Flourish With Digital

Jessica George

Senior Training and Implementation Specialist, Milady

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Thank you so much. Well, hello again, everyone. My name’s Jessica George, as Chris mentioned, Senior Implementation and Training Specialist for Milady. I’m so pleased to be here with you today for the beauty summit, where the event theme is Growing Together.

Today, we’d like to talk about flourishing with digital and just confirm with me in the chat, can you see my screen, okay? Just say yes for me real quick and I love to see the engagement in the chat. Thanks so much for hosting this beautiful event with such great information. Now feel free to use the chat box for questions or engagement. I love to see it! I already see some familiar faces.

The Definition of Flourish

All right! So let’s get started with the definition of flourish. It means to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as a result of a particular favorable environment. I want us to marinate on that for a moment, ‘favorable environment.’ What’s surrounding that element? So I’d love to hear from you, what does it take to flourish? In your thoughts, put in the chat, just in one word, what does it take to flourish? Put that for me in the chat.

“It means to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as a result of a particular favorable environment.”

What Does it Take to Flourish?

Does it take growth, communication, drive, inspiration, be inspired, passion, persistence, listening, teachability. I love that! Confidence, motivation, perseverance, inclusivity, knowledge. Yes. Discipline and an open mind. Hey Lindsay! Yes. Patience. Absolutely. So many things go into flourishing and it takes hard work for sure.

Plant Metaphor

Now what does that mean for us? I mean, I’m a visual person. I love to see it visually. When a plant or a flower is in distress, and there’s tell-tale signs that the plant is not flourishing, it does not have what it needs to stay alive and continue to grow, right? I’m going to be using this plant metaphor in our session today. Me, myself, I am a plant lover. I have one of my babies here who actually went through some distress and is now flourishing and has come back to healing. That was kind of the inspiration of today’s session to really talk about what it is to stay alive and continue to grow as we flourish.

The Journey of Growth

So let’s chat about it. The journey of growth, it first starts with, “Hey, what’s not working? So what are you noticing?” I want us to think about the plant as our education, our schools, our classrooms, and what’s going on there. So walk with me through this creative process. Now, what are you noticing? Are the leaves limp? Are there some brown spots? Is the soil dry? There’s certain things that help us realize, hey, something’s awry. Something’s not quite right here and then identifying the problem. So what is the problem? Is it the environment? Is it the nourishment or the lack of? Is it the wrong fertilizer? Then we’re researching the remedy. Then you might say, “Okay, I need to explore my options, see what I might need to do. Am I using the wrong tools? Do I need different soil? Is this not the right plant for this type of environment?”

Put Strategy to Action

The next thing would be putting strategy into action, so once you’ve gathered all your research, you’ve identified the problem. You know what’s not working. Now, you’re thinking, “Okay, strategy. What’s next? Let me gather my team, let me put this strategy into action.” And then from there, you’re watching it flourish. You’re doing the hard things. You’re committing to the steps and then you get to see the fruits of all of your labor. You start seeing those new leaves emerging and you start seeing all the benefits of your hard work that often you can’t see from above the soil. Really, we know growth is in the roots. I mean, below that soil is where it’s expanding, where the roots are kind of intertwining together. It’s just this beautiful magic that happens underneath soil and that’s where you start to see it flourish above the surface.

“I mean, below that soil is where it’s expanding, where the roots are kind of intertwining together. It’s just this beautiful magic that happens underneath soil and that’s where you start to see it flourish above the surface.”

Our Milady Growth Journey

So let’s explore all of that journey. Now, our Milady growth journey went something quite like that. We asked ourselves, “Hey, what’s not working?” We examined areas of opportunity. We identified possible problems in areas of opportunity. We needed to identify diversity and inclusion gaps. Our industry has shifted and asked some hard questions. Not just about diversity and inclusion, but hair textures and skin and everything from our industry and how we can grow and how we can evolve. So we took a look within.

“We examined areas of opportunity. We identified possible problems in areas of opportunity. We needed to identify diversity and inclusion gaps.”

We had a previous textbook called, The Natural Hair Styling Textbook, and we zoomed in as our industry evolved and asked some of these important questions about diversity and inclusion and how it can be integrated into our core content. Now, this personally was really close to my heart because a lot of us, I mean, we’re thinking, yeah, hair is hair, right? Texture, no matter what it is, it’s hair and skin color, skin conditions, diversity, inclusion, and how can it all make sense as one unit? So we took a deeper dive to that. We zoomed into that and we made plans of actions, which I’ll be talking about here shortly.

Digital Learning Needs

We shifted those needs. Now we had a platform previously for digital learning that got us through a really tough worst part of the pandemic, right? A lot of schools were shut down, as we know. During that, we flourished to a new digital learning platform, which was more suited for the beauty and wellness industry, which is CIMA, which we’ll also be talking about here today. We researched the remedy. Now we conducted surveys, we talked through focus groups, independent analysis of our content with actionable recommendations. And then four, we put that strategy into practice. We reworked an entire curriculum to be more inclusive.

Milady is Flourishing

We created new platforms and products and finally, we watched our efforts flourish and that’s what leads me here today. Milady is flourishing. My goodness. So just to shout out some of our key elements I’d like to highlight here:

• Our Cosmetology 14th Edition, which will launch at the end of May
• Our diversity and inclusion efforts Our CIMA exam prep
• Our Professional Educator, Fourth Edition, which is our new title of Master Educator

So check that out. That is launched and live right now. And Spanish translations as well as CIMA Collabs. So let’s dive deeper to our Milady growth.

