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Med Spa Success Strategies
Business Synergy, Partnership Marketing & Patient Satisfaction - Interview w/ Allen Lewis
00:50:28
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- [00:03]
A
Hey everyone, I'm your host, Ricky shockley, owner of MedSpa Magic Marketing. And this is the Med Spa Success strategies podcast where MedSpa and aesthetics practice owners come to discover strategies and tactics that help them better market and manage their practices so they can grow, improve profitability and have greater impact for their teams, their patients and themselves. Today I'm excited to be joined by Alan Lewis Allen is the co owner and operation lead of Just Injected and Cryox. A former senior manager at Amazon, Alan led a 50 person organization in risk and product management before transitioning into the wellness and aesthetic space. Today he manages the business strategy for Just Injected, the Med spa founded by his wife Justine and Cryox, a business they purchased together that they've expanded and nearly doubled since acquiring in early 2025. With a background in accounting and corporate operations, Alan applies a data driven approach to scaling service offerings and streamlining multi business ownership. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, Alan's a health and fitness enthusiast. He lives in Dallas with his wife Justine and their two dogs and they're expecting their first child here in May. Alan, thanks so much for joining us. We're excited to have you on the podcast.
- [01:09]
B
Absolutely. It's a pleasure to be here, Ricky.
- [01:12]
A
And we just talked for like an hour and a half or more last week and I know we touched on this a little bit, but for the listeners and even for me, could you give me a little bit more of a detailed view of your backstory? Like with everything you did with Amazon coming out of school up to this point in your professional life, what does that look like?
- [01:26]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So I've been in the corporate space for a little over 10 years now and I like to say that last month I officially retired from the space and so I did my undergraduate and accounting from University of Nebraska. During that time I held multiple roles as a risk manager and so most recently I oversaw a large risk and product organization at Amazon where I led about 50 to 60 team members. Respond responsible for various compliance things as it relates to third party transportation. About 10 years ago I got super into fitness, so side note, I was actually doing a lot of bodybuilding and so I think that's what parlayed me into a lot of what I do. Now I'm far removed from the bodybuilding space, but I still keep a lot of the health, wellness, fitness, nutrition aspects at my forefront.
- [02:19]
A
Yeah, cool. Sometimes the bodybuilding stuff I guess, doesn't even correlate to health and wellness at some point. I guess. Yeah, it depends on if natural.
- [02:26]
B
Exactly. Once you get A little bit too extreme. Then it's just like, all right, maybe that's not the most healthy thing to be doing.
- [02:32]
A
Yeah, I didn't know that. See, I just learned something new. Cool. Okay, so then bring us to like, you know, with, with everything you did in the corporate world with Amazon leading that team and then, and now getting into the aesthetic space and meeting Justine and how all this happened with, I guess, first just injected.
- [02:46]
B
Sure. So Justine is a nurse practitioner, owner of Just Injected Med Spa in Dallas. Um, she has been doing esthetics for a little over six years now. She's worked at multiple different corporate med spas here in the Dallas area. Four or five different places. Last September, she. Or September 2024, she officially took the plunge into becoming an entrepreneur. So she, you know, full credit to her, she jumped in 10 toes completely doing it all alone. She had some help or some support from me at the beginning, but I was so busy with Amazon at the time where I couldn't really dedicate much time to that. December of 2024, I was on the phone with my uncle. He was telling me happy birthday. And it was the first time I acknowledged that I was going to leave Amazon and most likely leave the corporate space. So transition a little bit into January. Month later, I started drawing out this image of what I wanted to do in the next five to 10 years. And the drawing was a wellness club. And so I'm really big into community and I wanted to identify a community space where I could build authentic connections with like minded people. I'm not in the party scene drinking anything like that, but I drew out this image of a place that had cold plunges, that had saunas, a saltwater pool in the, in the middle with the sun, and some lawn space around a kitchenette, like a mocktail juice bar type of setting. So then people could come in day night, hang out, have a good time with their friends. Two weeks after this drawing, like, no kidding, hopefully I'll find it before the end of this conversation. But two weeks after that drawing, I was like, all right, I'm going to start looking into maybe buying a business. And so I went online. I found my current business that I took over in April. It's called Cryo X. It was there and I was like, oh my gosh, like, this is absolutely crazy what some of those, you know, drawings and putting it out in the universe can do for you. Um, and so ever since then, it's been just injected and Cryo X, where I've been managing both of those alongside Justine.
- [04:53]
A
Yeah. Cool. So when you decided to kind of join forces with Justine on the business side, like, what was the vision for your role in the business and, like, the value you were going to add? Because obviously in this space, even with a lot of successful med spas that are single location or dual location, they were, they're, they're led by a medical provider, but that medical provider is also wearing the business and operations hat. So you with your business experience and acumen coming in, like, what was the plan there and the synergy between you and Justine.
- [05:21]
B
Justine is terrific. Patient care, gridding through things, making sure that she stays up to date with all the education, and can be the best injector and trainer that she possibly can be in dfw. However, where Justine started to fall behind a little bit was on the daily operation that you're talking to. Justine would typically see anywhere from six to ten people a day. And so that would mean she would have maximum of two to four hours of her own personal time on a day to day basis. And so what we had quickly identified was she could provide the best care, but if people weren't hearing about her or she wasn't doing the right level of advertising or posting on socials, then, you know, she would only really be able to grow through word of mouth, which might take a handful of years to really get to her end goal. And so, taking some of my business acumen, I started doing a lot of research, most notably on X, formerly Twitter, of learning the basics of SEO, understanding the basics of how can we build out sustainable models to attract patients, keep them coming back. I was also like, hey, let me help you with taking over the leads, because we put a little bit of money into Google and meta ads, and so there'd be days potentially that would go between lead coming in, hey, warm lead, nobody reaching out, because Justine was so busy. And so that was another aspect that I took over and so really ended up taking over, you know, soup to nuts, everything from strategy, operations, some of the admitting work, like even getting some people scheduled or rescheduled. So then Justine can focus more about how can I deliver that excellent patient care. When people come in the door and kind of have it stop and end with coming in the door.
