110: Gen Z, The Clients You’re Missing

Your next twenty years of bookings are already shopping, posting, and obsessing over their pores—just not in your treatment room yet. We pull back the curtain on Gen Z’s beauty mindset and show exactly how to win them with clarity, access, and authentic social design.

We start with a frank look at where their money goes and why marble floors and “luxury” branding turn them off. Gen Z grew up on smartphones, filters, and constant comparison, which fuels anxiety and second-guessing. That’s why sprawling menus and premium packages feel risky. Instead, we break down a simple, step-based service model with named outcomes—Calm My Acne, Soothe My Barrier, Clear My Blackheads—paired with low-friction pricing that makes yes the easiest answer. Think accessible entry facials with optional add-ons, positioned as maintenance, not indulgence.

From there, we get tactical about social-first environments. You do not need a renovation; you need one irresistible, Instagrammable corner that invites selfies and stories. We explain how a single shareable spot can replace ad spend, why peer-created content outperforms promos, and how to turn every visit into organic reach. We also map the right tone for education: guide rather than shame, translate trends into safe routines, and connect results to daily wins they care about. The goal is trust, not lectures.

Finally, we lay out the bigger strategy: capture Gen Z now and you’ll keep them through school, first jobs, engagements, pregnancies, hormone shifts, and aging. That is decades of loyalty, plus the overlooked boost from mothers who often fund and champion early care. Ignore them and influencers will lock in as the authority. If you want a stable book and stronger retail conversion, build simple, be social, and start early.

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Transcript

Welcome & Big Opportunity Tease

Announcer 0:00

Welcome to the Esthetician Podcast, where passion meets prosperity. Your host, Kari Jo Patterson, transforms from a solo esthetician into a successful business owner, achieving ultimate time and financial freedom by the age of 38. Kari is the author of Fearless Prosperity, empowering estheticians to build their empire and achieve financial freedom. And the creator of the Empire Growth System for Estheticians. Get ready for some empire building wisdom. Now welcome your host, Kari Jo Patterson.

Inside Gen Z Spending And Anxiety

What Gen Z Wants: Simple And Social

Pricing, Access, And The Kari Model

Design For Shareability, Let Them Market

How To Talk Without Shaming

The Risk Of Ignoring Gen Z

Lifetime Value And Mom Influence

Kari Jo 0:32

Let me ask you something. Do you want clients for the next 20 years? I know, dude. You're gonna say, yeah, duh, Kari, of course, everybody wants clients. But what if I told you that the next 20 years of your business is probably sitting in a 16-year-old girl's bedroom right now, and she's spending $100 at Ulta on the weekly basis. And look at this. She's never stepped inside a treatment room. So I'm so excited about this episode because I feel like what is going on right now, like when I get on these coaching calls, I hear I always try to narrow down like who is your ideal target. Oh my gosh, you guys, I get so many women, they are fighting over, you know, maybe the baby boomers. They're definitely all fighting after millennials, or what's the one above them? The is it Gen Zers? I don't even know. Everybody just wants that age group that's like 35 to 50, that's getting the botox. But you want to know what nobody's talking about? Nobody is talking about the Gen Zers. Who's the Gen Zers? The Gen Zers are the generation that's anywhere between 14 years old to 29, and nobody's talking about them. But I can guarantee you this whoever captures them first, they're gonna win. Today I want to break down to you guys. I want to help you understand how this generation is thinking about beauty. And I want to talk about why they feel so anxious all the time and why they actually spend way more money than you actually think they are spending. And then I'm gonna tell you how you can position yourself early on. Because let me tell you, if you ignore these guys, you are building short-term revenue, not long-term security, because this is the long-term security group. So I started thinking about this episode today because of my daughter, actually. She inspired me for this episode. And I'm gonna be really honest with you. My daughter, she does not need luxury. Okay, this girl has everything that she needs. I don't care for her to go and have some luxury appointment, right? I don't care that she walks into someplace that has marble floors, right? I want her to go somewhere that is affordable. I want her to have something fun. I want her to have something where, like, instead of her sitting on her phone all day long by herself, right? I want her to have an activity that she can go do with her friends and even post about it. And so I'm sitting here and I'm thinking, I kept thinking about my daughter, and I'm like, why is nobody building something for my daughter? When I was my daughter's age, right? I want you to think about this generation right now. When when we, I don't know how old you are, but I'm I'm in my 40s. So when I was in, when I was like 15 years old, I'm gonna tell you right now, I was not dropping $100 at Sephora. I wasn't even thinking about my face. In fact, what I was probably thinking about was getting in that tanning bed, which I did try, but my skin's so white it broke out in hives, and I was so jealous of everybody else who could get tan, right? That's what I was thinking about was like how to damage my skin. These guys, no, no, no, no, no. They're not thinking how to well, actually, I take that back. My daughter does like a good tan, and she does like to have her her uh strap showing on like she needs tan lines. I mean, back in my day, we tried to hide tan lines, but her generation, no, no, no, they don't hide tan lines, they want their tan lines out. But these girls right here, they are spending a lot of money on skincare. And the funny, the this isn't even the funny part. This is the sad part, is they're spending a crap ton on skincare, but they are guessing they are layering acids on top of retinals or whatever uh trend that they just saw on TikTok. That's what they are doing. They're doing whatever TikTok told them to buy. No aestheticians are guiding this group, no one, but they're the ones spending hundreds and thousands of dollars in Ulta and Sephora every year. Like, let me tell you, my daughter's makeup bag is the most expensive makeup bag. I couldn't even imagine having that makeup at her age, but yeah, here she is. Now, here's where I need you to like lean in for a minute, okay? Gen Z. They don't care about luxury. My daughter does not care. She does not give two craps about luxury. I'm like, I I like go and I buy like a Gucci or a Dior bucket hat, and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. Look at this, you know? And she's like, uh-huh, that's great. She does, she doesn't care. She does not care. I'll tell you what she wants though. She wants something simple, she wants something clear, she wants something really affordable, and she wants something that is social on social media. And this is where I feel like we are getting it wrong as aestheticians. We are thinking because this generation is young, they don't have a lot of money, that they aren't good clients. You think that they don't have money, but again, this generation is the biggest spenders in Ulta. The money, it's being spent, it's just not being spent with you. So let's get inside their mind, right? This generation, they grew up with the smartphones, they're the smartphone generation. They grew up with filters, they grew up with social comparison 24-7. They grew up with constantly being visible to absolutely everyone. They see their pores like you know those mirrors that zoom in. This is what this generation has seen their whole life is a zoomed-in pore, four times what it should be, but they see it every single day. We were not seeing it every day, they see it every single day, they have more anxiety than the generation before them. They have they worry about how they look, they worry so much about what people think, they actually are worrying. Hey, am I ever going to be able to afford a house? And the truth is, if you do the research on this generation, a lot of this generation, they're sitting there wondering if they're even doing life right. They have no idea. So when we are marketing, and this is why I talk about how it will come so important, we got to figure out who is your ideal client and who are you marketing to. When you are sitting there marketing, oh, a luxury facial experience, you're not marketing to them. They don't care, they don't want that. Luxury to them feels irresponsible. So, how can you market to this generation? Here's how I would go about marketing and how you should, if you're interested, you've got to make it really, really simple for them. And you got to nail the social aspect. That's it. Simple and social. If you want Gen Z, then you need to build that. So when I say you need to build something simple, what does simple mean? Simple means, listen, we are not going to build a customized 90-minute skincare routine. We're not going to build this 90-minute skincare transformation or anything like that. They don't want that. They want the calm my acne session. They want clear skin. They want it cleared. They want it named. They love steps. Like step one, step two, step. When I'm like describing that to you, what is something that comes to your mind? You want to know what comes to my mind? There's many different products that you can use and stuff like that. But one of the things that come to my mind is like Korean skincare. It's like the five-step process, right? It's easy. Follow these five steps. You could do that with any brand. I'm not saying you need to do Korean skincare, but what they do love is they do love steps. They do love systems, but what they don't want is they don't want complex menus. They don't want a bunch of things to choose from. These guys, they already have anxiety. They don't know if they're making the right choices, they don't know what ones the one to do. Like just make it simple, a simple