession.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. That's right. They always tell you, "Don't work for, with friends or family because it's going to end not well."

Tera Peterson:
Right? Luckily for us, yes, we've gone through our ups and downs but we've always kind of fell into our roles and responsibilities because we're all very different. So my mom is very spiritual, very in tune. Obviously she's the first crater of NuFace, but can't operate a computer or her iPhone. So operating a business like this, it would be difficult. But I come in and this is the stuff that I absolutely love, the marketing, the sales, more of the technical aspect to NuFace. My sister is a whiz. She keeps everything turning and burning. She's in operations. She's making sure that everything's getting chipped out. By the way her husband works for us too.

Tera Peterson:
We all have very different talents. We all come together and it's this perfect trifecta. We've learned that early on, but there's always peaks and valleys and challenges in the early years. My sister and I yelling and screaming at each other like true sisters do. But you get through it. We all really believe in each other and know that we all have the best interests of NuFace in mind. Always.

Mimi MacLean:
That's great. That's good to hear. Because sometimes it doesn't end so well, right? But it just seems like you guys have a good balance. Are you able to get a patent?

Tera Peterson:
Yep. So we have design patents on NuFace. The look, the feel... part of the uniqueness of NuFace is that you can deliver microcurrent in five minutes.

Tera Peterson:
That's part of the design that we have. Of course you've seen knockoffs in the industry that tried to mimic our spheres. But really the secret sauce is the technology itself, microcurrent, isn't patentable. But the delivery system and the design of it is.

Mimi MacLean:
That's great. Now, what would you say to anyone who's listening who's recently started out or think about starting a business? What has been your biggest challenge to date? What have you had to give up? Hardships as far as growing this company?

Tera Peterson:
Well, I think that being an entrepreneur. You put everything in it and as we were talking earlier, as you have a family, there's distractions, but NuFace is my first baby. I have twins that are five years old, NuFace is 17 years old.

Tera Peterson:
I find myself really consumed with NuFace, 24 hours a day. I know that takes a toll on the family. I'm trying to be a little bit better with the balance and really separating... Now with social media, there's an always on mentality. I'm really trying to practice putting my phone away and really being in the now, which is really, really hard for me.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. That is hard. Being able to turn it off and knowing...Because you always want to keep going. You can keep going and it never stops. If people don't like, if don't you respond to somebody over the weekend, they're like "??" "You're like, "It's a Saturday, leave me alone." Right?

Tera Peterson:
With social media there isn't... It's 24 hours a day. So I really like to be involved because I think that we're still a younger company. There are so many clients that don't know about NuFace. I like to make sure that I have my hands in what's going on and hearing what clients have to say.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. Then you bring up a good point. Because I feel like a lot of times when I look at, I don't know if you noticed it, but I'm an angel investor, and I have a lot of times when people come to me and I have this great idea, I'm building this great website and I say, "Okay, but how are you going to find, where are you getting the eyeballs from?" And they say, "Huh? Oh, I'm just going to advertise. So what?" And I say, "It's not that easy and it's super expensive to get eyeballs." So what have you used to get clients or customers?

Tera Peterson:
As I had mentioned, a lot of it is word of mouth. Back in the days of non-social, it was clients were telling their friends about NuFace. Now it's through still friends, but it's a community and the influencers that are telling their followers about NuFace. That really is the main area where we really focus is on social. I think the demonstrable aspect of NuFace. I literally can lift your face or you can lift your own face and see that instant lift, tone, and contour. You're seeing that on your phone instantly in the matter of two minutes. People get really excited about that. There is an influencer who just posted about NuFace a couple weeks ago on TikTok and it's gotten 7 million views and then it's...TikTok made me buy this.

Tera Peterson:
It's just a girl in her room lifting her face and going, "Oh my gosh, look at my cheekbones, look how tight this side of my face looks compared to this side."

Mimi MacLean:
That's amazing.

Tera Peterson:
So that word of mouth is, really where we focus.

Mimi MacLean:
Now for anyone who's listening, I know there's a lot of different affiliate programs. Is there any that you use to be able to work with these influencers?

Tera Peterson:
We get influencers emailing us every single day. So we do different platforms like GRIN and some different systems, but really it's from clients coming to us saying, "Hey, I have this many followers on Instagram or TikTok and so we send them over to our partnerships and then they make the magic happen. But I still like to do it old school, if that makes sense. Yes, there's different platforms that we can use. But that word of mouth is the authentic way for NuFace. I don't want to go and be, "Oh, I'm going to spend a hundred thousand dollars for you to post about NuFace." We've done that before, and it just never comes around.

