Financial Benchmarks for High-Margin Med Spas: Payroll, Profit & Provider Pay w/ Jessica Hunter

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Med Spa Success Strategies

Episode: Financial Benchmarks for High-Margin Med Spas: Payroll, Profit & Provider Pay

Host: Ricky Shockley
Guest: Jessica Hunter, Medical Aesthetics Business Consultant
Date: February 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the essential financial benchmarks and strategies for med spa owners to maximize profit, manage payroll, and structure provider compensation. Jessica Hunter, an expert consultant for aesthetic practices, offers practical guidance regarding owner pay, financial benchmarks at various growth stages, the realities of profit margins, best practices for cash management, and the nuances of scaling a med spa to become a sellable, sustainable business. The discussion is rich in actionable numbers, hard truths, and real-world scenarios for both startups and mature med spas.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Owner Pay & Profitability at Different Growth Stages

• The Owner/Provider Dilemma ([02:28])
  • New owners often misconceive that owning a $1M med spa means financial comfort—many struggle to pay themselves adequately.
  • If you’re both owner and provider, pay yourself as you would another provider, but keep your salary minimal for the first 18 months.
  • Jessica:

    “I want you to take as little as possible…keep as much cash flow in the business for, to be honest, the first 18 months.” ([03:37])

  • Draw additional owner profits quarterly, only after reviewing real business needs and maintaining sufficient cash.
• Transition After 18 Months ([05:14])
  • After the initial period, reevaluate your salary based on business stability and goals. Maximize reinvestment if aiming for growth or higher valuation for sale.
  • When preparing to sell, owner salaries are normalized based on role/value, not past earnings.

2. Cash Reserves & Financial Buffer

• Cash On Hand Benchmarks ([09:14], [10:20])
  • At minimum, med spas should have three months of projected cash flow reserved—this applies to both startups and established clinics.
  • Jessica:

    “There’s no way you could be in this business without having at least three months of cash flow for the projected three months if you really want to maintain that revenue.” ([10:23])

  • This reserve provides peace of mind, cushions seasonality (“J months”: Jan, June, July), and allows calculated risks on new services.

3. Owner Role & Path to True Profitability

• Profitability Requires Scale ([13:36], [14:01])
  • True, “sellable” profitability—where the owner can step away from day-to-day operations—rarely occurs at the $1M revenue mark.
  • 80% of med spas are stuck in the $1M–$1.2M bracket, often with owners still entrenched in delivery.
  • True profitability and sellability begin at $1.2M–$1.5M+ in annual revenue, where operational roles can be fully delegated.
  • Jessica:

    “Until you’re anywhere above the million dollar revenue consistency in a 12 month period, you’re just, you’re not even anywhere near those conversations.” ([15:09])

4. Financial Health Scorecard: Benchmarks & Metrics

• What to Track ([18:44]–[21:29])
  • Essential metrics:
    • Fixed overhead costs (rent, utilities, insurance)
    • Marketing expenses
    • Operational expenses
    • Payroll (providers + support staff)
    • Cost of Goods Sold (COGS; product costs, supplies)
• Payroll & Provider Pay Benchmarks ([23:18]–[25:29])
  • Total Payroll: 30–35% of revenue (including all employees, taxes, and benefits)
  • Provider Compensation: Never exceed 25% of the revenue they generate.
  • Use tiered wage + commission structures; e.g., base wage with bonuses after a certain monthly revenue.
  • Owners acting as providers should count their own pay within these caps.

5. Building a Profitable Team—Provider Compensation & Utilization

• New Hires Lose Money at First ([28:03]–[38:02])
  • When hiring new providers (e.g., NPs or RNs at $35–$50/hour), they usually aren’t profitable until they generate at least $10K/month in revenue.
  • Avoid structures that pay high commissions from zero—tier incentives that reward productivity after the break-even point.
  • Jessica:

    “You're always going to lose money on [new providers] right out of the gate. ...You just know that. ...You’re paying about 60% right now for this person in this structure until they hit that [threshold].” ([36:40])

• Utilization Rate ([34:12])
  • Aim for providers to spend at least 60%+ of paid hours in direct client service—track and optimize to ensure profitability.

6. Service Mix & Maximizing Revenue Per Room

• Productivity Per Room/Provider is Key ([41:09]–[45:37])
  • Map out every service: allotted time, product/consumable costs, provider pay, and room time.
  • Not all high-margin services (e.g., laser or device-based) have enough demand to fill the schedule.
  • Focus: The 80/20 rule—80% of profit comes from 20% of your services.
  • Direct room allocation toward higher value procedures; use others for acquisition and retention, but recognize their lower per-hour profitability.
  • Jessica:

    “It’s actually harder [with a larger menu] ...understanding where do I want to focus my time?” ([42:37])

7. Patient Acquisition & Retention

• Retention Beats Acquisition ([45:37]–[48:36])
  • Initial acquisition offers usually only cover costs. Lasting profit comes from upsells, packages, memberships, and systematic retention.
  • Plan every step: initial high-value offer → deluxe package → downsell → ongoing membership/recurring revenue.
  • Jessica:

    “That one transaction that we’re trying to get for that $159 facial ...to my clients, I tell them it’s zero. It means nothing.” ([48:02])

8. Building a Sellable Business: Early Preparation

• Top 3 Keys to Sale-Ready Med Spa ([49:23]–[50:59])
  1. Address Key Person Risk: Ensure business can function smoothly if you (or another central figure) are removed.
  2. Systematize Operations: Document processes, leverage tech, and standardize everything to enable easy handoff.
  3. Optimize Payroll & Service Mix: Right team, right mix, right volumes—crucial for both profitability and buyer appeal.
  • Jessica:

    “You need people to be able to do these services and, and that’s something that I think people just kind of don’t really understand.” ([50:59])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “So many people think if you have a million dollar med spa that that’s a successful business. ...Most of those owners are struggling to pay themselves.” ([01:03], Ricky referencing Jessica’s clip)
• “As a business owner and provider in the business, I want you to take as little as possible.” ([03:37], Jessica)
• “Never want to go above 25% of what [providers] generate” ([25:04], Jessica)
• “80% of the MED spas in this country are sitting [at] a million to 1.2 [million in revenue]. ...Typically isn’t a profitable business in the sense of an owner operating in the business and probably drawing the salary that they feel is fair for their expertise.” ([14:01], Jessica)
• “Retention is the name of the game. Packages, memberships, upsells—systematize your retention or you’ll waste your marketing spend.” ([48:02], paraphrased)
• “If you want to sell, document everything and solve key person risk now—not when you decide to list the business!” ([49:23], paraphrased)

