B (2:25)

Yeah, I was there for a decade. I was one of the very early employees at HubSpot and rode that wave through IPO and beyond. And part of the fun for me doing something different for the year was figuring out how much of what I knew as an exec on a B2B SaaS business could potentially play out in a multi location brick and mortar. How similar, how different could I take learnings from both sides? Could I see different things in the playbook? So it gave me kind of a unique perspective on the space than somebody who probably grew up in it.

A (2:52)

So now that I know this franchise component, zooming back, how long of a period was that before you ended up on the corporate team?

B (2:59)

Like a couple months. We opened up the location, I got underneath trying to figure out how do we scale this thing and what are some of the systems and processes in place. The team there had incredible process in place and there was clearly a systems and marketing and sales gap. And so I started working with corporate maybe after two months, something like that.

A (3:16)

Was there anything that surprised you from like I'm going to do this to two months in that you're like oh, this is not what I expected or this was kind of more challenging than I thought or.

B (3:29)

I think pieces of it were probably what I expected. I probably had a different version of what I thought software in the space was. I mean I came from, you know, a couple world class companies on the B2B side trying to unpack what was available in the space. How good was it? Like what year was it equivalent to in the B2B SaaS world versus what maybe was actually pretty good here. And just I think that was probably the most surprising was there were a couple platforms that were great and there's a bunch of stuff out there I thought that was just really difficult. It was like being almost back in the world of On Prem, which seemed like a wild thing to come out of SaaS companies and get back into something else. And that's where you start.

A (4:07)

So I was just laughing because I don't know what On Prem is by the way.

B (4:12)

You might be too young for that.

A (4:13)

But.

B (4:15)

I was just glad I didn't have to ship a CD somewhere and that was okay. We're at least past that. Pete's in the timeline for sure.

A (4:24)

I've heard that complaint about the Med spa space. The aesthetic space is like the software feels kind of antiquated, which I think we'll get to a little bit toward the end because this Kind of ties up into what you're doing now. But so you get wrapped up into the franchise, corporate side, into the marketing team being like a key component of the growth scale and eventual acquisition. Could you kind of just walk us through from a high level like that process? What did that look like? What were some of the surprises along the way there? How did that all work? What were some of the challenges that you all worked through to make that a success?

B (4:56)

I think a couple pieces came into play. We went really quickly in scale. We acquired several locations in a very short period of time. Did I think it was our second or third transition of an emr. We moved everything over to Zenoti, which was a great experience. Became a big fan of that platform.

B (5:13)

The hardest part is probably starting to figure out every time you did one of the acquisitions, like you were just breaking down their marketing, their sales efforts. You were so deep in everything in diligence. And a lot of these better or worse, it's small businesses. And so you're trying to figure out where were they spending money properly, where were they not? I mean, transparently, it's how we found you guys. And you and I started a relationship and that location was doing quite well using your help and trying to find folks who were really data driven. Because we had a corporate team that was super data driven. So I think for us it's just a matter of like the metrics are so different location by location. The geographies, even if they were 20 minutes apart, could have been using totally different channels successfully in some way and trying to unpack that while also just roping them in culturally to the business and systematically. It's a lot at once. The integration process is heavy.

A (6:00)

Yeah. And dealing with people that have like fundamentally different service portfolios too.

B (6:04)

Right.

A (6:04)

It's not like if you're acquiring dental practices, like, okay, they all do the pretty much like it's kind of like the same three or four things. With the Med Spa space, it could be different. Like there could be a practice that's like super heavy on injectable. Somebody else is super heavy on some laser device. Some people are doing weight loss, some people are not.

B (6:19)

Yep.

A (6:19)

But when it came to consolidation of services and how you thought about, you know, multi location business, how do we make sure that this is as consistent as it can be and where do we let things be different based on those acquisitions? What was the thought process there?

B (6:34)

Well, I screwed a few of those up early. I'll fully admit that. Trying to move too much money maybe out of the budget before we really understood some of the back end of it just as we were trying to clean up line items in an integration. So I definitely made that mistake. We eventually got much better and teams full of experts now who know how to do this at huge scale since I departed.

A (6:52)

And.

B (6:53)

And how do you set up the process, especially the first 90 days, how do you drive people in? How do you think about the upsell, cross sell to your point on all the different services.

B (7:02)

But you can't just like rip and replace right away. You got to give it a little bit of time as you go. Yeah, yeah.

A (7:09)

Especially when they're established businesses with like an established patient list and yeah. Trying not to rock the boat to a point that's detrimental.

B (7:15)

Yep. New systems, expectations of communication and communication styles and also just making sure the patients have a good transition too. That's the other most important piece since they're the key to the whole thing. And in many times you'll find there's just clear opportunity, maybe the new patient acquisition side, maybe on the marketing for existing patients. Again, a lot of, you know, one, two locations practitioner owned, they may not be as either data systems or marketing savvy. And so there's so much upside that you can uncork there.