- [07:03]
A
Yeah, cool. And then on the personal side, we did a whole podcast episode on this, but this is just, there are a lot of husband wife teams and, and if you don't have a husband wife team in your business, you might have something that's somewhat applicable with personal relationships that overlap into business. What has that dynamic been like for you and Justine? And, you know, we're both Alex Hormozi fans, and I've heard him and his wife, if you're not familiar listening to Alex Hormozi, he's probably one of the thought leaders in the marketing space right now, say, along with his wife. Now, especially in the operation side, Layla and I know for them, they talk about business is just what they love, so they don't mind that it spills over into dinner and lunch and Saturdays. But I've talked to other people where, you know, business can be a stressful thing. It can be a frustration point, and we want to make sure we draw a distinction between business time and personal time, I guess. So first, what does that look like for you and Justine in the business?
- [07:50]
B
So I would say right now, we're in this season of life where we don't really have much of that off switch that some people talk about. I know people listening, they might be like, oh, well, that can't be healthy, or, oh, I bet this thing flares out. Or, oh, I bet that's really boring. But the reality for us right now, we have our first baby boy on the way, and we really love pushing ourselves similar to the harmosis. We're just in that season of life right now where we know we have the baby due at the end of May, and so we're trying to spend as much time as we possibly can on the forefront to get all of our ducks in a row. So then that way, by the time that the baby comes, then we can spend a lot more time with him. I would say that we have had a couple instances in our personal life where we're both kind of tired. And then it'll be next business thought. Next business thought. And it might have been a stressful business day where we've actually caught ourselves saying, hey, I don't want to talk anymore about this, in a very nice and gentle way. And. But sometimes even when we say that, it kind of creeps in to those conversations. But we've been together for a little over 10 years now, and I feel like our relationship has only grown and gotten stronger since going into business together, mainly because now we have that next fun thing for us to build and see grow. And so, you know, kind of mapping it back to the baby, like seeing this baby of just injected and cryo x both grow has been incredibly rewarding and fulfilling for us. And so we have those personal boundaries. Like, if we're hanging out on the couch watching tv, we're Most likely hanging out and watching tv. And it's not like, oh, hey, remember that thing that we need to do at just injected? Like that comes up sometimes, but it's never something that takes us away from being us and having that, you know, loving, nurturing relationship.
- [09:30]
A
Yeah, I love that. This episode is brought to you by Med Spa Magic Marketing, my agency. We help Med spas and aesthetics practices grow with more effective marketing strategies. And I know that's a vague phrase, right? That's a vague claim. So I have an offer for you. I offer this to any new prospects if you're interested in exploring any of them. Another marketing option, a new agency, or just getting into Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads for the first time. I'd love to show you why we're different, what we're doing for clients. And we can do that via a one and a half hour planning session where I'll outline a specific marketing plan and I'll give you all of the blueprints that we would implement if we were to do business together. Now you can take that, use that on your own, hire someone else to help you execute it or, or work with us. We really don't hold anything back on that strategy call. And I think you'll have a lot of confidence in how you manage your marketing investment moving forward. Understanding some of the nuances that can help you implement more effective marketing strategies for your business. So if you want to do that, you can go to medspamagicmarketing.com cool. So, so getting into the business, taking over operations and finances and you mentioned you had an accounting degree. What are some of the things on like the operations side that are like day in the life for Alan now with the two businesses with Cryoex and you know, just injected. What are the things that you're generally focused on, the things that you think, you know, if you're, if you're a medical only provider that you might be missing in terms of like the operational elements and the strategy and growth, I guess, orientation in the business.
- [10:54]
B
Yeah. So I'll start with some of the ktlo. So keeping the lights on activities and then on the back end I'll kind of pivot into some more of the strategy things that everybody should be thinking about. Non negotiables. Have it open on one tab on your computer every single day. Managing the leads. So leads are, anytime that your ad attracts a new customer, they'll fill out a form and then they'll essentially be in your queue for you to reach out to them. It's Incredibly important during that first 30 minutes to an hour, engage that lead. So I would say that's probably something I do probably two hours a day is managing the leads as they come through.
- [11:27]
A
Somebody has to wear that hat for sure. If you're trying to have somebody that's, that doesn't have the availability managing that hat like you're, you're going to struggle with lead conversion. So totally agree on that.
- [11:37]
B
Yes. An absolute worst case if you don't have somebody in your corner that you can, that can support you through that because you're in treatments all day, maybe see if a virtual assistant could be something to look into or maybe even a lower cost front desk, train them on the process. If you're spending ad dollars, it's incredibly important that you are also the one or you have somebody in your corner that is managing that relationship with potential prospects. So I'd say lead management is a big one. Another big one are just a lot of the initiative improvements or projects that we're working on, continuous improvement projects. So for example, about. I do one big project every week. So last week I was creating a brand new website. So we're actually going through a rebrand right now, transitioning our wellness business, Cryox, to the brand of Just Wellness. So now we'll have just injected Just Wellness. Both play upon Justine's first name. And so I had built out the new website last week. This week has been a focus of I've been creating like a lookbook. And the lookbook is a super cool idea that we've had for the past like three or six months where it's a before and afters booklet and it'll show each treatment that somebody got and it hits on the specific pain point that that patient had and then it educates potential prospects or clients on what is sculpture, what is a Nefertiti neck lift. And then it shows the before and after results of Justine's work as well. So I would say day to day are always going to be a mix of how I'm managing the leads, the supporting our staff in office so they reach out to me if there are any equipment malfunctions or if there's, you know, maybe a customer that needs some extra love that day. And then I also will always have one or two projects that I'm working on in the meantime as well. I would say probably one to two times a month. I'll also be deep diving our balance sheet, profit and loss statement and then sending back any questions that I may have to our accounting team. I also work really closely with our. Our marketing team. Here's a plug for MedSpa Magic Marketing, our marketing team that we use for Cryo X, where if I have new creative ideas of how we can identify new potential prospects or bring in additional value to the patients that we already have, I'll shoot over those ideas to them as well. So I'd say that's kind of what a normal day or week looks like for us.
- [14:00]
A
Cool. I love that. I love the Keep the lights on. You've got these maintenance things, making sure everybody's getting their jobs done, that you're supporting the team. You've got that administrative function and the operations function and then also having like, rocks. So, like, what is that? What is the next thing I can work on this week? And I like. I like even putting like the weekly timeline on it because I've always made the mistake when I do rocks. Planning in our business is like, sometimes there's such big, long, intensive projects that it's very hard for me to stick to my time blocking because it feels too distant. So I love the idea of. This is a good project management tip. I'd be interested in your advice on this, Alan. This is something I'm trying to do different for 2026 is if you're time blocking and you're in an operations function in a business and you're trying to fix things or move the ball forward on other initiatives, instead of chunking, like, I'm going to spend an hour and a half moving this initiative forward and then an hour and a half doing this other thing, really scheduling larger time blocks where you can really see a project from start to finish as fast as possible before moving on to the next project. So instead of juggling, you know, four or five balls at one time, just having one thing that you're focused on to finish it sounds like that's kind of something that you've ingrained in your work habits. Like as a weekly rock.
- [15:07]
B
Absolutely. As a business owner, entrepreneur, we all have a million and five things we want and need to do. If you have all of these things that you want and need to do and you're like, okay, I'm going to do a little bit of this for the one hour. I'm gonna do a little bit of this for one hour, you're either not going to finish any of them or when you're finished, they're only going to be 80% complete. And so I really try to stay in, in touch with how can I focus on this one thing? Chunk it down into how many hours should said thing take? So for example, if I say website creation should take me about 30 hours. Okay, great. Well, I know that I have six hours per day to work on a task that's outside of my KTLO responsibilities. And so that will take me five days. And so don't let yourself, you know, fall into the notion of, oh, that's a four week project. Well, break it down into, well, how many hours will that take you? Oh, it's only going to take me four hours. Well, can you get that done by lunch? So I think it's really important to reframe sometimes. Of how many projects do we have, what is the most important one that we do this week, this month? Isolate your focus there and then move on to the next one.
- [16:09]
A
Yeah, those big problems. I like that a lot. Like you have the next big problem I'm trying to solve. Let's push, push, push. I also think you get enormous amount of satisfaction from seeing the project through to the finish line in a sense of accomplishment rather than just like I'm moving the progress bar 15% on the 75 things I'm trying to juggle in the business. Get something over the finish line, feel the sense of accomplishment and then pick the next thing.
- [16:31]
B
Yes. And if you don't know where to start, hopefully you do. But if you don't know where to start, plug in your project list into Gemini ChatGPT, whatever your AI equivalent is that you enjoy using and ask it to prioritize what you should work on, why you should work on it and follow that order. I love.
- [16:48]
A
I was just going to ask you about prioritization and Cool tie in to use AI.
- [16:51]
B
Yes.
- [16:53]
A
Yeah, I was just making a cheat sheet for our team and all the different ways I've used AI in the business. We need to do like a whole episode on that at some point. Do you have anything else, Alan? AI wise? Like one of the things that I was doing today for our team is I was creating a new SOP on a, you know, if somebody asked for something that's outside of scope and we standardize this and we have an SOP template for how we build our SOPs, but instead of me just writing it all down, I just talked to, texted it with Gemini, which is if you're not, if you're not aware, like Alan said, that's Google's version of ChatGPT, their AI tool. And I, and then I uploaded the SOP template and I said, give me everything I need to fill out to create the updated sop, it took me one tenth the amount of time. Are there any things that you're doing on the AI front right now, like workflows or like little tips or tricks that you found added efficiency?
- [17:35]
B
Workflows? No, but efficiencies, tips and tricks, yes. If you aren't using an AI tool right now, you're definitely behind and so jump in. But it's not because it's not too late. But jump in now. So when I talk about my website creation last week, so I built a couple of websites before, mainly like using Squarespace or GoDaddy and they're more of a drag and drop model. And so with Gemini, what I did was like, hey, Gemini, I want to create a website. I gave it a couple inspo websites that I liked and it wrote me code. I know maybe for non technical, I'm non technical, but non technical people. That sounds like, oh my gosh, I don't want to get into engineering. I have, I don't understand the code. Well, all you do is you copy that, you paste it into your website domain and it creates an entire landing page, it creates an entire service page, web page, and it takes 10% of the time that it would normally take you to create a website. So if you are maybe somebody out there who is like, oh yeah, I paid somebody $10,000 to create a website. There's a lot of that out there. You can create one yourself in 20 hours. Just telling Gemini, hey, I really like, just injected MedSpa's website. I really like Ricky Shockley's website about marketing. Can you mirror that for me? It will do that exact thing for you.
- [18:47]
A
Yeah, I think that's a good tip for how to use AI in general. It's like you might not have the skill to do the actual thing, but you don't have to for so many of these things. You have to be the director and you have to just give it a feedback and mechanism to refine it into what you want it to be.
- [19:01]
B
Yes, that was a tangent.
- [19:03]
A
Fit that bill.
- [19:03]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So that was a tangent into saying I use it for a lot of different things. I use it for sop, standard operating procedures. I use it for website creation edits. I also use it for helping me stack rank my priorities. I help it or use it to help me understand certain financial levers that I need to pull or I should pull. You know, for example, should I use debt or should I use equity to pay for this machine? So there's just a lot of different ways to use it think about, hey, if I run into a problem, how can I solve it? And my how can I solve it is using Gemini and through, you know, different prompting that I might have.
- [19:41]
A
Yeah. And for those of you who are business owners or operations managers, directors, I like this little tip. I always do this when you're driving. I use the voice mode on these tools like in ChatGPT I'll turn voice mode on and you could just be driving and you could run through an entire problem set and come to a solution with documentation by the end of like a drive to pick up coffee. Like we've had like internal, internal policy documents or like hr, we rolled out a profit sharing plan for our team. I went through like poking holes in it, figuring out what might be wrong, running through different scenarios, all just talk texting while I drive. So like another layer of efficiency, being able to do some of these things and solve big problems and talk things through. You have so many things inevitably in your business that you would just like somebody who really knows their stuff to lend their ear and their input to. You get that with some of these AI tools. So that was not on our agenda for discussion, but I thought that was a good tangent. Thanks Alan. Yes, anything else on that end?
- [20:32]
B
We also use it for our emails and so we had used ChatGPT before for our emails and it spit out your generated AI equivalent email that would come through. And so we recently switched to using Gemini and we're using the code prompting from Gemini so we copy paste the code and it's actually quite crazy of how sophisticated the email templates have gotten and how much cleaner that those end up looking when they go out to our customers. We also use it for a lot of lead management or lead responses. And so if we get into a position where we might not know the answer or we might not know how to say it in the nicest way, then we'll have Gemini Chat GPT reformulate a response for us just to make sure that we're hitting that, that right angle for the customer.
- [21:21]
A
So yeah, one thing I think a lot of people should be be doing too is like uploading, feeding these systems information is going to give it more context on how to answer your question. So like if you have internal documentation, SOPs, information on your website, pricing sheets. Alan just mentioned one use case, just whoever's managing your leads, having access to a complete library of information. You can train a, your, your GPT, Gemini, whatever tool that you use to have that database storage so that when you're going to pull an inquiry. It's actually got the context specific to your business, so you can calibrate that, that answer appropriately. Cool. On the profitability and finance side, some of the accounting background. So business, you know, we're all in business to generate a profit. We do that by serving our clients well. But we have to run lean, efficient businesses. You said you kind of geeked out on the personal finance side. Debt versus do we, do we pay this with cash? Those kind of things. What are some of your core principles and the things that you've learned about, hey, what are we shooting for here? What is the goal of the business? What does profitability look like? And what are some pitfalls that you think most people just in business in general are falling into when it comes to running the numbers and running a profitable business?
- [22:29]
B
So I think one of the most important things are you have to understand and enjoy what you're doing. There have been venture capitals, you know, firms that have came in, they bought, you know, med spots like, oh, wow, cash cow. But then if there isn't much love or there really isn't much understanding of the business, then things, you know, happen to end up failing during those, during those times. Some of the core principles that we tend to follow are make sure that we always understand where each one of our revenues are. We need to really understand how much revenue each service is bringing us, each product is bringing us. Otherwise, we need to figure out, do we stop doing this thing or do we reimagine how we're doing said thing. So, for example, we have a cryotherapy machine at our clinic in Grapevine. The cryotherapy machine was starting to get very expensive to run because it was using nitrogen, which is expensive overhead cost, in order for a cryotherapy machine to run. And so we heard a lot of customers saying, oh, I really want to keep this machine. You know, I'm going to leave if I don't have this machine. But we ran the numbers and we understood that we would either have to double the price of said thing or we would end up not being able to run it. And so we decided that we are going to cut the cost of managing this cryotherapy machine because the numbers didn't make sense and we knew that people wouldn't end up paying more just to have that same experience. And so I think when you're thinking about profitability revenue, you need to do a breakdown of all of your line item. So whether it be a certain skin care type, whether it be Botox vs Dysport you need to understand how much that overhead cost is. So not just the direct cost of, oh, hey, I spend $1.55 per unit of dysport. Okay, great. Well, do you. How much are you also paying your nurse injectors? How much are your supplies? How much is that room costing you per your rental agreement, or how much you're owning on it? And so it's incredibly important that you understand those numbers end to end. I think that for us, we don't take any new debt that we wouldn't be able to pay back within six to 12 months. And so that's super important for us as well. And so whether that be a new wellness machine or a new piece of equipment like a micro needling device, we always look at our business bank account and we have a separate one for understanding what equipment funding can be. And so we'll look at both of those. And if there isn't enough money in that reserve to pay for it in the next six to 12 months, even if we take on a loan, then we don't do it.
- [25:05]
A
I love having, like, a baseline rule instead of just, like, going off, like, I don't know, should I do this or should I not? I really. Even a lot of big established med spots, they don't have any sort of rubric to, like, help them make that decision. So you, you have basically separate accounts, and you have this separate account that's going to dictate whether or not that's even on the table as an option.
- [25:21]
B
Yes. And always make sure that there's demand for your next step, or if you decide that you might have a cost out there. So let's go back to the cryotherapy machine example for a second. So maybe you, you should always reach out to your customers before you say, hey, I know I can save $50,000 in costs right now. I'm going to go ahead and do it. Well, you also should understand, well, what is the inverse of cutting that cost? Well, how many patients will you end up losing? How much revenue goes out the door? And so it's really important, and I think this is a general business concept that you're surveying your customers before you make too big of financial mistakes as well.
- [25:58]
A
Yeah. Don't you fall in love with it. Make sure that it's justified. We talked to Gina Graziano. She's a consultant in the space on that topic, too. She's like, you have to make sure the demand is there to launch a service.
- [26:06]
B
Yes.
- [26:07]
A
Which I guess leads me to the next thing, because this is something we've talked about a little bit. The services that Cryo x as a business, as if you're in the med spa space, many of you listening will be doing the traditional med spa type services. And there's a lot of flirtation now with health and wellness stuff. And I think that there's probably a risk that's inherent to expanding into some of these services because some of them are very, very new. Some of them have better science than others. Some of them have a more tangible, measurable result. Others are a little bit harder to nail down. You've taken Cryox, from what I remember from our conversation, from $50,000 a month business when you purchased it, to over $100,000 a month as a business in a pretty short time frame. What were some of the things that allowed you to do that? Like what were some of the catalysts to the growth that you mentioned? The just understanding the numbers, the profitability, but just overall growth in that space, of course.
- [26:57]
B
And so when we were going through the buying process of Cryox, we just saw so much synergy with the aesthetic space. And we're like, all right, I know that we can be at the forefront of where wellness meets aesthetics. And so that's something, I mean, because also Jesse and I's background is fitness, health, nutrition, all of those things. And so understanding that what the future will look like, we wanted to be an early adopter of, of that invention. And so when we had taken over cryoex, we were like, okay, I know I need to reduce my nitrogen costs, which allow me to put more money back into the business to purchase other machines that are super big in the wellness space right now. So we ended up buying a hyperbaric chamber. Hyperbaric chambers are consistently everywhere right now, and they're, they're popping up very heavily in the wellness space. And so that was a quick revenue driver for us as well. We also have a very big wellness customer base as well. And so when we brought on aesthetics, which were injectables as facials as well as facials, a lot of people started gravitating towards those services as well, because we had already built out that know, like, trust with the wellness consumers. Justine's background with being a nurse practitioner, being in the aesthetics industry for the past six years, people are like, oh, wow, I love the work that she's doing. And so it was a very easy and seamless integration for us to match the health and wellness with the aesthetic space as well. I think that wellness, and when I say wellness I don't just mean peptides, GLP1 injections, vitamin injections. I think, you know, maybe that's a misnomer and maybe I'll be the black sheep here to say, you know, I'm not going to really classify or call that wellness. Wellness. When I think about wellness, it's a lot of the red light therapy and hyperbaric because you know, more science that's coming out right now, especially people like your longevity experts like a Brian Johnson for example, the constant advocation for that to help improve yourself from the inside out. Because when you're replacing a lot of the, or when you're bringing in a lot of the collagen producing modalities like a red light and a hyperbaric, it's only going to help drive your esthetics procedures a lot further than where they were before through just a simple injection.
- [29:09]
A
Yeah, that's cool. And, and like with the demand of those services, I guess what was, what were some of the catalysts of the growth you had in that business? Different pricing models, managing the existing client list. Those can be a challenge to market.
- [29:23]
B
I know, yeah, managing. So one of the big things that we had seen when we taken, when we took over Cryox, they ran no ads, they had zero ad spend. And so we immediately started running meta ads. The meta ads really just brought us probably, I don't know, 20 to $30,000 a month through our injection disport offer, three dollar unit disport offer. We offer that up and so, you know, slight profitability on that first one, but we're really banking on some of the long term gains there. Another one of the ones that I mentioned was the hyperbaric chamber that brings in, you know, five, $10,000 a month. And then, and then since Justine is a nurse practitioner, we also have other nurses to where they were only doing IVs, vitamin injections on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We were able to convert that into being able to do that Monday through Saturday. And so that brought in another 5 to $10,000 of revenue as well. And then there are other little small things that we ended up tweaking as well to try to get more people on membership, some of that more that recurring revenue model which is super important for really any business in general. And so those are the top three things. Bring on aesthetics. So getting people on facials, injectables, running ads, highly important if you aren't, are, especially if you're trying to expand your business. And then the third one was identifying what wellness service that existing customers wanted and Then we brought that on as well.
- [30:47]
A
Yeah, it's never one silver bullet. Right. It's always a handful of things. And like, yeah, it's pretty cool to grow a business that quickly from 50 past 100k and. And just making the right strategic moves. Because I think a lot of people, when you're at that phase, whether you have five locations and you're trying to jump to six, or you're wanting, trying to jump to two, or you're just trying to figure out what the next service is to go beyond injectables or to incorporate injectables, if we don't do our due diligence and we miss on that call, like, this is a lot of what business is about. When you go to make the call, what is the right next move on the chessboard? And if you make the right move, it leads to greater profitability and prosperity for your business. You're able to serve more clients and to make more people happy and to help them achieve their desired outcomes. But if you make the wrong chess move, that's where you end up in these situations where you may be saddled with debt or you're creating inefficiency in the business or hurting profitability and growth. So just making the right decision. I guess as part of that, the magic, there's.
- [31:35]
B
Yes, absolutely. And one other one that I forgot that was probably. That was pretty big in terms of the revenue driver as well, was some of the influencer marketing as well as local business partnership outreach. And so those two pillars ended up bringing us some revenue too, because the partnership model. So we got into a partnership with a dentist office and now we're working with gyms to where they are incentivized to send us customers and vice versa. So that's a big way to also help grow your customer base as well. And then through influencer marketing, where they would come in, they would just record themselves doing the services and then people would come in based off of those services that they had did as well.
- [32:18]
A
Yeah, I love that we've talked about that in previous episodes, but I think so many people, they just want to hide behind the keyboard and they just, they just want to run ads. And you are a local business, you have the opportunity to have. Have interactions with other businesses that can refer you business and your prospects and your clients by getting out in the community and making connections.
- [32:34]
B
Yes.
- [32:34]
A
What if some of those things looked like specifically like. I think probably a lot of people that have tried this maybe have like dipped their toe, it didn't quite work. They felt like they were spinning their wheels and they gave up on it. How were you able to establish successful referral relationships with other businesses? And what was the thing that you felt like made it attractive for those people to say yes and to want to actually do something with you?
- [32:52]
B
It has to be a fairly adjacent business, I think. So. For example, we have a hyperbaric chamber. So it's super easy. I shouldn't say super easy. It's fairly easy for us to partner with a local physician's office who is recommending certain wellness services for their patients. They've got to refer them somewhere. And so why not have some sort of incentive mechanism in place instead of saying, hey, go find a hyperbaric chamber, hey, go use the hyperbaric chamber at cryoex and say, and tell them that, you know, I sent you. So then you get X amount of dollars off at Just Injected. I would say that the biggest incentive that we have right now for the local businesses are to be on. We do, we normally do a $50 two way referral credit. So if Ricky, you come in to Just Injected, you get treated for Botox, then you would get $50 as well as that person who had referred you would get $50 at their next treatment. And so what we do for local businesses is we actually do a hundred dollar referral. And so we have, for example, at Just Injected, she has a hair salon that she partners with, with. And there have been, I mean, the lady essentially now gets free treatments because he's gotten thousands of dollars of credit banked. And so we look at like, oh, wow, that's a really great partnership because then we build long term customers as well. So yes, you might be getting free services, but she's paid for herself, you know, ten times over.
- [34:12]
A
Yeah, exactly. I love that. Good tips. We've talked about that a lot, but we've never gone into any detail really about it. So that's helpful. Hey there. Wanted to briefly interrupt the episode to make a quick ask. If you're a podcast listener, it would mean the world to us if you'd leave a review for the podcast, whether that's on itunes or Spotify. It's something I hadn't really remembered or thought of asking for, but it does help us show up more frequently so that we can reach more people with the information that we're providing. So it mean the world to us if you'd leave a review on itunes or Spotify, if you're listening on audio, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure to hit the subscribe button. So you're in the loop for future videos and you don't miss any of the content that we're putting out. Leadership and team. So now managing two businesses, you got, you know, existing staff at Cryox, the business you took over, the growth you're now pursuing with just injected. What are some things and from your experience at Amazon that you try to apply to the businesses you run now, in terms of managing a team and leadership philosophy, you have to listen.
- [35:10]
B
And like, when I say listen, it's like, really listen, not just here. After leading people in at Amazon and understanding people has to be one of the biggest traits that you can bring to the table. It can be very easy for us to get frustrated, mad, disappointed in people, but we really have to always make sure that we're looking inwards to understand why somebody might be upset, why somebody might not be doing the job on time or per your quality. So I would say that's probably, you know, the biggest trait that any leader needs to bring to the table. I would say the next one needs to be kind of defining the line between I'm, you know, your boss versus I'm your friend, or I'm this authority figure versus maybe being a friend. It's super important to be kind to all of the people that you interact with, staff as well as customers. But sometimes if you get too close to your staff, then there can be some of those instances where it's hard to separate a personal from a professional relationship. And so I would make sure to always spend time, you know, shooting the breeze with your colleagues, especially the employees at your job or at your workplace, but also to make sure that you set those healthy boundaries, don't overshare, don't engage in the gossip, and then make sure that you always have kind of the performance standards in place as well, so those don't slip. And then I would say the last one is making sure that you have measurable traits in place, because what is it you can't measure or what you measure can't get managed? And so make sure that you always have your finger on the pulse. Make sure that there are decent ways for you to track performance, whether that be for an injector, for a front desk member, or even for yourself. Look at your revenue month, your revenue from the trailing three months, six months. Look at how your Instagram profile, look at the number of insights that you're getting month over month, month. Look at the number of opens on your emails that you're receiving. So those are, I'd say, Probably the biggest three qualities and traits that you need to make sure that you're displaying as an effective leader.
- [37:22]
A
Yeah, I love that. Going back to the membership model, I know you talked about this in the answer where we talked about with Cryo X. I think one of the things that we talked about was this idea of letting clients self sort and I think so many, so many of us in the service based business world, especially in med spas, you know, you have a wide gap of client types. You have people that come in and they just want to do the bare minimum and it's what their budget allows, it's what they're comfortable with, it's the service that they want and we still want to serve those people because they generate revenue and profitability for us. And there might be more of those people than the people that spend top dollar, but we want to have options for the people that spend top dollar. So you made a modification to the membership options that allowed you a little bit more top end leverage for the high spenders. Could you share that? Yes, I know we talked about, we haven't talked as much about membership on just injected as you mentioned with cryoex specifically.
- [38:11]
B
Yeah, so with cryoex just to kind of give everyone an understanding of, you know, the numbers we have typically about 100 or so to 150 Wellness members every single month. And so right now our current membership model is you can only select from four different service types and we have about 15 to 20. And so those four different service types that you can select from are you can get something for six times a month, 12 times a month, or unlimited. That's all we offer. But something that we're building right now is essentially an a la carte menu where you can select any of our services, any of our products, and you will receive a discount on said product, on said service as long as you sign up for the membership. So an example that we've talked about as part of this conversation has been our Hyperbaric Chamber. And so right now our Hyperbaric Chamber is excluded from our memberships because the current memberships that we have in place are static based off of a price point. So we have those four services that we offer and each one of them costs our, we charge $40 per one of those services. And so hyperbaric chamber, it's $90. And so there wasn't an easy way for us to fit that into our existing membership model. And so now what we're gravitating towards and it'll roll out at the End of this month, early next month is more of a credit based system. And so you would pay your membership dues each month and then you would get X number of credits based off of how much something is. So, you know, maybe cryotherapy is one credit. Hyperbaric chamber is three credits. A hydrafacial is six credits. You would be able to use that in store credit to customize your own membership. Something. And where this came from was I started to get a lot of outreach in September, October for people who wanted customized memberships. And so I put these membership place plans in place and I would quote them 500, 600, $750 for a membership. And I'd be like, oh, wow, should I decrease the cost of this a little bit? I'm like, no, the price is the price. I'd send it. And they'd say, okay, yeah, I would, you know, like option two and option two would be the more expensive one. And so that's when I had a realization of there is a lot to be said about being able to give the customers what exactly they want. And what they want is being able to use the money that they've already paid you for pretty much anything in the store. And so that's the membership model that we're moving towards at the end of January, early February.
- [40:31]
A
Yeah. If you can figure out a way to make it work. Being able to give people what they want means you're probably more successful at satisfying your clients.
- [40:38]
B
Yeah.
- [40:39]
A
So I like that you were creative about finding a solution there and it gave you more of a top end for more expensive membership options as a result.
- [40:45]
B
Yep, exactly. And quick sidebar. We had tried to do memberships at Just Injected. I think we had one sign up in three months. We're like, okay, yeah, we're good. 1. We didn't push it or advertise it very hard. But you didn't necessarily receive something every month either. Yes, you would get money banked towards your Botox for a following month. Yes, you would get cheaper filler for when you came up. But those services were fairly infrequent. You know, your dysports every three to five months and then filler is maybe once a year. And so that became a little bit difficult for, I think customers to justify that. Hey, this membership is super valuable for me to get. So we ended up cutting ties with that one.
- [41:20]
A
Yeah, yeah. We've heard a lot of like different things on the membership models, especially on the aesthetic side.
- [41:25]
B
Yeah.
- [41:26]
A
And I know it could. Some people have enormous success and Certain things work for certain businesses that don't work for others. And I think that's something that's not quite nailed down perfectly. Yes, Alan, our conversations. I know you're like you're, you're a student of business and the game when it comes to marketing. What are some things that, and I think that is important if you have, if you're wearing a hat in your business, where you're in operations or marketing, marketing or leadership, if you don't study your craft around that topic area, you're not going to excel in it. So what are some of the things that you're tuned into that you find super valuable? Just from whether it's like certain people that you follow on social media, books, things like that that you're plugged into right now that you recommend to others?
- [42:02]
B
I would say a year ago I was consistently on YouTube and self help books podcast, but I've gravitated a lot recently towards X, formerly Twitter. And so the algorithm on X has gotten so good to where a lot of the posts that I'll see now are hyper focused on marketing and some of like the more niche spots, you know, kind of around SEO. I've also seen a lot on business finance, how to properly utilize, you know, low interest credit cards versus taking on debt versus just paying directly from your checking account. So I would say that's kind of where I've spent a lot of my information gathering time recently. So typically every morning from about 5 to 5:45 before I go to the gym, that's my time of research and study. And a lot of that time has been on purposeful use of X. And so I would say X is probably the best place that I'm going right now to grab some of that information. Oh, and what I'm also seeing on there is a lot of, a lot of education and research in the longevity space. And then I would say number two is closely followed by podcasts right now. I would say the biggest one that I gravitate towards is going to be the Game by Alex Harmozi and then third, just for research, but it's more so just because I'm curious are going to be anything in the personal finance realm as well?
- [43:29]
A
Yeah, I love that. And yeah, use your social media algorithm, hack it, your reverse, hack it yourself, click on consume the stuff that you want more of and you'll get more of it.
- [43:39]
B
Yes. Yeah. And if maybe develop two different accounts, have one account for personal, it's like hey, this is my fun one where I can go on I can see, you know, cute AI dog videos and then the other one can be like, all right, this is my serious, is my business account where I'm going to go in, I'm only going to use it for learning.
- [43:58]
A
Yeah. And it's, we're in such a fast moving, like quick evolving space right now, especially with AI and technology and, and even like advancements in health and wellness, which probably ties into AI here in the coming years. Like you want to be a step ahead of on everything that you're doing. So staying plugged in I think is super important. What is the future of, of both of these businesses look like for you and Justine? What are the future visions and future plans? What are your growth goals?