choice. Because that simple choice creates so much trust. Now, I've, if you tuned in, I brought up the Korean. We're gonna go back because a few weeks ago I talked about this at the end of this episode. And it also, my daughter Anne the Spa, who was my biggest inspiration for talking about this on the podcast. And this generation is because as I was telling you guys, one of their biggest fears is like financial. They do have financial fears. So if you're going to market and try to get this generation, you need to create a low barrier entry. So there is a spa that I talked about a while ago, and it's called Car, I think it's called Kari. It's spelled Kari, just like me. That's why I like it. I I think that's why I like it, is it's actually my name, but it's but it's K and then it's dash A-R-I Kari. Anyways, there's a spa that I saw, Kari, and I loved it. And on the very first page, if you go to their Instagram on their page, they literally write, facials aren't luxury, they're maintenance. K. What did I just tell you earlier? This generation doesn't want luxury, it just said we're not this, we're not like this luxury, right? We're maintenance. Then you go to their actual price point, they have their price really, really competitive, and all they do is this Korean skincare. So there's not like a bunch of products, there's not a bunch of like it's simple. You come in for this facial, it's $20, but there's no barrier, there's no financial barrier into going. It's not luxury, it's simple. It makes it's like a no-brainer $20. There's add-ons if you need it, but here's what made this killer is the spa's environment. Go look at this spa's Instagram. It looks so cute, it is Instagrammable worthy, right? These guys, and I want you to go do a deep dive because these guys are doing their marketing right and they are marketing to the I don't, maybe they don't even know. Maybe they know because they're doing it so well. If you really deep dive, they're real really marketing to this generation so well. It's simple, there's not a lot to choose from. It's priced at a point where there's not a barrier, it's a simple facial, but the spa looks like something out of Instagram. It's so cute that everybody is going to go in and take a bunch of photos there while they are there. I wanted to go and take a bunch of photos while I was there. Now, listen, I'm not saying that if you're gonna market to these people, you need to do a huge remodel to your spa. But what it does mean is you need to have some cute aesthetics. You need to have at least one cute corner that is Instagrammable because the Gen Z generation, if it's not shareable, then it basically doesn't even happen to them. It didn't even happen. But this generation loves to post, they love to show that something did happen. So you're going to be going, if you go into this generation, you're going into generation who actually genuinely loves marketing for you. And so they're gonna be posting, and that is your marketing. So when you think of like, oh, I've gotta go spend all this money on marketing ads and everything like that, okay. Well, instead of spending your money in the marketing ads, spend it in creating this cute environment, right? And then guess what? You attract the right people, and guess they're gonna be sharing that themselves. They are the marketing. That little corner, the money that you spent on that, that is like what's going to get it. Now, one of the things that we I want to talk to you about this generation is how to actually speak to them. And I see this because we talk about this as aestheticians, like these crazy, dumb, stupid trends that are on TikTok, that everybody keeps trying these dumb trends and they shouldn't be doing them, it's ruining their skin. Now, if you come and you're marketing to this generation, right, you've also got to know what they're dealing with, right? This generation is dealing with anxiety. So if you're coming to them and you're lecturing them about what they're doing, and you're like, you shouldn't be using that, you're going to be inciting anxiety in them. Instead, you need to be approaching these guys as you need to be approaching them with like, I know TikTok has told you to use these three acids. Okay. So let's fix how we are using them. Don't shame them, just teach them, guide them. This generation, they are anxious, but they are also so smart. This generation, I'm I believe that this generation is probably one of the smartest generations. Now, here's the danger. If you decide to ignore the Gen Z and nobody goes after these guys, except for maybe the spa that I just told you about, they are going to start building loyalty with influencers. They are going to grow up thinking that facials are completely optional. And then by the time that they're 30, they already belong to someone else. They're not coming to you. Our field is gonna be like sinking down the toilet because they're they're not coming to aestheticians for skincare, they're going to influencers. But if we capture them now, like if you choose this group now, you're gonna keep her through college, you're gonna keep her through engagement, through pregnancy, through hormone shift, through aging. That is over 20 years of revenue that you are going to keep. That is stability. So the bigger play with generation marketing is this isn't necessarily even just about the teenagers, but what I want you to think about is starting to position who you're targeting earlier. Everyone always says they want more clients, but what if instead of chasing more clients, you started capturing earlier clients and then you ended up building in a lifetime of value with them, you guys? I just think there is so much value here to marketing to this generation. This generation, they spend money anyways, they're already spending money, and so I think that it's time that we as aestheticians we start capturing them. And what a better model than starting out with simplicity. These guys want simplicity. We don't need to do everything, we just need to do simple, we just need to be social. And I can't think of a better business model than something simple and clear. And I know that there is so much money to be made with this generation because I also know that the moms that are raising this generation, I am one of them. Like, I will spend for my daughter, right? When I watch my daughter obsess over her pores or follow these TikTok trends and they're doing something stupid, and I'm like, oh, I just need to educate you. You know what I mean? When they're crying over a breakout, right? They're like, I need this product, this is the most important, like, this is the biggest product. I know that there are so many moms out there that they don't know how to help their daughters, and they want somebody in their daughter's life. And so what I'm saying is, I hope you guys, I hope that this episode, what I want you to take from this episode is to expand who we're thinking about and the different people and getting inside their brain and what they're going through, and so we can really learn how to market. If this episode made you think differently or made you think maybe you will go into that, guys. If you could do me a favor, please subscribe, leave me a review, share with another esthetician because we are not building busy businesses. We are trying to build very strategic ones. And if you want to stay ahead of the industry, then you need to understand what generation is actually coming next. So I will see you next week on another esthetician podcast. Bye, guys.

Announcer 18:43

Thank you for listening to the Esthetician Podcast with Kari Jo Patterson. Each week, Kari brings you real-world lessons on how to grow your empire. To learn more about Kari's Fearless Prosperity Mastermind Group, one-on-one VIP coaching opportunities, and more, visit www.karijopatterson.com. That's www.karijopatterson.com. See you next week for more insights and strategies on the Esthetician Podcast.