A (7:43)

So when you all were picking up locations and you're going through this acquisition process, like you said, you're doing, you're doing your due diligence, you're trying to make sure you're making a decision about where to grab a new location and where not to maybe or where maybe to pass. As you start to grab these locations and you start to get a feel for what they're doing. Were there any common themes in terms of like the practices that were successful, we're doing this, or even all the practices that were doing the things that were working well were this common thread of things. And there was another common thread of things where people seem to struggle.

B (8:15)

I think there's two angles to that. The first for us was trying to understand it depended on the acquisition is one answer. And one example would be if we were trying to get significantly better at a process or a procedure from, let's say like a retention standpoint, let's say weight loss wellness. There's a lot of ways that you could run hormone replacement processes in an office with patients. Weight loss processes, for example, like GLPs. Some people would mail them out, some people wouldn't mail them out. They'd make the person come in. You could swing Your attention metric 30 points depending on the way that process worked. And so if we knew something was going to be important to our general business thesis moving forward, we'd figure out, like, in a geographical area around us, who was probably the best. And we would figure out, what were they the best at, how did they do it? And then take that, acquire them, learn from them, and then put the stuff we were the best at into their practice and do the upsell, cross sell that way. So sometimes it was just, you know, opportunistic. Other times it was highly strategic. Were they really good at something we weren't? And just we wanted to figure that out. We wanted to be the best at everything. So we got really lucky in some cases. I think there were people who are great at things who weren't adjacent and we took advantage of that.

A (9:24)

Yeah, it's kind of cool. You're like a superhero where you've got your core skills and the things that you're really confident in, but then you, as you start to eat the next thing up, you start to learn that, ooh, maybe this is kind of cool, and you can start to build this, like, master template that gives you a better chance of success overall. You mentioned earlier there's a, like, one of the challenges was how different the clientele environment could be, like 20 minutes apart. What were some of the challenges around that? Was it the client base, the income of the area? Like, what were some of those challenges?

B (9:52)

All of it played a factor. Client base, expectation for pricing, income levels around the area, competition in the area. If maybe you were a newer player in that geographic area, your pricing compared to others, brand experience, all of it played a really key part. And the folks, I have to say, like Michael and Danielle, the founders MD aesthetics, were maniacal in the best way about keeping that experience so consistent and raising the bar if it needed raising across the board. And so the minute you walked in one of our locations, you knew where you are, what you were going to get, what the outcome was going to be. You can go to any single one of them in any provider and have a fantastic outcome. And that was the most important thing.

A (10:31)

Yeah, with, with the pricing.

A (10:34)

Was the realization that there has. That the pricing has to be customized, or is there an opportunity for these, for businesses and people that are listening? You got multiple locations, let's say, and you deal with this problem because you've got a location here that's a little bit different market than it is here. What was the end result? Was it, hey, we're going to hold the standard. These are the price points of the Business or we have to tailor those to the area.

B (10:55)

This is really tricky. It depends on how far away your other locations also are. If you have two or three locations and they're all an hour plus apart, you're probably not going to get that much patient overlap. If they're within 20, 30 minutes of each other. You've got to keep a really tight guard on maybe what's your price per unit on your Botox. And if you can, maybe you just maneuver on the front end, but you equally maneuver the pricing on the back end as you acquire scale and you have the corporate relationships help drive the price down. But it's. That is very tricky if as your density increases in a region.

A (11:29)

Interesting. So the kind of the core component that you're looking at there though is the potential for overlap. So if like you're going to steer people in one direction over the other, then it becomes a little bit more complicated. But if there's truly separation, you have a little bit more flexibility in how.

B (11:41)

You handle that a little bit. Like, I mean, look, regardless of whatever location going to, right. We know you're going to have a good experience and you're going to come back. What I didn't always want to have happen was that you're going to go to one location for one service, another location to another, ultimately it all rolls up. So it's relatively all good. But people also find their injectors, they like them. I think that's important too. So you have to be really thoughtful. It can't move around that much or you just add a little bit of like simultaneous discounts at certain places at certain times from a marketing perspective to help drive that and align it the best you can.

A (12:14)

And you mentioned that there's this multi factor analysis. It's kind of complicated because when like, let's just say you're a solo location, that's a little bit easier. But you talked about how different your pricing decisions or your strategy decisions might be if you were doing this in isolation from one business to the other. Because you can't just look at like comparative market prices. You also have to look at your competitive positioning, how many other competitors in the area, what are the. Like there's just a bunch of stuff.

B (12:39)

Sure. How long the business has been around, what do people expect? What have they expected for, you know, maybe dozen years? If the practice has been around that long, no longer. So there's really like no right answer. You just kind of have to figure it out and then see where the volume comes in. So it's okay to experiment with it a little bit. Yeah. For.

