I went from an A&E doctor to a cosmetic doctor – with the help of Alan Sugar!
She won The Apprentice 11 years ago and opened her first clinic soon after, and Derry girl Dr Leah Totton is not finished yet
I‘I went back and did GP training while running the clinics’
T’S been 11 years since Leah Totton marched into Alan Sugar’s boardroom in the sharp suit and skyscraper heels that are de rigeur for any would-be Apprentice. As a new series of the programme kicks off on February 1, there’s been quite the celebration for the stunning Derry girl. She’s just celebrated her 36th birthday on the tenth anniversary of the opening of her first cosmetic clinic.
‘We just turned ten on January 22, which is also my birthday so big celebrations all around,’ she says. ‘I am delighted to have reached that milestone. I have just turned 36 and I opened the clinic on the day I turned 26. I was on The Apprentice when I was 25 and then it took us about six months to get everything organised with the clinic.’
Totton was a doctor working in an accident and emergency ward in a busy London hospital when she put her stiletto-shod foot into one of Sugar’s town cars.
She had left her home town of Derry to study medicine at the University of East Anglia before taking up an NHS job but she was also training in aesthetic medicine too as the result of something that happened her aunt.
‘I was a normal medical doctor working in A&E at the time I applied for The Apprentice,’ she says. ‘My aunt had an adverse outcome as a result of getting a dermal filler treatment and that was what first sparked my interest in the sector.
‘That was about 2012, well over a decade ago, and at the time the sector was unregulated and there were were very few medical doctors offering cosmetic injectables,’ she says. ‘It was either plastic surgeons at the very top end of the industry charging thousands or back-street beauticians. So I saw an opportunity to come into the sector, to medicalise the sector and improve it in the nonsurgical cosmetic industry.’
Fast forward to today and Leah now has three Dr Leah Skin Clinics, two in London and one in Essex, and a range of her own skincare products. So when Alan Sugar told Leah ‘You’re hired’ he really meant it. He is still very much involved in the business, which continues to grow.
‘He is my 50 per cent partner and has been for the last decade,’ Leah says. ‘We have been fortunate that the business has worked out and it has done well over the last decade.
‘Luckily the whole industry that we are in, that non-surgical cosmetic industry, has really boomed across the UK and Ireland in the last decade and we were fortunate to have been one of the first sort of well-known businesses in that sector and I think we have benefitted from that.’
While she might look super glamorous, with her blonde hair, slim figure and those towering heels, Totton is not afraid of hard work and even went back to qualify as a GP while running her clinics.
‘I actually went back and did GP training alongside running the business and I worked for a long time alongside the business,’ she says. ‘Alan Sugar was very supportive of that. It was something I wanted to do myself.
‘I really believe that the industry now is very different than when I won The Apprentice in 2013 and the medical influence in the industry is apparent now.
‘There are a lot of good doctorled clinics in the industry and that has been a really positive thing for the cosmetic sector,’ she adds.
While the majority of us are still trying to figure things out in our mid-20s, Leah certainly meant business, to the point where you’d have to wonder if she has any regrets about being so serious and so focused while her peers were maybe out downing cocktails at weekends or taking gap years to go travelling round Asia.
‘I qualified young as a doctor and I was working as a doctor from 23 so I was in a very serious role,’ she says thoughtfully, eschewing the idea of the work hard/play hard medic. ‘There’s nothing more serious than working in an A&E setting as a medic so I was in a serious role regardless of whether I won The Apprentice or not.
‘But I think in business you make sacrifices for sure, in terms of your time, your personal life and having that sort of period where you are switched off. I don’t believe as a business owner you ever really have that time where you completely switch off as you are always thinking about the business.
‘But in terms of feeling like I’ve missed out, I really don’t think I have. I have loved my career as a whole, particularly the past ten years, and I feel really blessed to have had the opportunities and the success in business that I have had. I don’t take that for granted. A lot of business start-ups are not a success so you have to be appreciative.
‘I love every day that I am in the clinics. I don’t look at it as work I have a great team and fantastic clients, some of whom have been with me for a decade now. It is an absolute pleasure to go in every day and love what you do.’
As you might expect from someone so driven, new treatments are always something Leah is watching out for and the current trends are no exception,
‘There are two new things that are in big demand at the minute,’ she says of what the clients in her clinics want. ‘One that has been huge in the past 12 months is a non-surgical bum enhancement. We do a treatment called Lanluma and that is essentially an injectable treatment that enhances the bum and the hips.
‘That’s a really big trend at the minute as there is a move away
from surgical enhancement as it is high-risk surgery and there have been deaths globally.’
‘So we offer a non-surgical option, for that the risk is much less. This is actually a product that is injected and stimulates your own collagen and elastin and naturally enhances the bum and the hips. It’s something that is very popular.’
