Excellence
Sarah-Donia was a trainer for Cynosure, the maker of most of our devices: she walked into other Quebec clinics to show staff how to set the machines. She is the one who trained the team here.
Our story · Sainte-Rose, Laval
It all started in my mom’s spare room.
DC is my initials: Sarah-Donia Cherif. SDC was too long.
People often tell me the clinic works because of the reality show I was on. The sad truth is that it did not bring me clients. Quite the opposite.
Let me tell you from the beginning. You will understand why.
01The beginning
I was 19 when my father passed away
It is the hardest stretch I have been through. I started my nursing degree right after.
Then my injection course, right on its heels. Years later, when microblading was already paying more than the hospital, someone asked why I was holding on to nursing. In case something happens. At 19, I already knew it does.
I did the microblading in a bedroom at my mother’s, at $250 a service. Free on my cousins to get photos, a Facebook page, $200 of ads behind it. 2 clients a day, between school and my 3 ER shifts.
It was working. So I wanted more.
02Growing
I was told my name was too personal
A room at the back of a swimsuit shop, $350 a month. Then a basement in a medical building, $1,000. My first machine, $5,000, and to me that was enormous. I answered the phone, ran the ads, built the website myself.
What I really wanted was a laser. That is what led me into a partnership. It was explained to me that “Clinique DC” was too personal a name, and the place was renamed.
Except I was no longer in my own house. And in 2020, everything stopped at once.
032020, COVID
The clinic was closed. I went back to the ER.
Twelve hours a day, to pay a lease and machines that were serving nobody.
Public health shut the clinics down. Not a dollar was coming in, and the lease still went out, so did the machine payments. I picked shifts back up at the hospital, and I paid.
So I held on. Except on 7 January 2021, it all burned.
047 January 2021
The fire was not even aimed at me
An arson fire was aimed at the business next door. I got the damage.
My machines burned. I said I was starting again on my own. People around me panicked, and I lost access to the pages, the website and the client list, all of which I had built myself.
When I was able to start again, I took out my book of phone numbers and called my clients one by one. They had already restarted somewhere else.
I had nothing left. So in February 2021, I started the renovations.
05March 2021
Clinique DC opens for good
I took my name back, and this time nobody was taking it from me.
In February I stripped the space to the walls. $100,000 in renovations, paid with my savings and an insurance cheque, because I had taken the trouble to insure things properly. In March 2021 I reopened and started taking clients again: that is the date the clinic carries today.
Except a new space with no clients does not pay the rent. So I went looking for help.
06Looking for help
$45,000 in promises
The first agency took $10,000 for a website and SEO that never produced anything. The second, $15,000. A third promised me a full schedule without bringing a single call. The last one billed me $10,000 for a website I found ugly.
I am not going to hide what that feels like. It is despair, and it is betrayal. You put your business in the hands of someone who swears they are handling it, and you realize nothing ever happened.
So in 2021, I tried something else.
072021
The reality show did not bring me clients
I left to film. What scared me most was leaving the clinic with nobody running it. I said yes without knowing what I would come back to.
And here is the part nobody wants to hear: it gave me visibility, not bookings. Those are not the same thing, and to this day people credit the clinic to it.
Except it changed nothing. And the years that followed were the hardest.
08Four years
I packed 10 years of experience into 4
Nurse, manager, receptionist and HR, often in the same week. Hiring and letting go of several people in one year. Pregnant in 2023. A mother in 2024. An autoimmune disease on top of it.
The most expensive part is not the money. It is the mental load of carrying on, and believing it with everything you have while nothing proves it yet.
I believed it anyway. So when the right person finally showed up, I had no patience left to waste.
09October 2024
I finally found someone who wanted it as much as I did
Not more promises than the others. The same hunger I had.
From there things moved at a speed I had never seen. In under two years, we went from 5 people to 12.
Finding the right person is very hard. When that luck falls on you, do whatever it takes to keep the relationship.
So here is what those years taught me.
10What I learned
I only invest in what can come back to me
My body, my mind, my knowledge, my technology, my clinic, my team. From the start, my money goes where it has a chance of coming back to me. And over the years, I have learned to respect my own worth more and more.
The market decides what your services are worth. You decide what you are worth as a person. Never mix the two up.
So no, I regret nothing.
11No regrets
Believing is not enough
You have to put the work in, so you never have to wonder what would have happened.
Your well-being is an investment.
Your career is an investment.
Your peace is an investment.
For the you of tomorrow.
Sarah-Donia Cherif, nurse and owner
The story, in short
- 01The beginningA bedroom at my mother’s
- 022020COVID closes the clinic. 12 hours a day in the ER
- 037 January 2021Everything burns, and I lose my clients
- 04March 2021Clinique DC opens for good
- 05The agencies$45,000 in promises
- 062021Reality TV, and what it did not do
- 072023 → 2024Pregnant, then a mother, while everything runs
- 08October 2024The right person, at last
- 092026We are 12, and the rating is 5.0
The clinic today
A clinic rebuilt twice treats the people who walk in differently
When you have lost your entire client base once, you never take a single client for granted again.
Service comes before everything else: answering the phone, explaining, calling back. And safety comes before service, before a yes, before a month-end number.
Safety
A laser burn does not heal in one session, and on a face it sometimes does not heal at all. That is why we turn a treatment down when it is not the right answer.
Honesty
Prices are posted, never “on request”. We tell you what will not work on you, even when that means selling you nothing today. We promise no results, because in medicine results are not promised.
- 7 years
- that Sarah-Donia has been treating, in Sainte-Rose
- 12
- people, including three nurses and three medical estheticians
- 5.0
- across more than 700 Google reviews
Come meet us.
We sit down, you tell us what is on your mind, we give our take. You have nothing to decide that day.