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Important Timestamps

| Time | Topic/Quote | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:28 | Owner/pay structure, lean draws for first 18 months | | 10:20 | Minimum cash reserves: 3 months projected expenses | | 13:36 | The break point for true, owner-independent profitability | | 14:01 | Sellability/transaction conversations begin $1.2M+ in annual revenue | | 18:44 | Key metrics to track for business health (overheads, payroll, COGS, etc.) | | 23:18 | Payroll as % of revenue: 30-35% total, max 25% for provider pay | | 28:03 | How new hires impact profit and why tiered comp structures are critical | | 34:12 | Utilization rate: tracking provider productivity | | 41:09 | How to analyze service mix profitability, allocating room/provider time for max revenue | | 45:37 | Patient retention over acquisition, strategies for retention/systematic upsell | | 49:23 | Building a sale-ready business (key person risk, ops, payroll/service mix) |

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Final Thoughts & Takeaways

• Most med spas are “small businesses” by financial benchmarks; real wealth and freedom occur above $1.2M–$1.5M revenue when the owner can step back.
• Start lean—draw only what you need, reinvest in the early years, and reserve cash for both resilience and growth.
• Diligently track payroll (keep under 35%), provider pay (never over 25%), and be wary of new hires’ early profitability.
• Map every service for true profit per hour/room/provider—not just sticker price; use acquisition offers as gateways to high-retention strategies.
• Build with sale in mind: document, systematize, and structure so the business thrives even if major players exit.

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For more info on Jessica Hunter: hunterconsultingservice.com
For more on Ricky and MedSpa Magic Marketing: medspamagicmarketing.com

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This summary captures the full depth of the episode’s guidance, including benchmarks, tough realities, and first-hand insights, providing listeners and med spa owners a robust framework for financial health and growth.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to MedSpa Success Strategies. I'm your host Ricky Shockley with MedSpa Magic Marketing. And this is 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 families, their teams, their patients and their communities. Our guest today is Jessica Hunter, a business consultant specializing in the medical aesthetics industries with over 10 years of experience. Jessica Jessica has worked with over 100 clinics ranging from startups to multi location practices that are generating over $10 million in annual revenue. Before her independent work, she spent five years as an allergan consultant helping their largest clients scale and honed her expertise in strategic planning with global names like 3M and Stryker. Jessica holds a bachelor in Kinesiology and an MBA in Entrepreneurship. She's a sought after speaker at industry events across the across North America and Europe. Jessica, thanks so much for being on the show. We're excited to have you.

[B]

Oh thanks Ricky. It's so exciting to be here.

[A]

So I went through your Instagram profile as my research for our interview. I mentioned to you I always like to dig a little bit deeper and I like to pick up on some things that you've said in some of the other clips or podcasts that you've been on. So we're going to go through a whole list of things, but I actually pulled this from your website because I think this is a good framework for the conversation. You're growth consulting with your firm. You're focused on identifying key growth metrics so you can identify the changes you need to boost performance, maximizing revenue streams either via expanded service offering or better patient retention or obviously a combination of the two, and then streamlining operations to fix inefficiencies that reduce profitability. So I think the questions we have today all tie into probably one of those three buckets. But we'll start with one of the clips I saw you post on Instagram was so many people think if you have a million dollar med spa that that's a successful business. But that's really small in the med spa world and most of those owners are struggling to pay themselves. So just in terms of owners pay and a breakdown on profitability numbers, I wanted to go through a few different benchmarks of growth and what you typically see or shoot for. And I know you said every business is different, but if we had to put something on the radar as a goal because I've seen million dollar med spas that have the owner paying themselves nothing and then I'm sure there are versions of that where they're still really running a lean operation, where they've got good profitability. Do you have any general benchmarks that you're trying to guide your clients toward, even though every business is different?

[B]

Yeah, I think this is a really good question. And I think anybody who is just starting up, you know, their own practice or their own clinic versus someone who is established has this question because they're quite uncertain of how do I pay myself? And so the two things you're going to ask yourself right away is, am I an owner and provider in the business? And if you, if that is true, and you are, then my suggestion and recommendation of how you're going to pay yourself is you're going to pay yourself to industry standard of what you would pay somebody else who is providing that service. Now, easier said than done, right? And I think, you know, one thing that is just the reality of the world is as an owner, starting your own business. I always suggest this, and this actually just happened yesterday, where I had someone who's just starting a business and we're going back and forth on, you know, what can they pay themselves? And, you know, they're opening next month. So it's a really real question. And what I always suggest is like, sit down, take a look. Like, what are your actual expenses? So what are your fixed overhead costs? What is your marketing cost? What is your percentage of cost of goods on your forecasted revenue that you think you're going to do for the first six months and work backwards? What do I now need to live? And I want you to take as little as possible. As a business owner and provider in the business, I want you to take as little as possible. So if you know that, let's say you need the $5,000 a month to be able to pay your basic bills, then I actually want you to draw that as your salary. I want you to keep as much cash flow in the business for, to be honest, the first 18 months. And after that, you can kind of assess of like where your set salary can be. But the reality is, is we want to be taking just what we need as our base salary. And then I want your owner's draws to be done no sooner than every quarter in the business. And at that time, you can take a look at what do I need for cash flow. Now, the Jessica's told me to forecast my actual expenses, right? What do I actually need for this business to operate every single month for the next six months? And then you can Decide if you can actually draw some more money out. But going into it saying, hey, and this is, this example just happened is, hi, I'm a provider, I'm leaving another clinic. I made 20%, you know, of the revenue I generated, so I should be able to pay myself that. You're just, you're gonna keep being in this situation where you're underwater every single month because all you're doing is paying yourself more than you need to be in terms of cash flow generation. So it's, it's a really tricky spot. And I think having that understanding that mentality of owner versus provider, because now you're the owner in the business, you're going to get that profit when it comes as the owner anyways. So I just, I kind of always lean on that theory of operating as lean as possible.

[A]

Is there a point at which you, you flip that? So you said 18 months. I know. Kind of just related to our industry. There was an account that spoke at one of our trade events that we go to for agency owners and he was talking about depending on your goals of the business, it might radically deter, like determine in one direction versus the other what money you're taking out of the business. And if he calls, I think one of the versions of it was like, like harvest to sell, where you basically, you're putting yourself in this position where you could kind of do either option. I could keep this business. That cash flows really well for me.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Happens to be sellable. Or I'm going for maximum growth. And when I want maximum growth, I need to take as lean of a salary, even if I'm an established big business. Right. I'm doing $3 million a year, but I'm trying to figure out how to build other locations and get to 10. I need to reinvest in the business. So is that one of those decisions that's very business dependent or is there a breaking point where you say, hey, listen, we need to start making sure that we're profitable and that you're taking home a good healthy salary as the business owner.