Available Now & Coming Soon

Available now, we have Professional Educator Fourth Edition, CIMA exam prep, CIMA for all disciplines.

Coming soon, we have the Milady Standard Cosmetology 14th Edition, which is gorgeous by the way. If you have not checked it out yet, definitely go to milady.com and see it in action for a beautiful slideshow of some of the pages that you can experience in the videos, gorgeous videos, beautiful imagery. So definitely check it out. CIMA Skills, Eyelash Extensions, and Brow Treatments, which will launch in fall of 2022, CIMA Skills, Hair Removal, 2023, soon to come, and CIMA Skills, Chemical Peels and Advanced Treatments, 2023. So a lot of stirring here on the Milady side.

Growing with Digital: Bring More to Your Classroom

Listen, team growing at times is uncomfortable. Okay? Let’s keep it real, heart to heart. It stretches us, right? Going back to that plant reference, to all my plant lovers here on the line, you know that a plant can only grow to the size of the pot or the container that it lives in, right? Bringing more to your classroom sometimes means expanding the resources. So that what’s happening inside that classroom can expand and flourish. As we talked about, those roots start to find their way. Then you see all the benefits of flourishing above the soil. So grow with digital.

“Bringing more to your classroom sometimes means expanding the resources.”

Benefits of CIMA

CIMA is more than just the curriculum platform. It provides access to partner content with CIMA Collabs and other skills-based courses, what we’ve branded as CIMA Skills. So we have CIMA partnerships, branded content is easily added. We also have aesthetics, plus Dermalogica, which is a partner content, but with a course with Dermalogica content built in it. CIMA Collabs, such as our collaboration with Beauty as a Business.

So glad to see everyone here today and so many great things already shared about Beauty as a Business, but offering a curriculum that you can teach social media and marketing in your classrooms is now offered on CIMA with Beauty as a Business as a CIMA collab and CIMA benefits. You can seamlessly integrate into the platform. There’s a single log on and all CIMA functionality, including grading and time tracking is available there.

CIMA Collabs

Beauty as a Business, to dive deeper here, it keeps your students and instructors focused with one platform to get time tracking, plus all other CIMA capabilities.

Social Media Marketing

Access to social media marketing content that helps future pros understand and apply concepts while still in school, which is a huge advantage to gain these skills while they’re still in school. Social media savvy students will help build your school’s online presence as we earlier talked about, driving more traffic directly to your website and that’s what we’re looking for, right?

The program includes the best practices to leverage Instagram, photography live and short form video content, even if it’s scary and then websites that convert Google reviews and so much more. So, so proud of that partnership with Beauty as a Business.

CIMA Benefits

CIMA is a revolutionary digital learning platform. There’s no doubt about it. As I said, it’s gorgeous, but just some key talking points they’d like to share with you today. It has self-serve analytics, time tracking and reporting tools available on demand when you need them. You can run reports whenever, you can even schedule them. Automation, yes. All instructor materials are included for free. “If it’s free, it’s for me, right?” It is for free, complimentary for you in your CIMA course.

All materials are readily available anywhere, anytime, any place on any modern device and easy, intuitive enrollment navigations. There’s no more access cards, no more access codes if you previously used our previous platform. There’s robust exam prep that helps more students pass their licensing exams, which improves your school’s pass rate, making your programs even more competitive in the market. Now Spanish options are available soon to meet the needs of diverse student populations.

“There’s robust exam prep that helps more students pass their licensing exams, which improves your school’s pass rate, making your programs even more competitive in the market.”

Plant New Opportunities For Your Classrooms

So I encourage you today, plant new opportunities, explore how else you can transform your classrooms, including Spanish CIMA for Aesthetics, 12th Edition Nail Technology, Eighth Edition, Barbering, Sixth Edition, and soon to come here, Cosmetology 14th Edition.

New Translations

So what exactly is translated? Now, all student-facing assets will be translated, including the book, the entire CIMA learning path, instructor support slides for instructors, and then also, test banks. So many incredible resources there for multi-language programs.

Audio Books

Now, audio books. We are so excited to share this! Now I don’t know about you, but I love an audio book, as I can continue doing things with my hands while listening to the book in my AirPods, right? So audio books are in production. We’ll be retroactively adding them to CIMA for the following disciplines, including Professional Educator and Cosmetology 14th Edition. They will be playable inside CIMA and via smartphone audiobook playing systems. Please note, also, this will not include in-time tracking.

Look For Growing Opportunities

To close here, I encourage you today, I hope that you took some great things away from the opportunities of growth, what it means to flourish. If you haven’t made the leap to digital yet, I’ll say yet, because this space that we’re in right now, is digital focused. It’s not going away and it’s only up from here, so grow with digital. Listen teams, prepare your soil, gather your tools, plant your seeds and cultivate the environment and watch your school flourish. So I hope you’re feeling encouraged today, not just with going back to your teams, continuing to grow, continuing to flourish, implementing digital, but also enlightened with all of the growth journey that we have here at Milady. So thank you so much for having me here today!

” Listen teams, prepare your soil, gather your tools, plant your seeds and cultivate the environment and watch your school flourish. “

Learn More About Milady

If you’d like to know more or find out some more details about the 14th edition, CIMA, if you’d like to request a demo, you can visit us at milady.com. Thank you again for having me. Have a beautiful day everyone!