- [44:22]
B
Growth goals. So we're super excited that and I guess I'll break it to you, Ricky, but we're in the process of rebranding Cryox to just wellness. And so, so that's one of the things that we're looking forward to the most for this year is you know, we bought, we brought Cryox back in April of 2025 and we, you know, started to grow the business. But the more we had thought about the name was like, oh my gosh, who wants to go get injected at Cryox now? Maybe not, maybe not even me. Right. But you know, we do have a great service, we provide great services, you know, a lot of science backed modalities that we have as well. Well and so right now we are in the process of working through a full rebrand and so things as easy as, hey, we have to go get a new sign for outside to building the new website, to putting together essentially party plans where we're going to have a lot of our customers, a lot of our business partners come in and look at our new redesigned office building. And so I would say that hopefully by the end of the day of 2025 that, you know, we maybe doubled our revenue again. So, you know, kind of taking it from the hundred thousand where we currently are to maybe 200,000. We recently we expanded our space at Cryox as well. So we ended up taking on the unit right next to us. It's about 1200 square feet, has four additional rooms that will be purely Med Spa. And so we're going to have a full differentiation on the inside of our building which one side will be pure wellness and then the other side will be pure Med Spa. So we are, we already started treating people out of the Med Spa side and they are, people are absolutely loving it. I would say for the just injected Side, we want to bring on one more injector at some point this year. So going from Justine's business to okay, hey, this is a med spa. And so that will be something that we are excited about growing this year as well.
- [46:14]
A
Yeah, I love that. Well Alan, thank you so much for sharing your tips and insights. Super valuable. Get a, a wealth of experience and different things that you're bringing to the med spa space. Now with the partnership with Justine and the two businesses, where can people learn more about what you all are up to? We'll make sure that the social media links, I guess we'll have to update them. Make sure whatever the Cryo X links are update back to just wellness.
- [46:33]
B
Yes. So you can see more about our wellness service offerings on Instagram at the Cryo X C R Y O X. And then you can find more about just injected at, on, on Instagram. Just underscore injected underscore if you see the page and like oh my gosh, that's you know, quite small and it looks brand new. Well, Justine's account just got disabled last week and so we're in the middle of building out her new social media.
- [47:00]
A
Geez. Yeah. I actually wanted to ask you this one last thing. Even though I got that wrap up question. We'll do this as a bonus at the end. I love to talk about this. We had, we did an episode that we filmed that's not out yet. Lauren and I on reputation and review use.
- [47:11]
B
Yeah.
- [47:11]
A
And how important this is to the purchase matrix in any business. Because if we talked a lot about, you know, offers and ads and, and this is like a horosi thing. Right. How do we, how do we make a great irresistible offer that elicits action. But ultimately in the med spa and the service business space, that's kind of the cherry on top. Right. The meat is like the reputation of the business.
- [47:32]
B
Yes.
- [47:32]
A
Anything that you, that comes to your mind with how Justine treats patients or how you run and operate these businesses. Because now both these businesses have, have I think five star ratings on Google with a ton of reviews and I think that there's almost nothing in terms of value like you want to talk about valuable assets in a business. I think when people go buy a business, this should be somewhere listed as part of the valuation. I think it's, it's that important. What do you all do and how do you think about patient satisfaction and patient care in both the businesses?
- [48:01]
B
Just. Yeah, I, I would say just like fundamentally it goes back to what I had said, you know, earlier about Making sure that you're listening. We have two ears for a reason. And so make sure that every time a customer comes in, whether you're having a good day, a bad day, your team is having a good day or good day or bad day, that that patient truly feels heard and truly feels understood. You might go in and just give them a Botox treatment because that's all that they asked for. But did you take a step back to just make sure that you really understood that they only wanted that Botox treatment versus actually, they were hoping to learn a little bit more about skin care, or they actually saw that you had a full suite of wellness services that you didn't talk to them about. And so think about every patient as somebody who is fully interested in your suite of offerings and making sure that when they come in, they feel heard, they feel understood, and they feel like they had a customized conversation with you. And so make sure that you're taking the notes on each one of the people that you meet. Put it in their treatment records. Hey, this was Ricky. He has two kids and a wife and lives outside of Nashville. Right. And that makes it a lot more engaging for the next time that they come in. And so, biggest thing to, you know, pull in good reviews is be yourself, be authentic. There's only one of you for a reason. Make sure that you lean into that at your. Your fullest capabilities.
- [49:29]
A
Yeah, I love that. And also some of those things about being detailed, taking notes, being personable. As you grow, it allows for transferability, because if. If an injector does change or they have to book an appointment with someone else, it hopefully makes that a more seamless experience instead of relying on the tribal knowledge of the one person documenting that stuff.
- [49:45]
B
Yes, exactly.
- [49:47]
A
Cool. Well, thank you, Alan. It was awesome having you on the show. Look forward to having you on again and. And looking forward to watching the growth and success of both of these businesses here in the coming months and years.
- [49:55]
B
Yeah. Thank you, Ricky. It was a pleasure getting the opportunity to connect with you and share this information with everybody here.
- [50:02]
A
Yeah, absolutely. We'll see you all on the next one. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. This podcast is a production of medspa Magic Marketing. If your med spa or aesthetic practice is in need of digital marketing services, help with advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Google lead generation, and booking more appointments, please visit Medspamagicmarketing.com.