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Med Spa Success Strategies
How to Thrive in Marriage + Med Spa Ownership - Interview with Dr. Brent & Angela Baldasare
00:43:09
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- [00:02]
A
Hey there. I'm your host, Ricky Shockley with MedSpa Magic Marketing. And this is MedSpa Success Strategies, 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. I'm excited today to be joined by Dr. Brent and Angela Baldassarre. They've been married for 33 years and have spent just about all of them building successful businesses side by side without losing their minds, their marriage, or their mojo. They've scaled successfully and sold two businesses, all while raising a family and homeschooling their kids. Sounds like a recipe for burnout or divorce. It could have been, but instead it became the foundation for something bigger. They didn't stumble into success or harmony by accident. Brit and Angela became obsessive students of what makes couples and companies thrive, devouring books, attending seminars studying communication, mindset, human behavior, and business systems. Over time, they reverse engineered their own hard earned lessons into what's now known as the Power Couple Protocol, a bold no BS framework for entrepreneurial couples who want to build life and business that is actually worth waking up for. Their method has helped other power couples gain clarity, structure, and connection, especially those who find themselves blurring the lines between the boardroom and the bedroom. I'm really excited to have both of you on the podcast. Thanks for joining us. I guess can you start by just giving an audience, the audience, a little bit of a background on yourself and what you all have done and what you're up to now?
- [01:31]
B
Absolutely. I'll let you go because I'm gonna probably talk the rest of the time.
- [01:35]
C
Oh, I was gonna definitely let you go. You have a better intro anyway.
- [01:41]
B
So. I am Angela Baldessar, and this is my husband, Dr. Brent Baldessar. We have been together and in business for over 33 years. We have recently scaled and sold to private equity our last aesthetics and wellness center. We're doing coaching and consulting right now. And we've been kind of amazed and blown away by the percentage of couples who were in business together in this field in particular. I think you kind of expect to see it in real estate, but boy, the aesthetics and wellness centers that are run by husband and wife teams today is. Is pretty. I think our client list is like 65%. So.
- [02:27]
A
Yeah, and we talked about it. I think ours is. Ours is probably 35, 40% too. So it's a very, very common theme in the space. So I'm excited to Kind of dive into this unique angle. There's so many things that I could talk to you all about with your experience, but I think that that is definitely a fun place to focus the conversation.
- [02:43]
B
Sure.
- [02:44]
A
Can you, can you give us a little bit of a backstory on the business? The all. How did you get into the space originally? What did the growth look like? I know we talked about this on our preliminary call, but give me a little on the. The practice that you ran and eventually sold how that came to be.
- [02:59]
C
Yeah, so we started with just a mom, pa, angel and I chiropractic office. It was, I was covering for another office and she came to surprise me for lunch and she done a big lap around the, the neighborhood and she goes, she, she comes to pick me up for lunch because I just found out where we're going to open up the new practice. And there was a big sign that says a super Target coming soon. And this was East Orlando. And at the time, 20 some odd years ago, there was nothing out there. And sure enough, we opened up and we started with about a 900 square foot practice, had four major expansions and by the time we had sold to private equity and scaled up, we had 6,000 square feet, 15 treatment rooms, 22 staff, a second story film studio. And just, it just got bigger than we ever imagined it was going to be. But it wasn't without its challenges. It wasn't without our growth personally and our growth business wise. And you know, sometimes you have to go through pain to get to the other side. And even though we're on the other side, there's still, you know, it just never ends. It's a constant spiral. I think it's called the Fibonacci sequence, where it spirals. You just get wisdom through it. We've had a lot of wisdom over the last 30 years.
- [04:10]
A
Yep. Yeah. And what, what went into the decision to selling the practice? I know we talked about that a little bit. I think there was like a, a climb and then a reset and a climb again before you ended up. And I know it wasn't originally part of the plans, right?
- [04:21]
B
It was, I don't think it was ever really part of the plan. I mean, we were, you know, we're kind of OGs. We've been around for a long time. You know, we had this clinic for 28 years. So there weren't, you know, when we started our clinic, I was driving 37 miles away to get my Botox done. So it's not like there were a lot of options and a Lot of choices. And we started getting calls, I don't know, four or five years ago, like, would you be interested? Would you whatever? And we were like, no. Like, no. What would we do? What would we do if we, we know. And of course you want my cash cow and whatever else. And then, you know, you have, you have a glass of wine on the back porch and you say, you know, just hypothetically, what would we do? And then you start dreaming of what life might look like afterwards. And, you know, for me, I'm a little bit older than Brent is. I think I was, you know, getting burned out a little faster. He's got more, more energy, more pep in his step still than I do. And it just, I could just see it and feel it. And I just, I was, I knew, I knew it was time for a new chapter for us.
