By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
Get our mobile app
OREGON — A Rockford-area nurse has opened a new business designed to deliver high-end aesthetics and health services closer to customers in rural communities.
BEAM Beauty Bar, 101 S. Fourth St., Suite 108, is preparing for its grand opening after welcoming its first customers earlier this year. Justine Beaman, a Rochelle High School graduate who now lives just west of Rockford in Winnebago, said her analysis showed there was nothing within a 25-mile radius that offered the type of Botox-brand injectables, lip fillers and other services her business provides.
“Growing up in Rochelle, knowing that I traveled to Sycamore or DeKalb or Rockford or Janesville to get those higher-quality services … Why not bring it home to the rural areas,” she said. “We deserve it just as much as those people do who live in bigger cities.”
More business: New Creole soul food restaurant to open in downtown Rockford
BEAM is located inside The Commerce Building in downtown Oregon, a community of roughly 3,600 about 25 miles southwest of Rockford.
“I’m a Midwest girl serving her Midwest rural communities,” Beaman said.
Beaman’s business is in the same building as Bella Lusso Skin Studio, WINK Lash & Beauty Bar and Cas Grover Microblading. The three other woman-owned businesses create a mini hub for aesthetic services in the city’s downtown.
“The referrals have been nonstop for everyone, so much so that I actually carry their business cards inside of my office,” she said.
BEAM offers Botox-brand injections that help reshape your face without wrinkles. It can also be used to curb excessive sweating or to relax your jaw and alleviate the pain of temporomandibular joint or TMJ disorder. She also offers lip fillers intended to provide a full but natural look.
“I like the more natural look and the natural hold,” she said. “I don’t want to be known for big, pouty, unrealistic looking lips.”
In the next month she plans to add microneedling, which can help get rid of acne and chicken pox scars and other fine lines and wrinkles.
More news: Rockton musical artist signs songwriting deal with Grammy-winning group
Beaman’s transition to business owner comes after nearly two decades as a nurse that has run the gamut from trauma specialist to training new nurses and providing psychiatric, geriatric and in-home care. Her first job after graduating from Saint Anthony College of Nursing in Rockford was in the Level 1 trauma center at Rockford Memorial Hospital, which is now Javon Bea Hospital-Rockton and has its Level 1 trauma center on Riverside Boulevard.
“I have seen and experienced a lot of what some people would consider overwhelming trauma: anything from overdoses being dropped off and the people driving away to stab wounds. I’ve pumped a heart. I delivered a baby out a woman who didn’t know she was pregnant,” Beaman said. “I’ve seen death. I’ve seen life. I’ve seen everything in between. Nothing surprises me anymore.”
Beaman later returned to school to get her master’s degree in nursing education from Western Governor’s University and became an assistant professor at Saint Anthony College of Nursing. She earned her post-master’s in family practice from Herzing University in Madison, Wisconsin, and today she continues to work full time for a nurse practitioner at nursing homes, long-term care facilities and sub-acute rehab facilities while running her own business by appointment only.
“It’s very fulfilling going into these homes,” she said. “I don’t know that I could ever leave the bedside 100%.”
More business: Rockford brothers company Phateez breaks the mold for sunglasses
She saw her first patient at BEAM in January. Her full time work allows her the flexibility to run her own business as well.
Beaman and her husband, Christopher, a Rockford firefighter, are raising two children ages 8 and 5.
The name of the business BEAM is not just a play off her last name. It’s also the way she wants customers to feel after receiving her treatments.
“I want my patients to beam and feel good about themselves,” Beaman said. “They are my walking billboards, too, so it’s really important to me that they feel good about themselves when they leave my office.”
About | BEAM Beauty Bar
Hours: By appointment only
Where: 101 S. Fourth St., Suite 108, Oregon
Contact: 815-222-7115
On the web: beambb.com
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on Twitter at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas