Entrepreneur achieves glow & balance with SkinSpirit salons

The moving boxes that stood unpacked in her Palo Alto home for a year were one clue that Lynn Heublein’s life was off-kilter. There was also her schedule: While working at the tech startup she’d co-founded with her then-husband, she hadn’t taken a single day off during one 18-month stretch.

“We were cranking,” she said of her time at Catapult Entertainment in the 1990s. “If we did go away, we were working.”

It’s a familiar story in Silicon Valley. The couple, both Stanford business school grads, had learned how to find investors and launch a company, yet knew little about work-life balance. For a variety of reasons, the relationship didn’t work out and the company, which had developed network gaming technology decades ahead of its time, was sold. But there was an upside: The experiences led Heublein, single again, into a different path in life.

She took a year-long sabbatical from work to decompress. To put her best face forward for dating, she began going to a physician for microdermabrasion and laser hair-removal treatments.

It was 2002, and that physician, Stanford-trained plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Dean Vistnes, had a startup idea of his own: He thought there was an opportunity to create a clinic based around non-invasive cosmetic procedures — not just facials, but treatments with injectables like Botox to ease wrinkles and fillers to plump lips. It was the infancy of cosmetic dermatology, and a risk. Heublein, a Seattle native who’d majored in engineering before going to business school, had assumed she’d eventually go back to work in the tech field.

Vistnes’ idea made her think twice.

“You know the analogy of how the frog doesn’t know how hot the water is and he boils in the pot as the water gets hotter and hotter?” asked Heublein, 54, over tea on a recent weekday. “Being out of the water for a year made me realize that even though I can handle stress and power through stuff, it was really hard on my body and psyche. It took a year of work detox to understand what I had been doing to myself.”

She and Vistnes opened the first SkinSpirit clinic in downtown Palo Alto a year later, in 2003. As cosmetic dermatology has caught on among Baby Boomers and anyone else seeking to keep the signs of aging at bay, the company has opened branches in Walnut Creek, Los Gatos, Mill Valley, the Seattle area and, most recently, in Presidio Heights. Products include Jan Marini, SkinMedica, SkinCeuticals and Glowbiotics MD. With services such as chemical peels, Fraxel laser skin lightening and Ultherapy ultrasound to stimulate collagen and tighten sagging skin, Heublein expects company revenues to top $30 million in 2017. (Manicures and pedicures are not offered.)

Heublein no longer works months on end without a break, and she doesn’t encourage her employees to do so. She offers flexible schedules and salaries “well above” minimum wage to show she values them, she said, believing that upbeat workers treat their customers better.

Heublein, remarried and the mother of a teenager, tends to work from home these days. She also makes a point of taking time to meditate, hike, spin, and to get eight hours of sleep every night.

“If you don’t have balance in your life,” she said, “I don’t think you can connect with anyone.”

SkinSpirit 3325 Sacramento St., S.F. Visit www.skinspirit.com for other Bay Area locations.