- [05:30]
C
Cool.
- [05:31]
A
Yeah, awesome. All right, well, jumping into some of the dynamics of working together as a couple. I know Angela, and some of the stuff that you sent over, this power couple protocol. Could you tell us a little bit more about that, how that came to be?
- [05:42]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we've been, like I said, practicing together for 33 years. The question we got asked the most outside of how much is Botox a unit is like, are you guys like really that happy? Happy? Like, how do you do it? You work together 24 7. We had a nurse practitioner who started with our office and she actually asked a long time team member, she said, are they faking it? Like they're not really. Like they don't still like each other. And so we started teaching our. We did a. We had a big hormone program. We started teaching our patients, you know, some of our, our secrets to kind of what had kept our marriage strong. I, you know, longtime researcher. When Brent was 21, I was 23, 24. When we were dating. I long history of divorce. So I decided I was going to read everything I could on what made great marriages. I left him a copy of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus on his bookshelf. And he read it and he marked it up, so I knew he was willing to be a student with me. And, you know, we just studied. So we started teaching our patients just these kind of tips and tricks that we use to put guardrails around our marriage and to grow our business. And then, you know, as we, in the year and a half since we've left our personal practice and started consulting, we see owners all the time that are at these, I call them landmines or headbutts. Around, like, they can either concentrate on growing their business or they can concentrate on growing their marriage, but they can't find the place where the two can intersect and, you know, just don't have, you know, these guardrails, these protocols. So we decided, like, look, we have this place where we grow, help businesses grow. We have this place where we help marriages grow. What if we combine them together? We always get comments on our social media, like, true power couple. True whatever. So I was like, all right, well, then that's it. We're going with the power couple protocol. And let's not gatekeep. Let's teach people what we did the hard way and shortcut it for them.
- [07:57]
C
Just real quick. Because power couple is a term that I don't like. It makes it sound like a bougie. These two people are controlling something. That's not what power couple means. It's the power in the interdependence of the power in the relationship, not about controlling other people.
- [08:12]
A
So. So I know there's probably a lot that goes into that. If you had to boil it down into the. A few of the things that are, like, the core components of that philosophy. What are those things?
- [08:20]
B
For me, it's. It was guardrails around certain things. And, you know, it's really easy to. And from early on, I put guardrails around our family time and our date nights. Like, these are the times when we don't talk about work. These are the times when we, you know, this is protected time because, you know, it's the blessing and curse of working together. You can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can work in bed, you can work at the soccer game. You can work all the time, which is great because it really gives you the capability to really brainstorm, really grow your business. I mean, it's amazing. But if you do, then you lose your marriage in the process. So I was really good at putting those guardrails around our family immediately and saying, you know, date nights, we don't talk about work, we don't talk about the kids, whatever. But I kind of had a light bulb moment that I wasn't doing the same thing for Brent with our business. We. We usually find that one part of the couple has their foot on the accelerator and the other person is the brakes. Brent's definitely the foot on the accelerator, and I'm definitely, you know, slow down, hold off. And he would say, like, you know, can we talk? Can we, you know, come up with our five year marketing plan? Or can we you know, talk about adding. And I would say, yeah, let's do it Thursday after I drop the kids off from school. And I wouldn't honor that time. Like I made him honor our no work time. You know, I think, well, he understands that the kids were sick or he understands that I had to go back into the office or whatever else. So when we finally said, you know, we have to, this, this time that we spend together as CEOs is as important as the time we spend together as a couple. And when we put, just put guardrails around, those kind of things. And if he scheduled a meeting with me, I had a marketing meeting, I had to keep my marketing meeting. So just the basic guardrails was a big kind of learning curve for us.
- [10:21]
A
So weirdly we think, we think about the balance is like, I've got to draw the boundary here. But you're saying it's important to draw the boundary and the commitment on both sides. Like, and it's easy because, you know, if you're going to get out of a meeting with your spouse, it's okay. Well, it's, yeah, but it's, it's also the person that owns the business with you that's managing the business. And if it was just the person that owned the business with you managing the business business, it would be a non negotiable meeting. But because it's your spouse, you give yourself kind of free reins to like out or to move or to skip.
- [10:48]
B
And you certainly wouldn't like no call, no show. Right. On a vendor or whatever else. Yeah.