[B]

I think a few things. I think when we're looking at selling, just as a clarification in terms of an owner provider business where you own the business and you're the main provider in the business, is that when you do sell, we're going to actually normalize whatever you pay yourself, regardless. So if you're paying yourself, you know, $300,000 a year and you're a nurse injector, we're going to normalize it based on Your expertise, your experience and what you're bringing to the business in terms of what you will be paid. And so the rest of that will actually essentially still be profitability. That's still profit, right? We're not taking anything away and it will normalize it. However, in saying that to even get to that point, to show profitability is you need to probably be reinvesting in your business, know either personnel, technology, systems and operations. And so that's why my suggestion is take, be lean, have that cash flow as an investment because you need to also pay off your loans and any assets that you just, you know, acquired and all kinds of different things before you can even get down that road. And so I, I think it's just like understanding that and understanding the hard truth of again, ownership versus being a provider in a business. Because that's, that, that's the biggest, I think, misconception I would see is a provider starting their own business and thinking that they're going to get paid how their past employer has paid them as a service provider in the business. Because just remember that the asset, or sort of like the advantage that you have as a service provider opening up your own business is that you can pay yourself less than you would pay someone else to do it. That's the whole point. That's why you don't hire a social media person right off the bat when you have time. That's why you don't maybe need to hire a receptionist right off the bat when you have time, because you will still have time when you're just starting out to be able to do multiple tasks and you're going to save on your cash. And that is so key. And nobody wants to listen to that. They don't want to hear that, but that's the reality of it, right? And that is as a business owner, when you start out, that's, that's what you get. You get because you have less, you know, you have more time and you have less cash. And as you grow, that's, it's not going to be the case. And so you're going to have to, you know, obviously diversificate your know, your, you know, what you do and, and hire people out. They can do other things, but in the beginning that's what you have. You have time. And so, yeah, that, that's, that's like again, hard truths, right?

[A]

Yeah, so, so when it comes to being lean, another rule of thumb I've heard in most businesses there's some sort of a benchmark for cash on hand. So when it comes to being lean and keeping money in the business for reinvestment, for cushion. Does that data point change in terms of a benchmark? Like, is there something that $1 million med spa, or a med spa just starting off is looking for in terms of cash on hand versus an established med spa that's doing three or four million dollars a year? And I know again, it's one of those things that everything's relative to us, to each individual business. But if that's even the case, what determines what that rule of thumb is for your specific business?

[B]

Well, Ricky, let's go backwards on that. You know, if you're worth thinking, it's a million dollar business and 80% of our revenue comes from injectables. And we know just as a service provider business that that hinders on paying a provider and having the consumable product be able to provide that service. We can just, we can just run those numbers backwards. So we know we have to pay a service provider about 20% of the revenue they generate. And our cost of goods are about 30% of what we do for revenue. That's 50% right there. So to be able to do $100,000 a month in revenue, $50,000 of that essentially on a real like rough estimate is out the window. Right where we've already taken that away. So that's the kind of stuff we need to be mindful of is, you know, this kind of idea that, you know, I did $100,000 in injectables in January, I made $100,000. Well, no, it's nowhere near that. We know that. Hopefully we know that. But if you go backwards on that, to be able to have that cash flow up front, to be able to maintain that business month over month. Yeah, that's how you understand cash flow. It's really that simple in my mind.

[A]

Is there a duration that you want that cash on hand to be able to cover?

[B]

Yeah, I think again, we're in the service provider business and if we were in a different kind of business, there would be different, you know, benchmarks and metrics, but there's no way you could be in this business without having at least three months of cash flow for the projected three months if you really want to maintain that revenue. That's just the reality of it. Again, depends on your service mix, you know, depends on what you're offering. But in a real general sense, that's probably the least amount of time that you could get away with it.

[A]

I bet you there are a lot of people listening to this. That don't have that box checked.

[B]

Totally. Listen, I get it. You know, as an entrepreneur and whatnot, like, I totally understand that. I think where this really comes in is that we start, you know, obviously we can owe vendors money for 90 days and we can extend credit and we can do all these things. And I think we're just trying to kind of work backwards on this idea that nothing happens overnight. Things take time. And you're gonna have to have some patience if you want this to be a long term sustainable business. And that's the key in there is like if you want to get, you know, frustrated after two years and have an asset sell, where you just sell your assets and make no money from your blood, sweat and tears to just get out, that's where you'll be if you really don't put some of these things in place right from the get go and talking about our industry. But the reality is, is it's, it's really reflective of any industry.

[A]

Yeah. And it buys you peace of mind too. Like it. And that obviously that inflates, Right. If we're talking two or three months of expenses, cash on hand, the bigger the business, the bigger that number is. So make sure, making sure. Obviously that scales as you grow, but I think it buys you peace of mind. It buys you time during a downturn. It gives you the opportunity to take risks and to, to add on new service areas that might be a little riskier than.

[B]

Absolutely. Yeah. And it's a very like, you know, seasonality sort of, you know, business too. Like, we already know the J months are difficult months. Right. So, you know, January, June, July, typical, you know, in a general sense, you know, difficult months. And so we just need to plan for that. We need to understand that and be real realistic about what that looks like. And I think that where people get, you know, again into trouble is just having these sort of unrealistic growth expectations when they haven't put maybe the people, the places, you know, and sort of the, the plan into place, it's just sort, oh, well, next month will be better. And it's like, you know, how, what.

[A]

So this might be a little digging a little deep, but is there a point at which. So you mentioned like the combination as an owner, early on you're kind of taking your, like just keep a lean provider salary, be able to reinvest in the business, give yourself cushion, give yourself opportunity for growth. And obviously you're doing that because there's a light at the end of the tunnel when you get to a certain point in a business, it seems to me like in every business there's a breaking point where a business can truly be profitable without the owner wearing a hat in the business. But that, that doesn't happen early on. So you're not going to early on in a business run 25% margins with an owner who's not involved in the day to day. You need scale because every job has to be filled and profitability still needs to be there on top of that. So for owners, for so many of like the people that I talk to, obviously they're providers who turn into owners.

[B]

Right.

[A]

At what point are people looking for profitability? Like so they're running a truly profitable business where they've got 20%, 15, 20% margins. After all, replacement hires are factored in, meaning the person that runs the day to day, manages the team, hires perform service. Is there a rough point in the dollar amount at which you see businesses settling into that where they really truly have a sellable asset?

[B]

Yeah. So I mean when we think about again if we're just talking about straight revenue, which I think is a really good metric for us to talk about because people are pretty, you know, know their revenue quite well. So I think when we think about a million dollar business, which means we're generating $1 million in total revenue for a 12 month period, you know, a million to 1.2 is where 80% of the MED spas in this country are sitting. So it's a massive market and it's kind of the average obviously. And so that sort of size of the business, again depending on the service mix typically isn't a profitable business in the sense of an owner operating in the business and probably drawing the salary that they feel is fair for their expertise or experience. And typically if we're selling a business, you know, it's not necessarily, it's not ever about the revenue but, but if you want to use a revenue benchmark to profitability is we're definitely looking at 1.2 to 1.5. That's where your revenue would really need to sit for you to have something to be to go ahead and do a transaction or enter into those conversations that a transaction is possible, A and B worth what you are expecting, which is, you know, a whole nother question. But you know, but I think understanding that is really is really important because until you're anywhere above the million dollar revenue consistency in a 12 month period, you're just, you're not even anywhere near those conversations and you really need to again increase your capacity Increase your service offering really your margins and what you're trying to promote before anything.

[A]

I love that because I think there's so much. If you, if you watch like social media reels and clips, you'll always hear like, well you got to be 20% profitable. After all labor is considered.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But at a certain part of your business that's not going to be possible. You have to grow past a certain stage for that to even be viable. Right. You need, it's a numbers game to some extent.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

One other person helping you. Taking half your labor out is like you're not gonna be able to do that. If you're, if you've got nine or 10 people that are able to make the function of the business work without you, then you get to a point where you actually have a profitable business that doesn't rely on you to be in the business to create the profitability.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. And that's a lot of owners goals. Right. Like they came into this business, you know, as a provider, let's say, not to just be providing 35 to 40 hours a week. Right. They're like, I could have done that anywhere. So you know, Yes, I want my capacity to be less. I want, you know, there to be revenue generated when I'm on holidays, when I'm not here, when I'm at my kids soccer game. Right. So I think that's a lot of owner's goals. Is that sort of passive revenue that can occur when you have a really established business that isn't relying on just your hands providing the dollars?

[A]

Yeah. Awesome. Hey, practice owners, Ricky here. And if you're tired of seeing your marketing as an expense, it's time to see it as the investment it should be. At MedSpa Magic Marketing we specialize in driving predictable massive growth for medspas. We helped one client generate over 2,500 new clients directly attributed from ads in less than 18 months. And these aren't outliers. This is our expectation. We're HIPAA certified by Compliancy Group, rated a perfect five stars on Google and we provide true consulting and strategic direction to our clients, not just button pushing. If your Med spa is able to consistently invest in marketing and advertising and you want a transformative look at the exact frameworks, ads, offers and strategies that we use for our clients, schedule your complimentary strategy session with [e-mail] that's Medspa Magic marketing. Jumping into the benchmark conversation. One of the other things you mentioned was that people always ask about average benchmarks, which I've already done a few times. Maybe, maybe mine were more aspirational. I was saying what are the aspirational benchmarks? And you mentioned that. Why are we so concerned with average benchmarks? Are you trying to build an average business? No. And that every business is unique and you need to find the combination of, of financial factors that make your business work the way that you want it to work. So are you familiar with like EOs or any of those like entrepreneurial operating

[B]

system type things like, like you be like a platform that you're using or kind of.

[A]

But so like there's a concept in like of an EOS of L10 scorecards and it's basically like this mini scorecard of if you had certain things in your business that were happening, you would have confidence that the business was successful.

[B]

Gotcha.

[A]

If you had to put that just in terms of financials. And I know you mentioned when you're first working with somebody, one of the things you do is first observe and gather information before you make recommendations. So if you're trying to figure out the three or four, three to five data points that show you a business is healthy and you had to boil it down to three to five, what might those be? I know that's a hard off the cuff question.

[B]

No, no, I mean this is my wheelhouse. I mean as you said, any client that I have, I mean full transparency, disclosure is they have to actually give me access to both their EMAAR platform, so where we can see revenue generated, the actual breakdown and then whatever their expenses are. So if that's QuickBooks or Xero or whatever platform they're. Because I'm very diligent and really want to understand where those numbers are coming from. And so the quick things that we're always going to assess and look at is understanding again your overhead costs. These are your fixed costs. These are. If you didn't open up your doors tomorrow, what are you still paying? This isn't including, let's say what you pay for, you know, Zenoti or you know, one of those, you know, subscriptions or anything. These are just your actual fixed costs. So your rent, your overhead, your lease, you know, utilities expenses, maybe you know, know, malpractice insurance, those things. And then that's it. That's a really important margin to understand. We can talk about in a second. But the other ones that we're going to look at, right, is marketing. We look at operations, payroll and cost of goods. And so we're going to take a look at all your expenses. And we're going to not sort them the way your accountant sorts them because of course your accountant's going to sort things to make sure that it's, you know, applicable for taxes. And, and all of those things we're actually truly going to say, hey, we've got some contractors for staff and we've got some support staff that are, you know, employees. And then we also have a social media person that higher. And so we're going to actually look at what, what is your true payroll costs to the actual revenue generate every single month. And we do that with all the metrics. Right. And that will give us a really good understanding of where we're maybe overspending and where we're underspending, all based on how much revenue we generate month to month. So for example, when we look at payroll for, you know, we're going to take a look at what do we, you know, what do we pay our team? So support team providers, anybody who's in the business versus the revenue we generated. And that's going to give us margin and that should be about between 30 and 35% in this industry. That's a real realistic percentage that we're going to see. And although someone might tell you it needs to be lower, the reality is that we're paying, you know, depending on what state we're in, either a nurse practitioner to perform the services or paying a registered nurse or we could be paying a physician to come in and do some surgeries for us. Like we are paying very credentialed people. And so there's an expectation of what they need to make. And so our payroll always going to be really high. And our second one of course being our cogs, our cost of goods, right. So these are all the hard costs that you need to be able to perform the services you have. And this can vary depending on your service mix, what you're offering and also depending on your vendor and your size. Right. Because as you grow, you're going to get more discounts and more cheaper product incentives because you're going to buy in bulk just like anything in the world.

[A]

Such a catch 22 for medspas.

[B]

It's such a catch 22, it really is. Right. And you know, the other thing is we will continue to need these cost of goods to do services. We're going to continue to replenish this. But you know, in a general sense, you know, if we're a typical med spa, we offer injectables devices, you know, medical grade skincare, aesthetic Services, sort of that mix, gamut of things. You're going to see your cogs anywhere between 30 and 40%, depending on what stage you're at in your business.

[A]

That's just product cost, though, right? You're separating labor from product cost in this case, absolutely.

[B]

You're not. They're not, you know, they're not connected at all. And you know, to be clear, even like, operational supplies are not the same as your cost of goods. So those are two different things. Right. But yeah, and so we want to understand that margin and. Right. It's all relative because it's all based on how much revenue you generate. By the way, as your revenue increases, you guys, your cost of goods margin hopefully stays around the same, but your cost of goods will increase. And that's okay because we need the cost of goods to do the services, but it's relative to how much revenue we do. And that's why it's really important. Important when you're looking at this data is we want to look at the margins, we want to look at the percentage to the revenue you generate. It's so key when you just talk about, you know, numbers being like, oh, you know, $50,000 of your cost of goods in January is absurd. Well, is it? It's all relative. I don't know how much revenue we generated from that. What was our service mix? Right. It's really, you have to understand the business. And I know this is not, you know, it's definitely not my client's favorite, you know, favorite thing to do. And that's obviously where someone like, you know, myself would come in, because you really do need someone to kind of under the hood, understand the business before they're ever going to, you know, provide any solutions or recommendations of how to move forward. You have to understand where you were before, you know, where you're going and then where you want to go for the future.

[A]

So that first number you mentioned, the, the payroll expense that was related to service, what was that percentage again?

[B]

Yeah, so if we're looking at a payroll expenses, and again, we're looking at our contractors, our employees doing the work that we're supporting. Yeah, everything. So you want to be between about 30 and 35% of your total revenue generates. Okay. So you just take that number, obviously, divided by your revenue, and it's, it's nice to look at that month to month because you will see that it will, it will fluctuate, of course, based on, you know, how much you have providers working each month and how much revenue generated. But you know, it's a really good metric to understand how efficient your payroll is at providing and generating revenue.

[A]

I'm going to ask a follow up question on that because I'm not sure I caught the detail on that. Was it that the 33%, the 1/3 number is your total payroll or only your payroll that's performing service?

[B]

No, it's your total payroll. Great question. So it's your total payroll. If we're going to talk about the people that are providing their service in the business because we would look at all of them individually. I don't go over 25% each individually. Now the reason we go to 30, 35 in a payroll because we just know that you know to be true is because we have other support teams. We might have ownership. We again might have like a marketing. We have other people that contribute to that. If we have employees. I also would include all the employee tax benefits. Anything else that's, that's also part of how we compensate our team is all in there. But great point. If we're talking about providers and this is so important, you never want to go above 25% of what they generate.

[A]

So your combination rule should be 25% of revenue, Max cap an hour.

[B]

Yeah. And you can do that. I mean obviously my, my recommendation is you would do that with a wage and a commission tiered structure. Yeah, combination. That's my recommendation.

[A]

Questions on that too.

[B]

Yeah, but it's. But just remember that's that your total comp is going to be that for

[A]

a lot of reasons including your. If you're own self owner paying yourself, would that be included in that?

[B]

Absolutely. If you're an owner paying yourself. Yes, 110%.

[A]

Awesome. That's a really good, that's a really interesting data point. One of the things that stands out to me is actually the gap. So if you've got 25% of your payroll that's in service related provider like people that are actually doing the work, it means you to be a profitable and run a good operation you need to be pretty lean in the administrative function. Like you can't have it a super inflated payroll in non billable. Right. Is that the. Am I missing that or that a clear take?

[B]

Yeah. I mean it's not that we're absolutely. It's not that we're trying to not pay our support team adequately. Adequately. It's just this idea that you know, usually they're paid less. Right. Of course they're credentialed less and so their hourly might be less. Their commission Structure is going to be less. But just remember, the support team aren't, you know, directly impacting your revenue generation. So of course it's going to be less. The other thing that we'll, I'll see here a lot is family members or you know, other people that are included in the payroll. And so you know, that's up to, you know, the owners to, you know, to do but, and decide. But yeah, that can be included in there. So we're just always a little bit mindful of that. But it's a really good point. It's, it's a realistic point and I think where we get, get in trouble is not our support team, it's our providers. Right. As soon as I hear someone say, oh, I get 30% of my total revenue, you know, generation, and you know, they say I average $15,000 a month, I mean we're in massive trouble. We're in massive trouble. Right? Because what we already know is that you have to generate a certain amount of revenue to be able to pay a certain amount of money. And that's why a tiered system can be so helpful to a business owner, especially if you're just starting out about paying on their performance. And as someone grow and generates more money, you can pay them more and your margins will actually go down. And so that's sort of the really key thing that I think most owners would, would miss about compensation.

[A]

Cool, let's jump to that because I know you have a decent amount of thoughts from the things that I reviewed on provider compensation and talking about you can only pay people so much based on what the business can justify. But you also need a structure that rewards people that are making the business money essentially, especially for practices, let's say, that are bringing on a new provider. And they're always stuck between, well, do I eat it and bring somebody on? The next person that I'm hiring, am I hiring another full time hire? Am I bringing them on incrementally? Since I'm trying to make sure that what I'm paying them is based on actual like utilization. How do you balance that decision and how do you point people in the right direction?

[B]

So let's say we've established that we need some more capacity, right? So you know, we have a provider, they're at capacity, they can't work more than they are. Okay, great. So we've established we need, you know, more. It's a personnel issue, we need to hire for capacity. No problem. So the first things first is we identify what that looks like, is that an additional four hours a week? Is that additional eight hours a week? You know, what does that, what does that really look like? And then when you have that person come on board. Yeah. My recommendation for sure is you want to start, of course, in terms of filling up, you know, two days a week, you know, no less than four hours is sort of the mandatory situation. And you want to fill up their schedule. But remember that you're going to lose on every provider in this industry because they're credentialed people that expect more than, you know, $20 an hour. And so you're going to lose on them from a certain amount of revenue down. And so it will depend what that looks like. But let's use the number of $10,000. So on average, if you're paying someone in and around that, you know, without going through all of it, but if you're paying someone in around 35 to $50 an hour, you probably don't make any money from them until they hit about $10,000 a month. And you need to work backwards and understand that because you're going to lose on them. And so what you're trying to do a, is of course, get them to that, to that level as fast as humanly possible, of course, and then you can start paying them more as they exceed that amount. But where we get a little bit confused is like, we just end up paying them $100 an hour at zero. And so now we're overpaying them for an extensive amount of time before they've gotten up to that tiered or that tier of revenue that we need them to be at to be profitable. And that's where the issue really comes in. It's not about are we paying too much? We're paying too much on how much they're able to do. And so that's the part that gets really, really tricky that we have to understand.

[A]

Interesting. So is that part of how you recommend the compensation structure works is basically this tiered structure based on, hey, if, if you're handling X amount of business every month for the med spa, you're on a tier program where you're effectively making more money per appointment than someone who's just doing their first one or two days a week?

[B]

Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. So if we were gonna out, if we were gonna lay this out for somebody, you're going to hire someone. Let's say you hire a nurse and you pay her, I don't know, $50 an hour. Just going to work with some numbers here and the reality is, and they. They want a commission structure as well as the hourly wage. Hey, no problem, Nurse Jane. We're going to pay you $50 an hour. As soon as you hit $10,000 in a month revenue, I will pay you 5% of the commission for all the extra revenue that you do over that. Over that threshold. So if she does $12,000 next month, then you would pay her 5, $12,000, and you'd be able to do that profitably because it went over the threshold where now you can start making, you know, you're making more money from her. But there's always a threshold there. So it's like, from zero, if you're going to give her that 5% at $5,000, you will lose money on her. And so you have to put that threshold in place and understand that of, okay, until they're at a certain amount. Now, if you have a rockstar provider and they do a hundred thousand dollars a month consistently, you're not so worried about this. You do want to stay within that under 25%. Because what we know on the math backwards is, is that's what's going to keep you from, you know, being prop, you know, being able to be profitable when we consider all of our other costs. But you're not so much worried about it because they're consistently generating enough revenue to be profitable for you. Not just cover their costs, but be profitable for you. So you can, of course, pay that person a higher percentage right off the gate, let's say, if they consistently make that, that sort of threshold.

[A]

So for people that aren't connecting the dots on this, and you have, like, the new provider who's, you know, making 50 bucks an hour, and let's just say the ratios, like on. So of the time that they're getting paid when they're serving a client, the ratio versus what I'm paying them to serve the client and what I make for the client, client is the same, I'm assuming, as maybe even a seasoned provider. What is it that causes that newer person to not be profitable in the early stages? When you look at just the big picture, like, why are they not profitable?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, to your point. Yes. I mean, definitely, they're probably not generating enough revenue for every hour that they're working versus an experienced provider. And what does that mean? Well, that means that their transactions are smaller. So they're coming and a client's coming in and they're doing 25 units versus, you know, 40 units.

[A]

Very common for you.

[B]

Very common.

[A]

You will resonate with this.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Next providers. And you see this popping up. This is the next.

[B]

Yeah. And so there's a lot of things that go into that. You know, again, you know, most of our providers kind of come with this really empathetic, sympathetic kind of energy. And, and they're, they're used to being caretakers. And so I always say that, you know, this isn't uncommon where they feel like they don't know how to, quote, unquote, sell or, you know, be able to educate on a client or a patient on what they need to, you know, solve their problems. And so there's some things that go on there, but you know, for the, the majority of it, that, that's what it is. It's just the transactions are so low based on what we pay them. Now listen, if we were in a business where we paid someone $20 an hour, this would all change. But we don't, we have to start higher because these are credentialed people that went to school and depending again, what province you're on, they could be a variety of different. But you know, it's just that that thing that we're already starting there, we always, we have to start somewhere. And so we have to pay on performance as they grow and as they, you know, get better at what they're doing to be profitable. That's the first thing. And there's a whole bunch of other reasons why we'd want to do that. But if we're just talking about profitability, that that's just how you actually maintain long term growth and long term profitability.

[A]

I, I saw another post that you had where you're talking about utilization rate and how many hours are you paying them and how many hours are they there versus how many of the hours are they actually servicing clients? What do you typically see are the gaps there and how do you fix that when you see that there's an issue with the gap?

[B]

You know, I think the very first thing is, is we don't maybe hold our team accountable to the hours that they're, that they're there. So the reality is, is like we don't measure this metric, we don't measure utilization. And again, the nuances of the business can dictate if this is a really great metric for you to measure. If you're just paying someone straight commission, this of course would not be that metric. But if you're paying someone an hourly wage plus a commission structure, for example, we definitely want to understand this. And so anybody who has utilization under 60% in our business, we would need to review that and understand is this the right schedule for them? Are they coming in at the right times? Are they really maximizing their time? Now, all this being said, you might have a provider who also trains other people that might also, you know, be part of some of the operations or maybe is doing marketing support. Like there are of course, all these other sort of caveats that can be applicable, but in a general sense, the utilization is really understanding. Are they maximizing their time that they're actually there? Right. So it's a really good metric in most of my clients med spots to look at and typically something that no one looks at ever.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, that is interesting. 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 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. All right, switching the conversation to services. We talked about providers and labor a little bit. Well, I guess. Any other thoughts on labor? Labor costs? I guess I had one last question on labor cost. Those numbers kind of as a general rule of thumb, the 25, 33% in terms of service specific labor versus overall labor, when you make new hires and you're like, at this capacity lag where you may be like, you know, all of a sudden you've got more efficiency and less efficiency. I'm assuming you see volatility there as you're making the next hire. Do you break that rule temporarily for the next hire, or is the next hire getting you to the kind of the cap when you're looking at like, hey, what we. We need to be operating better efficiency than those numbers. So when we make the next hire and create inefficiency, we're hovering around that number. Or am I just splitting hairs getting a little too worried about the specifics on that? No.

[B]

Every new provider you hire, unless they're the 1%, I call them rock stars. Which, by the way, guys, stop asking me to hire you the 1% rock stars, they are very difficult to find. You're usually hiring someone who is, you know, 24 months or less experience that we're building up. That's the reality of it. But on a side note, so you're not usually typically hiring a rock star person and so always going to lose money on them right out of the gate. Like, you're always going to lose money until they hit that threshold. And that's going to take some time. But how we can make that worse is giving them something like a commission structure that it starts at zero, for example, and an hourly wage. That's how we make that worse. Right. Because it's just going to take so much more time to get that profitable. If not, you know, honestly, like years. And so what we obviously try to do is create that threshold when we go do the numbers back and we kind of look at it and we say, hey, when they get to this range, we can offer them a commission. Of course, it drives motivation, incentive to, in a short period of time to actually generate that amount of revenue to be able to build their own business with their business. It does a lot of things. But yeah, you're, you're always looking at. And you're like, oh, because when we do, when I show this to my clients, I'm like, hey, let's just take a look at this. Just so you know, you're paying about 60% right now for this person in this structure until they hit that. This.

[A]

Yeah. Relative to the revenue they're bringing in, like their labor cost every month, whatever you're paying them on payroll.

[B]

Exactly. So you're always looking at that and you just know that. And so it's again, how do we get that as fast as humanly?

[A]

So that's usually an issue with utilization rate and to average ticket for sure.

[B]

Because you can imagine in the Med Spy, you can go from, you know, $200 to $600 very quickly in terms of average transaction. And. And that's what you're trying to do do.

[A]

Yeah. This is branching off a little from the financial question, but since we're talking about it, I feel like it's at least good to ask you for your two cents. When I talk to, when I've talked to people and they're trying to find a new provider and they want to hire someone that is really good and hopefully coming in ready to kind of hit the ground running, it might be harder to find the person that only wants two days a week. So I think I see people at times make the jump of like, okay, I'm not making any money. I'm going to hire the person full time. And now they're really putting themselves in a bind financially to hire that next provider. And I get it from a frame, from a mentality standpoint, they're thinking like short term pain for long term gain. But how do you go about balancing the logistical concern of finding someone that only wants to work two days a week, but can flex can move up into full time with.

[B]

Yeah, I actually find it the opposite. I would like to hire more full time people, but I find that, you know, in this industry, it's, you know, dominated from women who obviously have other, you know, values and priorities in their life. And so they. They typically only want to work two or three days a week. But I also think it is just about assessing that, you know, that liability. Right. It's like understanding like, okay, does this person actually have the scope to be able to get to that average transition transaction faster if they can only do neurotoxin and that's the only service they can provide? It's going to take me forever. But if they already come with a really good skill set to be able to offer more services in a variety of ways and be able to do multiple syringes and, you know, those kinds of. That really, you know, moves the needle for me because then I'm like, okay, I know that I can get them there, versus trying to make somebody who just doesn't have that breadth of, you know, opportunity or services to offer.

[A]

Yeah. Jessica, how much time do I have with you so I can make sure I don't ask too many questions?

[B]

I just have to be off by one, which is in, yeah, 10 minutes.

[A]

Okay, I'm gonna try to roll, but

[B]

I can go right up to one. It's fine.

[A]

All right, so on this, on the service side, one of the things I heard you mentioned was we obviously have to understand what services in our med spa are most profitable. And I think that for some people lacking context, they stop at that and they go, okay, well, this service. And so I see this with laser devices, right? People will have a laser device, that the cost of goods is very low and the ticket sales are very high. So it's very profitable. So they're like, okay, well, the solution is I'm going to sell more of these. But the reality is there's not enough demand for that service. So hypothetically, if they could be doing that all day, they'd be really profitable, but there's not enough to demand for that for that service to make their schedule full, Essentially, how do you balance a diverse set of services where you have a consideration for maximizing for the services that are most profitable, while also not trying to jam the square peg into the round hole? Understanding that there are services like injectables that are probably less profitable, but are kind of the lifeblood of the med spa to an extent.

[B]

Yeah. Like, I think first and foremost, we have to understand sort of some of our limitations or our constraints in the business. And typically for most of us, unless we have this, you know, 10,000 square foot endless space, you know, practice is it's going to be space, right? And it's going to be providers. And so the first thing you want to kind of do is understand what your offerings are and what your services are. And we always base that back to time because all of our services take an allocated amount of time. And by the way, that includes our numbing, that includes your prep, that includes your changeover there. There's so many things to consider. And so when we first, what we want to do is break down all of our services exactly how they're offered, the allocated time, and what we pay that provider for doing that service, our cost of goods that we utilize. So these are both hard costs, and I call the miscellaneous cost, which is your syringes or alcohol swabs or numbing cream or headbands, you know, whatever, whatever the thing may be. And then we take a look at our allocated overhead costs, which again, these are those fixed costs that we do in the allocation of the time the service takes. And then we have a really good idea of like, what does this actually cost us for the time it takes and what is our price. And price is again, sort of our variable that we can utilize to really make sure that we're maximizing profit every time we're offering this service. And to your point, Ricky, where when you have a large service mix, it's actually harder than having a smaller service mix in some senses of understanding where do I want to focus my time?

[A]

Time.

[B]

And it's the 80, 20 rule. Just like in business, you know, 80% of your time is going to be focused, you know, on 20 of your services. That's just the reality of it. But understanding what, how and what profit your services are giving you is. You have to start that backwards sort of, you know, math again, about the allocation of time of everything that it takes and who's doing the service. Now when we have a service like Chemical Peel and we're paying an esthetician I don't know, $20 an hour. Right. But the peel takes a full hour. So, like, there's all these things where they're like, oh, I only have to pay her $20 an hour, but it takes an hour of your time. So that's an hour in that treatment room that takes away from somebody else potentially seeing maybe two clients for neurotoxin, where it's $1,000 because they're $500 each visit. And it's not to say we're not going to offer chemical peels, but it is to say that we have to understand what our sort of. Of allocated resource and, you know, time that we're trying to focus on in terms of our service mix. And I think that's the part that people really don't get and don't really understand. It's just about what are we going to put our efforts into and focus on versus what we're not. And we can still offer it, it can still be a part of our menu, it can still play a vital role for patient acquisition, for example, or within a reoccurring platform in terms of. Of reoccurring revenue. Everything can have its own sort of goal or sort of objective in the clinic. But is it going to be something that we're going to prioritize? Maybe not. And that's. You can only answer that question when you've gone backwards and really done the math.

[A]

Yeah. So it's people doing an incomplete analysis a lot of times, like you said, like, they're just, well, I only pay that person 20 and I make this. Yeah, but you didn't account for. The room is now taken up for an hour. And if we had an injector in there serving two or three clients, that might actually make us more money.

[B]

Money.

[A]

So, yeah, a lot of times.

[B]

Absolutely. And I think also, just like, again, this idea, if you, if you have a nurse injector who's in there and they're like, oh, well, I'd rather have a nurse injector in there to your point, you know, for seeing two clients within that hour. But that nurse Injector only does 20 units per visit. Right. And we already know that you have to do a certain amount by the way of units in neurotoxin, especially if we're using one of the more expensive competitive brands to be profitable just in general. And so you have to understand that too, of like, what does that look like? Where are we? And that's where you're pricing and your structure and how you're offering Things is so important. And those, you know, some of those things like a chemical peel, a hydrafacial, those are really good incentivized for first time transactional, you know, patient acquisition offers. That's what those can be really great for. And then they come in and of course we're trying to you know, upsell and create and do add ons, sell them into packages, sell them into long term sustainable client growth mechanisms. And so anyways everything has sort of an opportunity and a need in your practice. It's just kind of assessing about where we're going to focus our time and attention. And the reality is it's probably only 20% of your services. It really is.