A (12:57)

For our listeners that might have one location or they might have one or two locations and they're like, that's. That kind of feels like a cap on it. What do you think are like the.

A (13:08)

Things that people need to pay attention to to make sure they're providing a consistent experience when they're dealing with any version of a multi location med spa? Like what are like the high level checklist items? Like, hey, if this is what we want this to feel like, what are the things that have to be consistent and process wise, how do you implement that? Because you all had the challenge of you're implementing that without really boots on the ground. You're kind of behind like command center to a certain extent. Right. Trying to make that stuff happen, which.

B (13:33)

Is even more challenging, I'm assuming, to an extent again. And Danielle ran a lot of this process, who's one of the founders. She had her checklist every day. The front desk had their checklist every day. Make sure the flowers are right, the smell is right, everything's on the shelves, pointed the proper direction. Like you can be really, really down in the details of this whole thing and somebody at the practice every day should be checking it. And like, sure, at some point we were a little removed maybe because of like geographic distances or something else, but people would make their rounds and they would go check and make sure that everything's as it should be every single day, if possible, down to, you know, employee behavior, attire, decorations, all of it. One of our big things for the market thesis was we actually, when time we did an acquisition, we rebranded digitally, physically, systematically, the whole thing front to back. And so it was really a reset of culture also. But our culture was just so great and again driven by Mike and Danielle and team that like you wanted to be a part of that.

A (14:30)

Yeah. So does that in a sense come down to documentation? Is that the easy answer? Like 100%. You have to have like, what is the playbook from practice A that we're bringing to practice B? Because I think a lot of individual practice owners, they might have built something successful at one practice. And they think that simply by just going and opening up another location and kind of popping over there, like they're going to start back from scratch. But they don't realize every lesson that was learned across, like, you got to do it again, they were there and they were there at building one to hold hands and to walk through those problems as things. As things grew incrementally. Right. They brought Them their first team member, they could figure out run on the front, they knew how to hire. And when you go to do that at a second location, if you can't provide that hands on experience from start to finish, you're going to struggle. And that's where it comes down to like documentation, SOPs and like what is the manual that makes practice a operate.

B (15:16)

Yep, it's funny, this is one of the most, I'd say not surprising but like instantly recognizable parallels from my previous life. Anytime we used to open a new corporate office at HubSpot anywhere around the world, you would send in a couple people who you knew were great representation of culture, skill sets, expectations. We would do the same things here. We had a few folks who were early injectors in the Wyndham location at MD that were then became, you know, general managers, executives, however you want to phrase it across other geographic locations. And they would go and set the bar. And so you have to send at least one or two people who know how to do this thing at the level you expect, continue to hold them accountable and have a ton of documentation and it'll work. You got to do it.

A (15:59)

Hey there. Wanted to briefly interrupt the episode to make a quick ask. If you're a podcast listener, it would mean the world to us if you'd leave a review for the podcast, whether that's on itunes or something 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. So in a business that's heavily reliant on people, Right. I think this is still a service based business. People aren't choosing Med Spot A versus Med Spot B because of Botox.

B (16:39)

Right.

A (16:39)

It's the same product, so they're choosing it based on the provider and the experience. For the most part. Some of that is brand, some of that is the business entity itself, but a lot of it is provider and team. Did you have any sort of a common theme for how you thought about providing consistency in terms of like the service or at least selecting team members? Whether it's like front desk or injectors, Any Tips or advice on how to make that as consistent as possible. I know that's never going to be perfect as people, but it's, it's not.

B (17:05)

But I will say this was thought about very early, like even, even at maybe one or two locations when they started. Mike Pedro, the founder, started Injector School. Essentially it was like a six month course because you could see that in the space and I think a lot of people experience this. It's weekend Botox courses, maybe pay 1500 bucks, you don't really learn a lot. And so they established that there was a six month program that they did multiple in person visits, dozens of in depth modules that people would use for online learning. They went all the way down that rabbit hole. And it paid so many dividends for us in terms of providers because now the bar was set. You essentially got a six month interview process with people. And the best people that went through the academy, we took as injectors along the way and then as we did acquisitions, we had all that documentation. We could have folks on the new front lines go through also. So everybody would be required to go through it. Like that's a very different point of scale right at one or two locations. And if you're going to stay like that difficult and totally different. I think at that point it's a lot of hands on training from the head practitioner. But the folks at MD set up a hell of a scalable model for that.

A (18:09)

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. And these are the things, like I think a lot of our listeners, like you're, if you're a medical provider, you've learned the business side, you're running a successful business, but these are the extra challenges. And I think people. I listened to Alex Hormozi podcast recently and he was talking about how many businesses fail because they prematurely open another location without having a plan. Yeah, more profitability is like we'll just, we'll just open another one. And it ends up being like your death nail.

B (18:34)

And yeah, you can't just copy paste. You've got to have the integration set up. Even down to construction plans. Every single thing you're going to put in there, we knew down to every line item across the way from day one to month six, the end of month six, exactly what was going to happen at every type of level in the business. The construction, the decor, the front desk person, the practice manager, everybody knew exactly what had to be done. And you need that, especially if you're going to set the bar to scale a lot bigger later on, which you know, that's happening like crazy in the space right now. It is absolute wildfire, the amount of private equity roll ups that are happening in 2030 location acquisitions a year.

A (19:13)

Yeah. Do you see just, even just from like your context, do you think that slowed at all or is it as hot as it was 24 months ago?

B (19:20)

I think it's even hotter. Yeah. Having gone through that process, you know, a little over, we spent about a year from the time we went to market and we interviewed a lot of folks and a lot of folks interviewed us for PE dinners, et cetera. Like everyone has a very specific thesis on the market. I think now we're at the point where people just can't wait anymore and have to jump in. Even if data's not perfect.

B (19:41)

The thesis doesn't perfectly line up to what they think they wanted. You're seeing the combination now of all the other wellness services. Jump in between peptides stem cells and you're getting this whole overlap between like body and beauty and how you feel and how you look and, and I'm just. Every PE roll up I talk to is absolutely ripping right now. It is heavily competitive and they're all going for it.

A (20:05)

Yeah. Do you see? I did a, I did an episode on these like, so these like wellness trends, you know, like the cryo beds, red light therapy, all these kind of things. Do you see that as something that's going to be a long term trend in the space?

B (20:19)

I've had pieces of it Will. I think some of the difficulty and even you'd see this with, you know, the IV piece and a lot of people grew those pretty quick, franchise those pretty quick. It seems like not as many of those have really made it like through that fire because it was a low dollar value. You occupied a room for a long time and somebody had to kind of keep poking in or watch or check. That's 150 bucks or whatever for a drip for an hour is a pretty small dollar amount to lock up a service room. So the amount of volume you need of just new patients and people coming back for repeated services with very little cross sell is tough. So I think like, I don't know, maybe my candid view is like IV tough.

A (20:59)

I agree with this. Just, just to talk about this point, I agree with this 100%. And the challenge that we see too is like people try to market these services and now when you were selling it for $150 with no acquisition cost, at least you had $150 with minimal cost of goods. But when you start to advertise some of these services and you're not relying on like some sort of organic medium to generate the business and you have an advertising cost. You end up spending for like IVs for example, you'll spend 150, 200 bucks to even get the client. They'll, you have to run a discount to get them in that you basically break even, lose money on the first visit. And it's not a service. Like yes, we wish a lot of people were doing this like as a wellness trend and they were just coming back every couple weeks. And I'm sure some people listening to this, they've got clients that do that. But there's a large chunk of the IV market that are one offs. So the math behind it like I've seen is very shaky. Like when I've talked to people and we actually run the numbers, it's like, okay, as soon as you start to advertise these things, that feels, this feels less comfortable. And just anecdotally what I've seen on some of these other newer services.

A (21:57)

Do people actually see the benefit at enough scale that they've bought it? Like when you go get Botox, for example, it's a very clear before and after. Like there's a very visible tangible result and it requires ongoing service to maintain. With some of these other things, you look at even the science behind some of it. Like if I go in a cryo bed, there's no like substantial before and after that's happening for me. Right. So you're relying on like hopeing the data that's young on some of these things pans out to be justifiable and that people want to spend money specifically at a brick and mortar location having this done.

B (22:30)

Yep. Also like cryo one's a good example and I'll take full offense. And some of it like I have a cold plunge in the backyard. I was one of the early non tech bros who had it. Now I feel terrible about having it. But like okay, uh, but again like.

A (22:43)

You feel great cliche.

B (22:44)

Now I'm just a walking cliche. It's fine.

B (22:47)

You feel great for a short period of time. The thing with the Botox that everyone loved or even when you get lasered, etc. And, and fully transparency. My mom did some laser work. She was one of our best before and afters and 76 and. But she felt great every day for months even until she came in for the next appointment. She felt great. She could see the results. Everyone looked that way and felt that way.

B (23:10)

And I think if you focus truly on the patient outcome piece, that's why a lot of the research is probably going to be accurate here. Where in a downturn I can see people pulling off of doing IVs and plunges and red lights and all that stuff really quick. Your Botox, your filler, some of your laser, etc. Your GLP, that's going to be the last to go. And maybe you'll push it out from three months to four or five, but you're going to keep doing it.

A (23:34)

This will be the goofiest reference on the podcast. It's the shallow hal reference. A third party perspective.

A (23:41)

When you get, when you get Botox, you will look. If you stop getting your Botox, you will look visibly different.

B (23:46)

Yeah.

A (23:46)

If you stop going to the cryo bed, no one will know.

B (23:49)

No one will know.

A (23:50)

You might know. You might feel some. But, but it's that third party perspective piece that I think does create more stickiness. And we talked to Ben Hernandez from Skytail Group and he talked about still to this day, these private acquisition. Most of these places are looking for something like 60% of the revenue coming from injectables. Oh yeah, it is kind of the tried and true in the space.

B (24:07)

It's the tried and true. It's actually a really fine line because at 60, you've probably @ least got some, you know, coverage elsewhere, depending on what those services are, depending on what your split between medical and non medical are. But a lot of them, when we would go look, were 80, 90% injectables, which for us was great because we knew if we had a good mix and we knew how to teach them how to upsell, cross sell, we could bring our other services in right away. It would work out awesome. But even a lot of folks, I still talk today, three, five locations, they're heavy on one single line of revenue. And that is risky. Like from my opinion, just from like a business standpoint, that is risky for.

A (24:43)

Sure. Cool. All right. On the marketing side, one of the questions I had had here was what marketing channels from your, from your experience with this whole thing, do you think are undervalued or underutilized right.

B (24:53)

Now?

B (24:57)

Probably events. We did a lot of events. There's a couple flavors of it. Right. There's your local biz dev with adjacent businesses that might be good fits and doing nights and evenings with their clientele and your clientele. We would run a lot of thematic events at the locations. Obviously there's the easy grand openings when you open a new location. Etc. But like themed events over a core period of time and with different audiences that we would focus on or focus, different offers, different referral bonuses, things like that just absolutely crushed. And you know, the whole thing from my perspective from a marketing standpoint is this stuff is intimidating if you're new. I think it's why so much of the business in general, everywhere is referral, right? 25 to probably 40% for a lot of brands, it's about getting that foot through the door the first time. And so the more you can do to let them feel it, interact, test it before maybe they slide the credit card through, I think the better. And the events are a great way to do.

A (25:53)

That. Yeah, I love that. I know a lot of people have struggled with events. There are people, I think, that knock it out of the park and they're like, this is phenomenal every time we do it. I think one of our mutual clients that we've kind of worked with, they do really, really well with this. But I've seen a lot of people struggle with it. Do you have like just a core list of tips like, hey, what do you think makes made those successful for you.

B (26:11)

Guys? We were, we were really thoughtful about the offers. We also had a marketer on the team, woman named Jenna, who knew how to put together great events and it was a strength of hers and she absolutely rocked these offers. Pre event promotions, how to train people in the locations to promote the events. Just thematically, thinking about maybe some nights are vip, some nights are for new, like spreading that out throughout the course of the year. And we were doing them, you know, maybe every quarter for a period of time there in a bunch of our locations. And so I, I think it's just like any other event in your real life or any other life you've ever lived. Like, do you know what makes a good one? The decor, the feel, the invites, how are you going to do it? Plays all plays a part here, but offers were a big one too. Let's just be honest, like really thinking through the marketing offers and what we're seeing in the trend lines in the data. What time of year is it? What services are good, what aren't as good at this time of the year? How do you make up for summer doldrums, Things like that all plays a.

A (27:09)

Part. So I think the takeaway there is like, don't do this on a whim, like, oh, we should host an event, come up with some rough back of the napkin plan, throw a Facebook thing up there and then it Falls apart. You think events suck. Gary Vaynerchuk. I love this quote. He said, what's the ROI of a basketball to me? $0. What's the ROI of a basketball To LeBron James or Michael.

B (27:26)

Jordan?

A (27:26)

Billions. Right. And so the same thing can be true with anything from marketing and advertising standpoint. Like if you're thoughtful about your events and you're coming up with offers that actually get people excited, you have a promotion plan. You're making sure these are things that if people come, they're actually excited so they want come to the next one and they start to build some momentum. Like you're going to have way more success than if you just do this on a whim and you promote something you want to promote just because you want to promote it, you're not being thoughtful about the things that are going to get your prospects and your.

B (27:51)

Clients excited about coming in. Yep. Plus, also like, have a process for it for the planning, have a process for the debrief, ask people for feedback. We made iterations every single time and have a set of goals for the event. Attendance, package sales, total sales. You know, you run it for a couple hours after evenings. You'll find the right day of the week based on your geography. That probably works really well. There are all these little tweaks and levers that we would pull depending on where the location was, how they were pacing in the month, what they were doing overall, what services were popular there, we would think about as we did the events, and you'll find some scale to it. But also there is, there is some specificity that's worth leaning into.

A (28:28)

Yeah. Just being very intentional and thoughtful about everything you're doing is kind of the takeaway I'm getting so far. This episode is brought to you by MedSpa Magic Marketing, my agency. We help MedSpa and aesthetics practices grow with more effective marketing strategies. And I know that's a vague phrase, right? It'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 so on the data side, obviously for you, especially with a SaaS background, this was a big part of it. What were, first of all, I guess what were the challenges around like, okay, how do we measure success? Because as a marketing agency, even one of the challenges is in the med spa space. You can't just look at cac, customer acquisition cost and measure success on customer acquisition cost. It's one metric. But you have to look at a bigger picture that kind of gives you a pulse on retention, life cycle spend. What were some of the things that when you got into this, you're like, okay, this is what we had to. We were trying to figure it out because we didn't have confidence that we had the right data to make good decisions. And then what were your takeaways in terms of KPIs and data that you.

B (30:03)

Analyzed? Yeah. So we had, I mean, by the end here and even moving forward, and I'm seeing it on the other side of life here, working with a company called Corral Data, who specializes in this for the space, hundreds of KPIs now at one or two locations. Do you really need to do that? No. But at a couple of locations, there are core things you need to actually think about on a daily basis. It's the funnels. And that was another bit of the playbook from my old life. I couldn't believe how well it applied. It's mostly because I, I guess I didn't anticipate esthetics would operate so much like a software business with a recurring revenue model. Right. Most brick and mortar are not that way. That are insurance based to some extent. Right. You go to the dentist every six months, Fine. But this is a very different thing. And the opportunity for new patient acquisition, existing patient marketing, upsell, cross sell are three totally different sets of insights. KPIs and funnels. But I tend to think of that as how you have to look at it is the funnel shapes. Your new and your existing are a little bit different. You want to know all the conversion points along the way. Yes, totally on LTV and CAC and roas. Right. Your baselines for sure. By referral, source, by campaign, all of it. But you've got to understand what the funnel is, especially from a consult, like new lead to consult, booked, consult shows up, console pays. Do they convert? What happens? What services did they get? Is that repeatable over time? How many did they rebook at? What rate did they rebook all the way through the patient journey? And so it again, it was wildly similar to what I would manage typically as a CRO at a SaaS business, to a customer journey from the moment a lead was cold sourced, maybe by one of my junior sales reps, all the way through to renewing at 13 months of a contract. So there's hundreds of KPIs you could track. But I think the two, if I was a one or two location, I'd get tied on from a marketing perspective. New patient acquisition funnel and my existing patient funnel. Understanding how to do rebooks and reactivations are critical. And a lot of the smaller folks I talked to, the reactivations is a wild gap. They just don't think about and they just think it happens and people come back on their own, but they need the.

A (32:07)

Nudge. Yeah, I've noticed that too. It's like, I think there's this assumption and you, you probably know this better than anybody from the SaaS space. People think that if people want to do something, they'll either do it or they won't. They don't realize how much of an impact the marketing messages and the communications and the touch points impact that. So we talked about things, for example on the podcast about like, hey, because someone fills out a lead on Facebook, they're probably not that serious, most of those people. And depending on what we do in terms of touch points and communications after that, we can dramatically increase the amount of the chances that people actually schedule and show up for an appointment. But I think a lot of practice owners, they just think, well, if they wanted to book, they would have booked and they just kind of leave it at that. And the same thing with rebooking and retention. We've learned that's not true. We've talked about that on the podcast is when you have providers that are taking responsibility for rebooking. They're rebooking in the chair. You've got a specific process for getting those people on the calendar before they leave. You will have dramatically better rebooking and retention rates than if you just let someone walk out the door and hope they schedule on their own three or four months later or try to catch up with them via phone a month from now.

B (33:07)

100%. We spent a lot of time and I'm seeing a lot of people in the space starting to get better at this. Okay, it's day 91. This person hasn't come in for their Botox. They need communication. It's, you know, month six in a day on filler month nine in a day. Whatever service you want to pick and choose here in the day total, you have to figure out a way to have good communication with them. And then it's also taking the beat of what does the communication sound like? Is it over phone, is it over text, is it over email, Is it on brand? Does it feel like it was generated and it's automated or does it feel like it's personalized and it's something that fits within what they expect when they walk into a location. Are you using the name of your provider when in that messaging? Even when you're offering discounts in certain instances, you know, you're just. Most places, if they've been open for years, are just sitting on a few really interesting databases. You've got your new folks coming in. You've got to manage that, nurture that. And they book, they don't. Those should all hit different workflows. You've got your existing patients in your definition. You've got another bucket of folks who maybe haven't come in in a year or got one service and then never came back. Even if they got that a few times, those are still folks to go back to. If they live in the area, they might have just forgot or something changed and they might just need a little bump to come back into it. So I think the systems are getting better for it. It is one though when you don't have a point of scale, especially when you're trying to drive net new sales, you're not going to hire a full time head to go follow up on all the leads and do it in a way which is world class and what you're competing against, which is like a second later after they fill out the form. So some of the automation tools make a difference. And you know, I think people really overshoot the idea that you can automate everything away. We're getting closer and better in some of the AI and the agentic.