- [10:55]
A
So with the go ahead. Sorry, Dr. Brian.
- [10:58]
C
It's just a, just a powerful insight like when we deal with, with couples or we're working with couples, what Angela just said right there is probably going to be the most profound thing that anybody's ever going to get working together with their spouse is that, you know, there is always one and somebody's always putting the gas, somebody's always putting the brake. And that balance is needed. But to recognize that your priority and your value may be good for the family but not good for the business or vice versa, being able to have that open communication is really like a real conversation, not some bullshit like exercise, but like have the real conversation about what that means to each other. That's, that's when those breakthroughs happen.
- [11:35]
A
Yeah, I just talked to somebody else about this recently. So how do you like enforce the boundary when it's family time or date night time and there's stuff that feel, you feel like spilled over throughout the day like, my wife and I have a simple rule. We were just asked, asked this because we work together too. And we have a very simple rule that we developed because we noticed that there would always be a time where, like, there'd be times where we were kind of both okay with talking about the business at dinner or after dinner. And then there would be times when one of us wanted to talk about and the other one wanted to totally check out and had enough of it that day. So, like, our simple rule was, I just have to ask permission. I know for other people it's just, hey, this is family time. We're not going to talk about it. That is the guardrail. What did that look like for you all? And what do you typically see? Work.
- [12:13]
B
I mean, so we just, you know, we, we put guardrails around our family dinner time immediately. And first, you know, I think it's great for our kids to see us growing a business, but there's so much research around the importance of family dinners for kids. They're less likely to be drug addicted or have eating disorders or whatever else. So we just said, like, we're not, we're not doing this at the dinner table, period. And then, you know, there's a difference. We go, we go out to dinner all the time, or we stop and have a drink or we grab coffee or whatever. That's fine. If something is a designated date night, we have 15 minutes in the car ride on the way to the date, and then not only can we not talk about work, we can't talk about kids, we can't talk about, we can't talk about anything outside of our relationship on date night. So we have a lot of guardrails.
- [13:09]
A
Was it hard to keep to them at first? Like, it wasn't a challenge to like, like, make it normal to adhere to, or did you just make the decision and just stuck to it?
- [13:18]
B
We made the decision and we stuck to it. But in the beginning, like, I, I clearly remember, like our, when we first did this and our first, like, date night out, we sat there for a few minutes and you could see both of our wheels turning. Like, what are you going to talk about? Yeah, like, okay, we can't talk about family. Can't wait. We're going through the list of things we can't talk about. And I actually, in the very beginning, I bought a pack of getting to know your spouse.
- [13:41]
A
Like, that's so funny.
- [13:42]
B
I have a question.
- [13:43]
A
I have packs of those cards. We even use it for our team.
- [13:45]
B
Yeah, so I do. But I pulled out all the. I call them asking for a fight card. So I. What's one thing you would change about me? Or what's one thing? I pull all those out and like, you know, what's. What's what, you know, was our favorite date you ever had or what? And I. I brought them in my purse to dinner and I would just. Until it just became a habit and it became routine and we came up with our own questions and we came up with, you know, different levels of spicier questions for date night. And, you know, it just. It just then became a habit. And we so look forward to date night now because we know, like, we. We unplug, we disconnect from the whole rest of the world. So, yeah, it's. It's awkward at first.
- [14:27]
A
Yep. Yeah, I can see that. I'm thinking about even ourselves. We're in a season in our business where it feels like everything's just work, work, work all the time and, like, don't want that to be sustainable. And we try to adhere to some of these things. I know so many of, like, like you said, the businesses you work with and we work with that. Our husband, wife, combos deal with this. 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. When you don't see eye to eye on stuff, like you mentioned Brent being the pedal and you being the brakes on some of this stuff, how do you avoid, even at work, within the confines of the workspace, letting that stuff fluster you, I find that it's a little bit easier. You're more comfortable with your spouse, so you're more likely to vent and get frustrated with that person than you are with your team. You'll hold a better standard in terms of how you communicate any guidelines, tips, advice. And I see this even, like with clients and things too.
- [15:46]
C
Yeah, I would say that this is probably one of those lessons that taught me that if I have a good relationship, I'm going to have an amazing business. Because it took us time to get this point. So it really took me time to get to this point is that one of the things that defines a healthy relationship is your ability to recognize nonverbal cues on your partner. And whether that's in business or whether it's in the relationship. And picking up the nonverbal cues was like life changing in business. Like, you know, if Angela hasn't had her second cup of coffee, we're not making eye contact. It's not the time for me to start talking about, you know, spreadsheets or rolling out a six month marketing plan. But there was a time when I was a little bit more mature, a little bit more aggressive where I would try to bull rush through that. Like, you have to do this. This is what needs to get done to be, you know, to make the business work. Well, that, that was my frame. That wasn't her frame. She, she just had a different, you know, strategy, a different energy pattern than I did. It didn't mean she wasn't going to get the same path. And I had to realize that the same way that she treats me when she sees my non verbal cues and how quick she is to pick up on them, I had to start to learn how to do that with her. And that, that actually meant, for me, it meant to slow down in a little bit, like get present in the moment and recognize, like read the room.
- [16:58]
B
Yeah. I would say another thing for this that I tell, you know, our couples is like, don't skip. Like clearly defining your swim lanes, your roles, your responsibility and job responsibilities. Put that together. Just like it's for anybody if somebody else was coming in and taking over your position. And if, you know, if HR is on my plate, then if somebody comes to him and says, can I leave early? Then he should know, like, don't. Like, I'm not going to cause a conflict because I'm not going to answer that question. If it was, you know, if I was not his wife, he would say, go Susan, is hr. Like go ask Susan. He wouldn't even think about answering the question. So clearly defining your strengths, your weaknesses, your, you know, job responsibilities helps with that massively. The other thing is just, I mean, it's just doing good business that sometimes you skip when you're in business with your, your partner because you think like we're, we're both on the same page, we'll figure it out. Like put protocols Together. Like, Brent is, if there's a new procedure that a patient needs or a new something, he's gonna. He wants it in tomorrow. And I'm running around like a chicken with my head caught. Like, is it in the emr? Does the staff know? How much are we gonna charge? Like, you know, and so we just. We just said, look, we're writing a protocol. This is what has to happen before a new service goes in place. And then it's not an argument. It's not his speed or my speed or anything else. We're just going down the check sheet like any good business should do. And the new service doesn't get rolled out until everything on the checklist. So, you know, we found, you know, we just had to put protocols and procedures in place, and that's just. That's just good business. But then there's no room for argument. You know, you follow the protocol.
- [18:44]
A
Yeah, that's awesome. So that kind of ties into the same thing with the conversations. And when we're on and off for work, it's. That's another guardrail. What about the situations where it doesn't necessarily fall? So, like, I'm thinking of so many of our clients where I think the husband is, like, on the business end, and maybe the wife has got the medical background, and there's, like, there's a lot of disagreements just in terms of their natural inclination to want to. Want to do things a certain way. What about the things that maybe don't fall into someone's specific bucket, but they rise to the level of, like, this is the CEO decision, and you both. I don't know if you shared that hat in the businesses, and there are decisions where, like, somebody's got to make a call, but you didn't see eye to eye. How did you deal with those types of things?
- [19:24]
B
I mean, I think. So we kind of have a ball analogy when we didn't see eye to eye. And we see a lot of couples doing this where, you know, it's. You're throwing this thing back and forth, right? Like, you have this thing, like, we. I want to buy this laser. And so, you know, I'm taking this ball, and I'm throwing it Brent and saying, you know, this is good roi. And he's throwing it back, saying, we don't want to get locked into a lease payment, and I'm throwing it back. And we keep just throwing the ball back and forth to each other when, you know, what you got to do is really. You just got to put the ball down. It's not my fault. It's not his fault. Nobody's right, nobody's wrong. We're on the same team. You got to put the ball down, and you just got to look at it and analyze it and take emotion out of it. So you remove yourself and pretend. Like, if this was a client and we were giving them advice, what would we tell them to do? Do they have the capacity. Is this something that their patients need? And you just analyze. You got to remove the emotion from it and analyze it from a purely business perspective.
- [20:32]
C
Yeah. If you have an emotional reaction, then you don't completely understand the problem yet. Like. Like, if you feel that welling up inside, like, you have to defend or you have to take a side on something, or your positioning outside of the facts, then you don't have a full grasp of what the actual problem is that you're trying to solve.
- [20:49]
A
Yeah. Another. Another thing I think I see come up just observationally, is especially when you have a family and you've got a lot of stuff going on, it's like you're in and out of the business. You're. It's like, it's kind of hard to draw the guardrails where it's not necessarily business or family time. You're in the car with the kids, and you're on a marketing call. And I think those are times when tensions seem to flare because you. People feel a little overwhelmed. They're not necessarily dedicating a specific time and a place to have those conversations. They're just having them when they feel like they're able to have them. And that might not be a good time to have the conversations is the inkling that I get. Like, they just. It's just, we happen to both be able to jump on a call right now, but it's not necessarily that we have a dedicated time to be having those conversations. Any idea for how to manage that guardrail? Is there just a time and a place to not have those conversations?