[A]

Yeah. On the acquisition front I saw you mentioned that you see so many people, we talk about this a lot obsessed with customer acquisition cost and that all you're do like there are very few services in your med spa where your customer acquisition costs relative to your initial visit. Revenue is the thing that drives long term profitability. It really is the retention game. You just touched on that a little bit. Again branching off a little from the finance stuff. But is there anything that you've observed your most successful clients doing well in terms of retention?

[B]

Yeah. So the most success, the most successful tactics I think in terms of that is again if we're going to heavily invest in patient acquisition is that we have a really solid plan of how to acquire that patient long term. I mean that's just the number one thing. And what that looks like is again an initial offer of the best value offering that we can give and then then two options for a downsell. And so for example, what this might look like is you have now done a signature 30 minute HydraFacial as your incentive offer and they come in and we want them to go into a deluxe offering, not the platinum but the deluxe. It's right in the middle. It has a really good value for what we're doing and we want them to do a three package and so we're always going to start there. And then the downsell might be to our signature package or you know, whatever it is. But you always start with the key most valuable like most value add that you can have for your service offering and then you have those downsells and you never sell one. You need to sell a package or a reoccurring platform which would be a membership or something along those lines. But it has to make sense to the client. You can't just jump to get there. Right. If you're acquiring them through a hydrafacial they would need that incentive offer to align with what they just came for you for. Okay. And so that all has to kind of make sense. And that is very strategic, by the way. That is, when I work with my clients, we map that out like, what does that look like? What is the first, you know, initial sell, what is the down sell, down sell, then what? And we do it like almost like sort of an algorithm of like they said yes to this. Where do we go? And we really map it all the way down to medical grade skin care. And again, that one transaction that we're trying to get for that $159 facial that we've just, you know, acquired that them, that first transaction to my clients, we I tell them it's zero. It means nothing. It usually just covers our cost for all those things I just mentioned.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And yeah, and so the important piece is we have somebody now, we have the right demographic, the right audience in our chair to tell them about everything that we can offer to solve all of those problems. And that's a systematic way that you do that. And again, you get them into, you know, a one time initial offer is getting right into a reoccurring stream dream. That is the only way that's successful. Otherwise you've just wasted your money on a transactional offer that they're just gonna go and get another one from someone else. And along they go. And you've just, you know, spent thousands of dollars probably acquiring them for nothing.

[A]

Yeah, don't wing it. Don't wing it on the back end. This is a business that relies on retention. Like the entire name of the game is retention for most of you. All right, last question and then we'll wrap. If we have a second to wrap this last question. Yeah, Practices, we talked about that. Whether your goal is to sell or not, you should build it as if you were going to sell it, because that's going to mean that you're operating and owning a business that's going to serve you as the owner and do what you want it to do also happens to coincide with being a sellable asset. You said to make sure that you're thinking, if this ever is going to be on your mind, start thinking about it early. Don't wait until like, okay, I think I want to do something. You need a lot of data to get to the point where you can sell your practice this. And so what does that look like? Cliff Notes version of what are the things you want to keep in mind if you're trying to structure yourself for the Ability to sell at some point.

[B]

Yeah, so I totally agree. I mean we always go in that mindset of, you know, understanding that we're just looking for, to have options for the future. That's it. And whatever those options may be, you have, but that journey is actually the exact same is if you want to make a passive business where you know, you're not providing all the revenue versus, you know, doing a transaction and selling and partnering down the road. It's, it's all the steps are the same. So if I can leave you with like three quick things that are, they're probably the most important is of course, you know, key person risk. So it might be you as a provider, it might be your manager, it might be something. But you need to replicate the key person risks so that someone can eject you out or just that person out and be able to fulfill it. And so that comes with number two, which is your operations systematic and really set processes or processes that you want to have for your business are so key and nobody wants to come in, in to something that's a total chaos that they're going to have to do it themselves. And so that does start with your technology, starts with what you use. It starts with your platforms and that you're utilizing in them in a way and they're structured in a way that allows for systematic evolution of your practice. That's, that's an easy one. And then number three, I would say is just understanding understanding your payroll. I mean it's just, it's so key of understanding do you have the right providers doing the right service mix in the right amount of volume. And that sounds a lot easier than it is. But you really need to understand that, you need to understand your team because like I said, we're in a service provider business that's never going to go away. You need people to be able to do these services and, and that's something that I think people just kind of don't really understand.

[A]

Well, yeah, it's the non sexy thing. So they're like, I'll do it. It's the thing people always do. I'll do it next month.

[B]

Totally, totally. And I get it, like I get it. You know,

[A]

the visibility in that data I think just gives you so much power to make decisions that make your business better. Awesome. I know we're at the end, Jessica. Where can people learn more about you if they want to work with you? Want to make sure everything's in the show notes as well.

[B]

Yeah, a couple places you can Obviously go to hunterconsultingservice.com, you can read a little bit more about me, some of my client experiences and again about how I do things, which is sort of that four step process that we outlined in the beginning of the show. It's very systematic about how I work one on one with clients in the medical aesthetic space and have for over 12 years. So that would be a great place to start. And of course you'll, you'll find my Instagram on there too. If you want to see, you know, embarrassing content that of course I have on there. Those are all good places to start.

[A]

Yeah, we'll make sure all those are in the show. Notes. Is there a minimum threshold where it's like, hey, this is, this is probably the point. You need someone like Jessica or people out of the gate like, hey, get clear on this stuff early.

[B]

Yeah, I mean I have both, I have both that are looking to sell versus some people that are just startups. But what I would say the most common is probably that 18 month mark where, you know, I enough to know you don't know. And I think that that's a good place for a lot of people because you've tried a few things and realized that having someone in your corner to really give you that guidance and, and shape your resources is, is really impactful to your business.

[A]

Yeah, amazing. Well, Jessica, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I got per usual about halfway through my questions. I always think these things are interesting. I know, I dig and thank you for the detailed explanations and for giving us some of those benchmarks. We look forward to hopefully having you on again.

[B]

Awesome. Thanks so much, Ricky.

[A]

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.