If you think that sounds rather gruesome then look away now as the second trend involves parts of a fish you don’t want to think of. ‘The other thing that is very popular at the minute is polynucleotides,’ says Leah. ‘They are derived from salmon sperm DNA and synthesised that you inject to rejuvenate predominantly the eye area.’ I shudder to think but Leah believes this is just one of a range of new treatments that will be taking off. ‘That is a branch of medicine called regenerative medicine and I think that’s going to be the future of the aesthetic industry,’ she says convincingly of the new trend.
All of Leah’s treatments offered at her clinics are on the non-surgical side but she wouldn’t judge anyone for wanting to have a nip and a tuck. However, with the advent of more people getting treated abroad, she feels you do need to be careful if you are going down that route.
‘If you want to undergo a cosmetic treatment that is entirely your decision and I don’t think people should be judged for wanting to go down the route of cosmetic enhancement, be it surgical or not surgical,’ she says.
‘Obviously we are not a surgical provider but safety has got to be paramount. I am sure there are good clinics in Turkey that are doing their best and are safe but you need to be really careful when you are making these choices, when there is general anaesthetic involved and you are having a moderate risk operation.
‘There are other things to consider too, like how are you going to feel afterwards in terms of the flight; the language barrier —will you be able to communicate your needs and how you are feeling? Will you be adequately supported and will there be a follow-up when you return home?’ she says, pointing to the number of people who are turning up at hospitals here with complications from surgery they have had abroad.
So in terms of herself, does Leah get treatments to keep that flawless complexion she has?
‘I do some of the skin treatments,’ she says, laughing. ‘I often have this conversation with my hairdresser in that I say to her that if I worked in her salon I would have my hair always immaculate but she says to me, you don’t always have the time or the inclination to have your own hair done, and it’s the same with treatments.
‘I’m not averse to cosmetic treatments at all, it’s every person’s personal decision if they wish to have them or not. I had a baby just over a year ago now and I had Morpheus 8 on my stomach to tighten the stomach and it worked fantastically well.
‘I am open to having cosmetic treatments but I am only 36 at the minute. I have a lot of time yet to have them.’
Ah yes, baby Lilah, the child Leah has with partner, South African golfer Justin Harding. She is, undoubtedly, the best thing that has ever happened to her mammy.
‘It has been amazing,’ says Leah of motherhood. ‘She is my greatest blessing, she is an absolute little dote and she is adorable and I think it is the greatest honour and the greatest privilege to be a mum. I absolutely love it.
‘I had an amazing pregnancy. I loved having her and I had five months off after she was born which is the first time I have taken any real time off from the business if I am honest. Having that time off with her was lovely. I spent a lot of that time in Ireland and my partner is South African so we spent the rest of the time there. I did a lot of travelling and it was such a beautiful period of my life. I am absolutely loving being a mum.’
Leah still sees Derry as her home and would have loved to open a clinic either there or in Belfast but the logistics are currently proving to be too difficult.
‘Operationally it is very difficult to trade across such a wide geographic region,’ she says. ‘One of the things I am most passionate about is ensuring the quality in each clinic and I struggle with delegation. I like to be present at all sites to ensure that quality assurance is there and I didn’t feel confident I could do that.
‘But it’s something I wouldn’t rule out in the future — Derry is still home for me.’
Because of this — and, of course, her family being there — Leah wants Lilah to be a bit of a Derry Girl too.
‘My family live there and especially now I have a daughter I am going back quite a lot as I want her to spend as much time in Northern Ireland as she can so that she is familiar with my background and my family who are based there,’ she says. ‘Whenever I am off work, that’s where I am.’
It’s rare that we find out what exactly happens to reality TV contestants but they broke the mold when Leah walked on to The Apprentice.
Outside of the comedy fights, the backbiting on screen, the stress, the tears and the tantrums for many contestants, Leah has shown that dreams can come true and Sugar’s investment in her is still paying dividends.
‘For me it has been life-changing,’ she says of The Apprentice. ‘I have worked with Alan Sugar for ten years and he has mentioned me in that time. When I did the show, I didn’t have any business experience. I was working as a doctor, I wasn’t like some of the other candidates who were coming in with a bit more business experience.
‘I probably needed a lot more support from him than maybe some of the other winners but we have always had a very close working relationship. He has helped me a lot over the years to understand business and to make that transition from being a doctor working in the NHS to a business person.
‘I found it difficult, it was a big transition for me but I had Alan Sugar to guide me through it. I am forever indebted to him for that and for the knowledge he has imparted in me, for the opportunity that he has given me and for the career I have been able to build as a result over the past decade.’
‘ My daughter Lilah is my greatest blessing’
See drleah.co.uk