Mimi MacLean:
No, that doesn't work. I think people are better off now where you could join ShareASale` or one of those things where they track the tracking, but still you're using more of their own stories, but they're able to track the sales and get it that way. Versus I don't think paying the full amount, like you're talking about... You don't see the sales, it doesn't come back. I have never seen it.

Tera Peterson:
No. Consumers are smart these days. They know when something's BS and when something's actually authentic and when someone really, really loves a product. That authentic love, I think, is why NuFace has grown.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, totally. I'm not sure if you know this statistic or not, but only 1.7% of female founded companies ever reach a million dollars in sales, which is super low. I would love to know what you think would be a reason why someone is successful. What made you guys successful? What made you reach that number versus somebody who doesn't, who probably has just good an idea, but something was missing. I have seen now, talking to a lot of women, there is a trend. There is a reason why, there's a common link, but I've been curious to see what your take is.

Tera Peterson:
I have a couple of things. One, I always say persistence and passion will win every single time. You don't have to be the smartest cookie, stay focused and just keep on going.

Tera Peterson:
I also think that some people want the illusion rather than what's actually like happening in the business. Work within your means. Don't try to look like you are a $200 million business when you can't pay your bills or don't be purchasing something that... We've always worked within our means. As you do that, you can grow, grow, and then start to invest more into your business. I think that, one, we're also really focused. We don't try to be everything to everybody. I think that's another aspect of, I've seen other brands start here and then go over there and, I'm not getting the connection. I think staying really focused, one, allows you to prioritize as well as to be lasered on what are those objectives that you're trying to hit.

Tera Peterson:
I think being focused in what we are. We specialize in microcurrent and we've always done that. So NuFace is known for microcurrent and when people want microcurrent, they know NuFace for that offering. So those are a few... I'd love to hear what your hypothesis is.

Mimi MacLean:
Well, definitely is persistence, I think, and adaptability, not giving up because it's not easy. I have these different successful women on, I don't want to say they make it seem easy, but in a half an hour, it's boiled down and it's like, "Oh, I'm I'm successful," and they don't realize what they've had to give up. If it's time with their kids, if it's vacations, if it's eating for the fifth day in a row, peanut butter jelly, whatever it is, but you don't see that. Or they're on the brink of failure 10 times, but they come back.

Mimi MacLean:
So I think persistence is definitely and adaptability is "Hey, I'm not going to fail. What do I need to do?" No is not even an option. You just keep going. I definitely think that is one. I think the other one is getting mentors. I think a lot of women don't have mentors and men... twice as many men have mentors than women. I think women tend to do it like on their own. They don't want help because they feel like showing their cards is a thing of weakness. They don't want to show their cards. They don't want to ask for help. They're used to just doing it all.

Tera Peterson:
I'm a huge fan of mentors. I've had them throughout my career. Especially starting off younger and not having an example of like, "Hey, this is how you should run a business or the metrics that you should be looking at," or so on and so forth.

Tera Peterson:
I've always loved to network. With that I have had a few different mentors throughout my career. But I think that is, even now I have a CEO coach that is an amazing mentor, and there's always something that comes up. What I like about having a mentor is you don't feel like you're alone, right? You don't have to row your own canoe. You have someone that can really help problem solve. Honestly, you can save so much money by having a mentor because they could help you not make some of the mistakes that typical entrepreneurs could make, which, I could go down the list of mistakes that I've made.

Mimi MacLean:
There's a lot, right? They're expensive and it's time and it's taking over market cap or share...it's just that list goes on of what can happen by just making silly mistakes, right?

Mimi MacLean:
It's kind of like redoing a house or doing construction on the house. Once you do once, you're like, "Okay, I'm not making the not mistake again. Next time I know to ask this, this and this." It's the same thing. It's just anything in life. That's why people like going on the same vacation, the same place, because they have their restaurants figured out or they know where this is and that is, right? You're not spending time re-navigating. How did you find your CEO coach? For people who are looking for one. Is there... word of mouth or did you have a place that you went to?

Tera Peterson:
So it was word of mouth. A guy that worked for me for eight years actually went over to another company and they were doing CEO coaching and he told me about what they do with creating focus, having orderly meetings. All the leadership is present for the quarterly meetings to create. "Hey, here is the focus for the year. Here are the milestones, here's the initiative."