A (34:44)

Pieces you want to, especially in a.

B (34:45)

Service or that you want to. And that's the thing in the service really. Business is still so tied to people at the patient side and at the business side, they weirdly welcome the phone call. Like that is okay. Like I think when we really like A service and the person who provides it. It's not like getting a cold call from somebody randomly. It is a very different interpretation and it's perceived more as being helpful than it is being eager or salesy, you.

A (35:07)

Know? Yeah, Yeah, I love that. We've talked about that a bunch too, and I totally agree. So as part of this process, you all were rolling up these locations. You ended up going to the private equity. Is that right? And sold these locations. Mike and Danielle, what was that process like? We've talked about that. We had Ben Hernandez from Skytail Groupon. We talked about that a few times on the podcast. I know a lot of practice owners, like, they don't necessarily know what's on the horizon. Do they want to keep their business? Do they want to sell it at some point? I think a lot of people at least have it on their radar that maybe at some point they do want to sell their business, even if they're a single double two location practice. What was that experience like? Walk us through some of the things you learned.

B (35:41)

There. It was awesome. And I knew things from the VC side of life, and I've gone through an IPO and raised money and funds before. And so to go through a transaction P side was totally different experience. We actually worked with the folks at Skytail, so I'll give them the shout out. They're.

A (35:56)

Great. Nice. Cool. I forgot about that.

B (35:58)

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And I do some work with them too. They're one of the partners here at Crowd Data also. And so.

B (36:05)

You learn a lot. You get to see where you think you have great metrics or you have great understanding your business versus when you let somebody whose day job is literally living in spreadsheets come at it from a totally different angle. You learn a lot about the market and all the thesis that people have in the market, how yours compares, what's going on out there. The funny thing is that world is small, too. Majority of people in healthcare and PE all are in Chicago. Everyone knows each other. Half of them went to the same graduate school or MBA school. And so the world is small. Even if you feel like you're a one or two location, maybe, you know, somewhere in New England, somewhere in South Carolina. North Carolina. Whatever it is, you'd be surprised. It's wildly small and well connected. I think it's going to be something where again, it's just happening at such volume. The risk for people staying at one or two locations for a period of time is the competition that's going to come around. You and the scalability they're going to have from marketing. Pricing is one bit of pressure. And so like even if you're going to try and stay and kick it over, you have to get really good at everything. You have to start thinking, how do I get marketing help? How do I get operational help? If my job as a practitioner is primarily that and I'm really good at it, and maybe the business side, I'm less good, you got to bring in some people to help and make that investment. You may take less distributions at the end of the year, but the business will survive a lot.

A (37:22)

Longer. Yeah, anything in terms of like, hey, you want your business to be as valuable as possible when you go to this process, Key tips and takeaways.

B (37:31)

There. Everything's got to be tight. Every bit of to your commentary, earlier, documentation, process, SOPs for every single piece of the equation, paperwork's got to be tight. Leases, loan docs, employment agreements, every single nook and cranny that could possibly be found will be found. They will ask questions about, will come up in diligence and you'll get the advice. No matter what you do. This will be a massive distraction to the business and that is the risk. Right. Because then all of a sudden the business slides. It's literally a full time job in itself. I think we were really fortunate as we had a good sized executive team. We had invested in pre transaction and so we could divide and conquer a lot of this stuff on the front lines. But it is a full time job for several months. And of course the downside is if that distracts you, your price probably goes down. So the private equity folks love that and they win. Maybe it's a little bit less good for the practitioner in some instances. So you just, you got to know what you're going to be stepping into, but you also have to be ready and you've got to think like a very real business and have everything documented and set aside. They're going to know consistency, right? PE likes consistency and lack of risk. Anything you can do to mitigate that will be.

A (38:45)

Rewarded. Was there anything in terms of the valuations that you were surprised? Like, hey, if we actually had, would have had more of a tilt toward this valuation would have been better or worse. Was there anything that kind of surprised you in terms of how valuation is.

B (38:57)

Impacted? I don't think so. I mean, look, the reality of the valuation piece too, valuation piece and payouts and comp plans, there's so much intricacy in back math that I think it is hard for the average human to also understand that. And so surrounding yourself with really good people during the course of this and asking really good questions and pushing on that is is invaluable. Having someone like a skytail is just, it's worth it. You have. You just. You're going to get the dividends back. It will. You may feel like you paid money up front during the transaction for it, but you'll get that back in spades on the back end.

B (39:31)

I just think you're going to end up trying to understand many things that maybe as a 1, 2 location owner, you're not typically used to understanding and you need help. Like yeah, but if you find the right partner. Yeah, it's a different thing. But if you find the right partner, man, you can really start cruising really quick. We were really lucky. We found a great one. They continue to be a great partner and business is ripping. And so I'm seeing that in a lot of places. The good news is there's a lot of really good folks out there in the PE space who are looking to make.