- [21:31]
B
So, I mean, here's what we see a lot. Like, if. If that's. If that's the case, and the only time you have to have those conversations is when you're driving the kids to soccer practice or when you're something else, you need help your business. You know, maybe in this incubator stage, maybe in this stage where you don't have, you know, $80,000 a year to hire an admin person or to hire a marketing person or to whatever else, but you reach your capacity as a couple in what you can manage between Your kids schedule and the housework and the laundry and the marketing plan and the KPIs, and you have a million things on your schedule. And what I see all the time is couples saying, God, I wish we could hire a marketing person. I wish we could hire an admin team. I wish we could hire a. Well, hire a housekeeper first.
- [22:18]
A
Interesting example.
- [22:20]
B
Take the things that are, you know, low cost. Like, what do we have that's piling up on us as a couple and a family as a burden? And what is the, you know, cheapest help we can get out there? And do we have, you know, like, can grandma pick the kids up from soccer? Can you, can you outsource some of it? Think of your family like a business too. What can you delegate? What can you hire out? And you know, as CEOs and owners, your time is worth a lot of money. It's worth a lot more money than folding laundry is. So you outsource those lower things so that you can have time, dedicated time to do those meetings.
- [23:05]
A
Yeah. I think Dan Martell has a book called buy back your time and he calls it the buyback Principle. And it's. Where's the, like the, the lowest cost thing that you could be handing off? Those are the things that's the order at which you hire and get stuff off your plate. I had a college professor, Marv Collins, at University of South Florida, who wrote a book called Romancing the Clock. And every time I see somebody doing everybody just recycling the same thing. But I think that principle is the same. It's like, what is the highest leverage thing that's low cost that we could get off our plate? Is it answering the phones at the office? Is it doing laundry at home? So sitting down and doing a little exercise of what those things are that you feel like are bubbling up? Probably a really good. Yeah, people feel a little unnatural, right?
- [23:45]
B
Yeah. People always think the office first. Like, I'm, you know, I don't have time for all of this. I need help at the office. Well, why you're, you know. No, and you just scale that up.
- [23:57]
C
And you just keep scaling that up, delegating out the lowest. I mean, that's one of the things that we teach inside the office. And is that if you like, because we, we've been, we've been trapped by our own, our own success because in certain cases, we didn't build up the leadership underneath of us by delegating them out, paying them for taking on new responsibility and teaching them how to do it. Whether you do it Inside your, Your, Your personal life or you do it inside your business life. That's how you grow and expand in particular on the business side because it's more predictable. You got too many variables on your personal side to figure out how to hire something for everything. But inside your office, it's a closed ecosystem. So the better you are kind of communicating what the position is and then putting, you know, a bonus system in place and a commission structure on top of that, or payroll structure. That's the scalability of your business right there.
- [24:39]
A
Yeah. Amazing. How do you stop stuff from lingering? So if you've got disagreements or frustrations that happen at work, are there any tips you have for, like, the mental reset that now it's guardrail time. It's time to go into family mode or date night mode. How do you disconnect? Because I think this is a challenge. Is like this business partner that I wasn't seeing eye to eye on today. Like, if that was an actual business partner, you go home and you escape that. Now the business partner you weren't seeing eye to eye on, even if you were respectful in your cordial. I think sometimes there's times where you're still frustrated because you don't see eye to eye. And now you're going on a date night. Any tips for mentally resetting that? This is my spouse.
- [25:14]
B
I mean, I, you know, start with your marriage. Start with your marriage. If your marriage is. And I don't. I don't mean just like good communication. I mean like red hot spicy marriages, then it's. It's just. It's just not an issue. You know, you're communicating, you're understanding each other. You. You don't let things linger and build up. You have open communications, you're vulnerable with each other. You know, you say, I understand. You know, I, I understand how strongly you feel about this, but that, God, that really hurt my feelings today when you said this. And you just, you just.
- [25:52]
A
So the recipe for success here is. Is marriage first, it sounds like, because it makes the bit like you said, Dr. Brent, it's like that makes the business side a lot easier. It's really hard to go in reverse order.
- [26:02]
C
Yeah. What angel just said right there is. It's. That's so much easier now for me than it was when I was like, you know, we've been together since I was like 21. You know, now I'm 50 something a lot more than that. But when I was like, in my late 20s and early 30s, I would get pissed. Like, I would get Angry if she wasn't in agreement with me or if she wasn't putting like five or six, seven days of full thought pedal to the metal, doing what has to get done. Like, I would get angry at her. I'd be like, why aren't you doing this? This is what we have to do. And then I realized she actually, she actually did this unknowingly. She asked me what I was really angry about, and I wasn't angry at her, but I was angry is that I wasn't at the benchmark where I thought I wanted to be at that point. And I felt like I had to go faster and press harder to get to that point. But she's right. You just don't skip over the marriage part of it. And like, now that we're into this phase, like, if I come home or, you know, we get into an argument, something we all. I only need about 5 or 10 seconds of direct eye contact time with her. And that's, that's this, that's the trigger that breaks my pattern to whatever I was concerned about before. Oh, okay. There you are. There you are. There I am.
- [27:06]
B
I mean, yeah, if you're in a, if you're in a marriage with somebody where you can be completely raw and completely vulnerable and you, you form this connection, then you're going to understand that the little things that are setting them off at work are probably not really about the work things. You know, when you know somebody like on this level and you know it's like it. That doesn't just happen. You don't just say, let's just be raw and vulnerable with each other.
- [27:38]
A
Yeah.
- [27:39]
B
It's a, it's a, it's a process. It's work. It's. I mean, you have to work on this just like you work on your business. It's the same level of effort, it's the same level of communication. You know, it's the same, it's the same thing. And you know, when that's all done, like, we can go, we can go into work together, we can go into a pitch together, and we have complete trust and complete, complete confidence in our partner of what they are going to say. How are they are going to handle it. But that's because of what happens in the bedroom, not because of what happens in the boardroom. And when we're solid there, it just bleeds over into everything else.
- [28:23]
A
Yeah. 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 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 it sounds like even like the marriage. And you mentioned like when you all even first met in your early 20s, giving Dr. Brent the book. And is there a part of this that's like you got to kind of learn how to control your own emotions and control yourself before you can be good as a couple. Like, you almost have to like own yourself as an individual in terms of the self improvement angle too, because if you're not handling your emotions well, you're not processing information well, you're not dealing with stressors well, I imagine the second part is hard. Any, any thoughts on that?
- [29:49]
B
It is, but I think it's the opposite. I think it's learning how to lose control, how to be completely vulnerable, like being able to lose all of it in front of somebody instead of, you know, controlling yourself. I mean, you know, I, I think that was, that's the hardest part, you know, and we've worked on it incrementally over the years and you know, we've grown individually, but our growth as a couple has been exponential.
- [30:25]
A
It's awesome.
- [30:26]
B
Just because of that hard work together.
- [30:28]
A
Yeah. And, and I can see like how, how do you. And I think that is a very true statement too is like when, sometimes when you're frustrated about something, you're kind of boiling inside, so you're taking it out on somebody. When whatever happened is just kind of like the cherry on top. There's, there's a whole thing building underneath the iceberg that kind of led to that. Any tips for identifying, like, I'm not actually mad at this person, like you said, I'm frustrated where I am in the business and. Or something about, like, where we are in our revenue roles. And so now I'm on edge, and now I'm just kind of getting a little bit frustrated or having a little bit of an attitude problem in certain instances. Any tips on how to separate that and identify that that's happening?
- [31:08]
C
Anger is frustration plus helplessness. That's. That's what makes people anger. So if you break that down, it's the helplessness part that you have to get that outlet for, you know, and then, you know, when you start playing the blame game out of frustration and helplessness, you can't unring that bell. So that's part of what. That's part of what wisdom comes from, is that we've all screwed up. I mean, Angela and I have had some horrible fights, but at the end of the day, you have to do two things in a relationship. You have to truly love each other. And the most important thing, even probably just as important, if not more important than love, is you have to commit to being committed. And when you commit to being committed to somebody, it's over. It's. Everybody else is second to that. And if your audience gets anything right now is you commit to being committed, number one. And if you can't, then, you know, you might want to go do some couples therapy or some soul searching. And if you just can't commit to be committed, then you're not. You're not being fair to your partner.
- [32:01]
A
Yeah.
- [32:01]
C
Whether it's in business or business.
- [32:04]
B
We do a thing. And I. You know, I'm not sure where we learned it. Like I said, we gobbled up every podcast, every book, everything on, you know, relationships. And, you know, one of the things was asking yourself and asking your partner, you know, when was the first time you felt that? When did you feel that? And so, you know, you know, one of our bigger kind of issues that. That we had worked through, and somebody on the staff had recommended a product line, and Brent said, yep, let's go for it. And I was not behind it. It had blue dyes in it, and that was not my thing. And I. Why lost it? I mean, I just had a mental. And, you know, Brent started asking, like, what. What is it that you're. What is it that you're feeling that's causing this reaction? This is not. This is bigger than blue dye. And I. I said, I don't feel like picked. I don't feel chosen. And they said, okay, when was the first time you felt that? And I, you know, gave an instance of a story and then I gave a further back instance of a story. And then I was like, oh, God, when I was little, my dad never came to my ballet recitals, but he came to my brother's and my sister's soccer games. And we, and I was like, oh, I have a, I have a wound around not being chosen. And look, it took a lot of tears and a lot of. Yeah, that wasn't like a five minute discussion for us to like, you know, pick at that wound and figure that out. But now, like, now we're clear. Now I know that that's what's going to set me off because I've been vulnerable with him and told him, like, this is, you know, this was my issue. Now he knows that if, if that situation comes up, he's gonna back off a little bit and we're going to talk about it at home before we make any decisions. And yeah, in front of the office. So sometimes it's like, you know, digging deep, like, not mad. I'm not mad at him. That's just, you know, just something I got, I got to work on myself. But when you see it and understand it.
- [34:15]
A
So you all have been very intentional, though, about developing the skill set to be a health, have a healthy relationship. It seems like to me, so, so many people that listen to podcasts on how to get better at marketing and how to manage the ROI of their med spa, but they're probably not listening to podcasts or doing anything to get better at their marriage would be my hunch. Most people listening to this.
- [34:37]
C
Can I share a secret with you? Take all that shit you learned from Tony Robbins. Grant Cardone and I probably have spent almost maybe close to a million dollars legitimately going to. I mean, I was hooked. I was with Tony Robbins for 15 years. Let me tell you what, Take all of that stuff and just refocus from the business to your relationship. Think of your spouse as your, the client, the lead. You want to close. Call the lead. Take them out on a date, wine them and dine them. Follow up with them over. Deliver all that stuff that you learned on that side. Switch to this side. Now what, what? Now here's the beautiful, beautiful thing of this. If you read all their stuff, they talk about, get the feedback, make your adjustments a B split test. You can do that super fast. If that person's in the room with you for 25 years. Yeah, you can see immediate Feedback with that. So the better you get at communicating with your spouse. It's the same strategy you're going to use to communicate with clients.
- [35:29]
B
I mean, yeah, people, people, people and people are. But more than ever in this economy, people are buying people and before they're buying products or services, for sure. One thing that drives me crazy about people who work together is they're trying to hide. Like they're, we're a big corporate, we're not married. We're, you know, whatever else. And you know, vendors will come in and have meetings with them and like three weeks later be like, dude, they're married. Like I thought it was and like that's ridiculous. People love, people love, love. You know, they're gonna feel that and feed off that energy and you know. Yeah, I just.
- [36:08]
A
Do you, do you have any resources or anything? So I think again, people listening to this, they've got their podcast, their audiobooks, there's the. Do you have a few go tos that you think would be good recommendations for the listeners? Like if, hey, I want to take my relationship more seriously. I put a bunch of time into being better at the business and understanding marketing and finances. I should probably put some of this time into making my marriage the best thing that it can be.
- [36:29]
C
100.
- [36:30]
B
Yeah. Well, one of my favorite things that we have is we have a six week program to the ultimate date night. So it's six weeks of planning for one date. But in the process, you're starting these, you're starting these questions, you're starting these connections, you're starting to figure out how to put guardrails around your time together, around your marriage, getting to know each other on a deeper level, you know, building up to this one really great date night. You know, so obviously it's my favorite one and we have 300 questions in there for date night so you don't have to buy the cards. We have, we have warm up, we have sizzle and we have combust for really spicy date night questions. But it's just get you talking and communicating again and you know, learning how to handle arguments and like get that feeling of anticipation back again. I think, you know, after 33 years of marriage, people assume that, you know, date night is a, just a date night and when it's done correctly, just, you know, and for, for husbands to see that there can be as much excitement and anticipation in a date night 33 years later as they're getting in their business when they're closing, big deal, they can get that same adrenaline rush and that Same fulfillment. Yeah. I mean, we've just kind of taken, you know, again, we started it for our patients because our patients were always asking, like, what are you. What are you doing? How are you doing this? You know, why do you guys still like each other for so long? And, yeah, it's. Hormone optimization is definitely part of the. Part of the deal. But, you know, just like everything else, you know, it's work. And when we come back, you know, after. After a date night, we are, or, you know, weekend away or whatever, we are so energized and so focused on work. And we know, like, look, we're powering through. We're going to meet all of our Q3 goals, and then we've got Key west to look forward to. We've got. Well, you know, that's our reward for, you know, meeting all of our goals and keeping things under budget and.
- [38:45]
C
Red hot monogamy.
- [38:46]
A
Nice. Love it. Anything in terms of like. Like other, like, podcasts or audiobooks or things that you've listened to that you found really valuable?
- [38:55]
B
Oh, my gosh. There's so many of them. There's, you know, lots of them have been around for a long time. There's a. There's a book called A Fair Proof your Marriage that I absolutely love. One of my, like, aha. Moments when we were very, very, very young was Marianne Williamson has. It used to be on a cassette that I put in my Walkman and listen to. I'm sure you can just download it. But it was called A return to Love. And one of the exercises that we have all of our couples do that she says, is she made a list of everything she wanted in a partner. And they were ambitious, and they were honest, and they were understanding, and they were caring, and they were thoughtful, and they were. She made this whole long list, and then she said, would that person date me? Like, all of these qualifications. So the first thing I need to do is to become that person in order to attract that person. So we tell our couples, like, whatever you want your spouse to be, like, become that first. And then, you know, so, you know, not all of them are about, you know, purely relationships. Some of them are about, you know, just that, you know, returning to love. I am a big, huge fan of Brene Brown and her vulnerability. TED Talk. I tell you what, I mean it.
- [40:23]
A
That comes a lot in our job applications for our business. I've not watched any of her stuff, so I've got to go check it out.
- [40:27]
B
Oh, my God. So you've got to watch that TED Talk. It's worth it. I made my team watch it once a year, every year. But, you know, learning how much strength there really is and being vulnerable, I. That was like a big eye opener for us and how we communicated with each other, how we communicated with our kids, how we communicate with our team, just. Yeah, big fan of ours.
- [40:51]
A
That's awesome. I would love to have another conversation with both you too. Or we maybe go even into the business side. This is a really fun conversation, relationship side. But to wrap today, where could people learn more about what you all are up to? If they want to work with you, Find some of these resources, the stuff that you already talked about, we want to make sure that are in the show notes as well.
- [41:08]
C
Yeah. So I guess the main place to send it would be your practice solutions. And then we do free discovery calls, and we do most of it for practices. But now we're really starting to see that this is the same principles that apply to almost any business out there. And now we're starting to see tons of couples. I mean, everybody and their mother is an entrepreneur now.
- [41:27]
A
Yeah.
- [41:28]
C
So, I mean, if you're all. No matter what stage you're in your business, are we in the startup or in the building, the scaling or the exiting? You having been through every stage, you're gonna have. You're gonna have challenges just at different levels. So it's, It's, It's. It's fun to work with people having been through these stages. I mean, we're. We're on our seventh and eighth iteration of the. Of going through the same stages, building up other companies, watching these couples go through this and knowing exactly where they are and just kind of opening up the pathway and which landmines are about to step into. And then they'll call back up and they'll be like, oh, my God. How'd you know that was gonna happen? Because, listen, we blew things up more than once.
- [42:03]
B
Yep.
- [42:05]
C
So that's one of the most exciting things. And then when you actually see them start to grow and scale and they get free time and, like, they just can't believe how quickly they're able to do it because somebody is. It's like playing a video game. You ever play a video game with, like, a kid and you've never played before and he's killing you.
- [42:17]
A
Yeah.
- [42:17]
C
Because he knows. He knows what's happening next. He's played it, like a hundred times. So that's kind of how I feel like we're doing with our business consulting now. But your practice solutions is the website.
- [42:27]
A
Well, awesome. Well, thank you both so much for joining us. Look forward to having you back on the podcast. We'll do a whole deep dive on the business side as consultants and like the the ins and outs of the med spa space. I'm really excited to talk to you both on that too, but I think it's gonna be a really valuable episode. We'll make sure that that link's in the show notes and look forward to having you all again soon.
- [42:43]
B
Thank you so much.
- [42:44]
A
Yeah, thank you very much. Appreciate it. 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.