Tera Peterson:
So everyone's on the same page. This is the first year that NuFace has done it. It's helped so much because there's so much opportunity, but not all opportunity is going to have the same reward. Maybe you are enjoying an opportunity, but maybe there's a low return on that where you could be putting a lot of that energy into another initiative that could be generating tenfold for you. It's a whole system. It's a word of mouth and it's CEO coaching, if anybody wants to look it up. But I highly recommend them and they have different specialties. Just like with any coach, you want to make sure that there's a rapport with each other because we had one coach before and it was just, it wasn't there.

Tera Peterson:
So I was like, "No, this doesn't feel right." Then sure enough, this coach, Alberto, that I've been with for almost two years, all I have to say is, every time I haven't listened to him, I've kicked myself for doing it. For not listening to him.

Mimi MacLean:
Wow.

Tera Peterson:
It could have saved me millions and millions of dollars.

Mimi MacLean:
That's crazy. That's good though. That's good that you now have that relationship with him. But you bring up a good point because I don't know if you've ever heard, I think it was Elon Musk that did a TED talk or I don't know if he wrote an article or a TED talk, but I listened to it on a TED talk and it was about vector, about aligning like a vector. So think of your employees as vectors. If you don't give them direction, you guys are all going in different vectors.

Mimi MacLean:
So you add up. If one vector's doing five, three, you add that all up. It becomes minuses. Whereas if you give everybody the same direction, all the vectors are going in the same direction. So now you can add them instead of subtract them because you're all going forward. You're not pushing. It's kind of like sometimes when you're doing something and you feel, "Wait, why do I feel like I was working all day? But this person behind me, literally undid everything I did. And I had to fix all."

Tera Peterson:
Totally.

Mimi MacLean:
If you get everybody on the same page, and it's actually not as hard as you think to do that.

Tera Peterson:
It's so true. It's not as hard as you think. I'm a big numbers person too, and you need to have all the initiatives and the deadlines. We always talk about smart goals at NuFace, especially as we're creating our MBOs for the year and setting goals for the employees.

Tera Peterson:
I want everything to be measured. You could be like, "Oh, I'm going to run a marathon." Okay, so when are you going to run a marathon? What's that date like? You have that goal in sight.So when you're creating goals for yourself or for your company, write down those deadlines because everyone has a different expectation of when that's going to be due. Maybe it's important to you, but it's not important to someone else, potentially. So you're saying, "Where is it?" But the other person's working on five other jobs and it's not a priority. So making sure that everybody is on the same page with deadlines and making sure those initiatives, those top focus, are actually a focus that's going to have the highest return for you.

Mimi MacLean:
Do you, do you use a particular program, like an online program that keeps everybody like on the same page?

Tera Peterson:
No, we use an Excel document.

Mimi MacLean:
Got it.

Tera Peterson:
It's super, super easy.

Mimi MacLean:
You what I just found, and I'm loving it, it's called Notion dot SO or IO... N-O-T-I-O-N dot S-O. It's a place where you keep all your documents, but you can have a dashboard for your company. So it has what our objectives are for the year. What is our mission? All of our documents are here. What are all of our measurable things that we want. Whatever you want, but it's all in one place. Then you can put the tasks in there and everything.

Tera Peterson:
It's Notion.com?

Mimi MacLean:
No, it's either SO or IO... Notion... I think it's SO.

Tera Peterson:
I'll look it up.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, it's good because you just want to get everybody. I was at this Mastermind group and they were talking about it. Just putting everybody on the same dashboard, so they can all see what you're striving for in one place.

Tera Peterson:
I love that.

Mimi MacLean:
It's kind of like Google doc, but it's a little bit more user-friendly and prettier, yeah.

Tera Peterson:
I love that. I'll look that up.

Mimi MacLean:
But this has been amazing. Thank you so much, Tera. I really appreciate your time. I'm trying to think, I think we have everything covered unless there's anything else you want to talk about or mention before we jump off?

Tera Peterson:
No, it was great. Hopefully I've given someone at least a tidbit of tips and tricks that they can take with them to make their business even more successful. So thank you for having me.

Mimi MacLean:
Yes, thank you so much. Take care. Bye.

Mimi MacLean:
Thank you for joining us on the Badass CEO. To get your copy of the Top 10 tips Every Entrepreneur Should Know, go to the www.badass ceo.com/tips. Also, please leave a review as it helps others find us. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear them. So email me at mimi@thebadassceo.com. See you next week and thank you for listening.