A (39:59)

Acquisitions. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, well, that brings us to Corey, what you're doing now to wrap the episode, tell us what you're up to now, corral data and what all is going on on that.

B (40:09)

Front. Yeah, so one of the big challenges when I was in seat most like the folks here who are listening is yes, the systems are getting better in the space, but a lot of the data is really siloed. And so we spend a lot of time every week in spreadsheets. And so your two choices are usually interlinking a bunch of spreadsheets and hoping something doesn't break or you're going to go down the rabbit hole. Do a data warehouse, hire analysts and engineers as you grow and put a bi tool on top of it. And I got set up here with the guys at Crowd Data as you mentioned. Like I fell in love with the space and the people and the challenges in it. And crowded makes a system that typically compliant that actually helps you integrate all of your systems across the business. Acts as a sets of a data warehouse acts as the data layer on top and then plugs in some AI on top of that too. So it's. I used to run exercises that took me half a day at MD or more that I can now do in 12, 13 minutes using coral Data, which is.

A (41:01)

Cool. Yeah, that's some of how we got reconnected is because we do a lot of that manually right now. That's one of the cool things about coraldata is that you're able to get all of these data pieces without like I don't think any of the EMRs. There's nothing that natively has this functionality data built in. So it is a matter of cross referencing and guessing and projection and projecting and estimating if you don't have a tool like this. So yeah, really cool to be able to. A lot of Corey talked about KPIs and knowing our numbers, looking at revenue relative to acquisition source and all these kind of cool things and to be able to query that and get that information sorted in live time is really neat. So we're going to make sure we put crowd data, all the links in the show notes for you if you're interested in checking that out. Corey, if the EMRs. I think we've talked about this. Yeah, pretty much all of the EMRs are on the table for integration with corral.

B (41:47)

Data. Yep, 100%. We've, we've got an official partnership with Zenoti. Ironic. We're playing favorites but I do think they're great in the space obviously and we love them as a partner. We integrate with everything we see. Modmed, aesthetic, record, nextech, all the typical ones you'd see. It's, it's the combination of being able to integrate your EMR data to your CRM data, Google Ads, meta ads, GA4, your QuickBooks, your payroll, being able to put all that together in one space, have a really good set of dashboards and KPIs. We have stuff out of the box that are specific to the wellness industry. So obviously if you're a little bit smaller and you're trying to get that done and cleaned up like we'll out of the box help you out but we also go and recreate all the good stuff that you've already got. So, and our AI is trained on this versus you know, a full chat GPT across the whole Internet model and plus we're HIPAA compliant which is great. So it's, it's a totally different way of thinking about things and being able to get an answer. The thing I do love and I remember the most about being in seat to the point of events and other before if you make a good data decision at 9am you could drive 10, 20, 50k in revenue in a day with an offer, a campaign, something that could go live. It's just a function of understanding the data and where the gaps are and maybe your appointment data, your rebook data versus your revenue targets and then knowing what worked the last time you did it and why man, that stuff's so.

A (43:04)

Invaluable. Yeah everybody listens to the podcast or the YouTube channel. They know we talk about that all the time. If you don't have that data, you're just guessing and that would stress me out beyond belief is just guessing on those data points because. Because the picture is so incomplete like you see ads from marketing agencies, 45 patients. That's such a small piece of the entire picture that you need to analyze and measure to understand the realities of your marketing investment and the costs associated with your business and profitability. So really cool tool. We'll include that in the show notes. I think the call to action on the site as of we're filming this is the book a demo. Do you all do that for like one single location practices or what is the call to action typically for.

B (43:42)

Corraldata? Definitely book demos. Typically it's locations. You're probably at three locations and up are usually a good fit for us because you then using multiple systems, you've probably got a CRM at this point. You're rocking with an emr. You've probably started really spending some money on the ads piece and you're looking for that. Maybe they're working with somebody like you and just the fact that at any moment in time you can know exactly what you've spent and what you got back for it and then compare that against provider utilization, upsell, cross sell data, all the things that you're sitting on that unless even I guess even if you are a pivot table wizard in Excel, you don't need to be we do the hard work for you and you let the robots do that work for you. So it's a totally different way of going about it and a way faster way of going about it. So it's used by a majority of the PE rollups at this point in the space and we have a bunch of great partners and customers and so it's been really exciting the last several.

A (44:31)

Months. Yeah, super cool. Corey, thank you so much for coming on the show. Awesome conversation per usual. I think I got through like 70% of my questions. We will have to do another episode down the line, but I really appreciate you coming.

B (44:43)

On. Cool. Appreciate you too. It was always good to see.

A (44:45)

You.

A (44:47)

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, certain services help with advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Google Lead generation and booking more appointments, please visit Medspamagicmarketing.com.