Cameron Hemphill, host of the Medical Millionaire podcast, discusses with Carolyn Boldt from Crossfield Design the importance of creating a visually appealing and functional medical practice space. Bull emphasizes that the physical environment is a significant marketing expense and should align with the practice’s brand and patient experience. She outlines a six-step design process, starting with functional requirements and ending with construction oversight. Bull highlights the need for intentional design to reduce operational friction and enhance patient and staff satisfaction. She also discusses the importance of balancing aesthetics with functionality and the challenges of scaling a practice within a fixed space.

Transcript

This is medical millionaire the podcast, helping your Med Spa increase in status, visibility and profitability. Join your host as he dispels myths, shares trends and gives you actionable steps today that will take your medical practice to the next level. Here’s your host, expert marketer and founder of growth 99 Cameron Hemphill,
hey everybody. Cameron Hemphill, here your host for medical millionaire. Hey, first off, everybody, thank you so much for taking the time to tune into the podcast. Our goal is to give incredible value and insight into the healthcare industry, focusing on everything from esthetics, wellness, everything to make you feel good, look good, and really help you take your practice to the next level. And so my team and I, we have consulted with practice owners all over the country for years, and we want to help you take your practice to the next level. So today, I have a guest on the show, somebody that has had a lifetime when it comes to offering value, when it comes to making your space look amazing. And so when you show up to your practice, you feel good, your patients look good. They’re feeling good. And so it’s really going to help elevate your space. And so who I have on the show today is, I have Susan bull. She is with Crossfield design. She specializes in interiors and architecture. Carolyn, welcome to
the show. Thank you. It’s good to have you. Good to be here. Absolutely. How
was that intro for you? It was good. Good, awesome. Well, hey, I know that you and I had a conversation a few weeks ago, we started chatting. I learned a lot about your business and how much passion you have around it, and you know, just just ways that you really help practice owners create a space that is not only like inviting for them to work at and want to go to work, but also their patients want to come back to so talk to us a little bit about what you do for practice owners on creating that space to make it so amazing?
Yeah, I’d love to so we focus on holistic and healthcare doctors to help elevate their practice and understanding that their brick and mortar space is the package to their product. So if they understand that, and part of my getting on podcast is educating that population, so they understand that they can be very intentional about their space and make a difference. So when you think about marketing, you’re thinking about getting the word out there. You’re thinking about your website, you’re thinking about your brand, your communication well, your environment, your office space, the way it flows and the way it looks, is a piece of that. It’s a very important piece, and it’s actually a very expensive piece that needs to be very much considered as part of that whole brand.
Yeah, absolutely, I totally agree. I’ve been to many practices throughout the United States. I’ve been to practices even actually in Central America, and I love walking through them. And I’ve been through practices that I walk into and I’m like, Oh my gosh. Like, this place is amazing. I instantly feel good. I want to be here. I actually want to spend more money in some cases, right? Because it just feels good being there. The vibes good. They level it up. I’ve been to other practices too, where I walk in, I’m like, Shut up here. Do do they? Do they know what they’re doing, and I don’t want to discredit like, we all have a budget. Totally get it. We all have to work within what we got. But at the same time, like having that area where people show up to right when they when they show up, it makes them feel a certain way, just like, as you were to go to a nice restaurant or a nice hotel or a nice gym, I work out all the time, and so, like, when I travel, I go to sometimes hotel gyms, I’m kind of forced to, I’m disciplined in that way. But some of those gyms, I’m like, Oh my gosh, man. Like, I’ll cut my workout short because I just want to get out, you know, versus, like, a nice facility where I want to stay longer and ends up health helping my health. So,
yeah, very much. So, very much so. So when we think about interior architecture and interior design, interior spaces, we think about retail design and hospitality design. So yes, it’s healthcare design, and it needs to function very well. It needs to flow, because that’s part of your operations. And the the you know, actually your profit center, you know, to have your operations flow, but to think about the esthetic space on top of that, and to be very intentional about it, because when you go to a retail establishment, when you go into the space, you’re psychologically connecting to that space and what they sell. And if there’s a disconnect, then you probably don’t shop there. Do you know what I’m saying it you probably won’t shop. Out there, but the ones that are successful have matched that what’s being expected when a client walks are not a patient at that point, but a client would walk into the space, a shopper would walk into the space and what they’re selling, and whether it’s Walmart or whether it’s a high end, you know, super high end designer store, that space and that product have to marry each other. Yeah, you know, that
brings up a really good point, right? Because if you go to Walmart, you know what you’re getting. You know the Walmart experience. You know you’re going there for a specific need, or whatever the case is, versus like, let’s just, let’s just use like, the complete opposite. You go to Louis Vuitton, you know you’re getting yourself into right, completely different size of the spectrum. So if you look at, let’s head us to marketing. Because what I look at like websites a lot, right throughout the throughout my day to day. So if you look at websites, and you look at like someone’s Instagram, right? And so let’s even take this, like a word of mouth referral. Hey, I’m at a I’m at a barbecue, for example, someone says, oh my gosh, you have to go to XYZ practice, because they’re amazing. And all this, my first area of search is going to be the internet, right? Yes, yes. I’m going to look them up on social. I want to see their work. I want to see their brand. I want to see their quality. I’m going to probably look about on Google. I want to see their reputation. I want to see their reviews, and then I’m going to hit their website and that that all has to connect, because, okay, now they’ve made this connection. If they’re like, Okay, cool. Now I’m going to take the time to drive there, right? I’m going to book an appointment. I’m gonna go there and spend money if they show up. And that practice does it? Maybe they have like, this extravagant website and extravagant Instagram and like, 100 reviews or 200 whatever the case is, and they show up to this facility that doesn’t match that marketing flow. Chances are they’re not going to, you know, move forward with treatment, and you’re going to miss out on that, that true revenue, that when they enter like, that’s where the revenue exchange truly is. Would you agree? I Yes,
very much so. Very much so. And it’s the in marketing you use. The term when you confuse, are you analogy? When you confuse? You lose. You’ve heard that analogy or that, whatever that saying and that, if you walk in expecting whatever you’re expecting, and we can use Walmart, you walk in expecting Walmart, and it looks like a Louis Vuitton, you’re not going to get the best price deal in town, you know. But when you walk into a Walmart and their and their statement is, you’re going to get the best deal. You know you’re going to get the best deal, the low price leader. Then everything about that space is designed to emulate you’re going to be at the lowest price leader. Every piece of it, the lighting, the flooring, the the fixtures, everything relates to I’m going to get a deal. So it’s the same idea of and I’m not. And what I love to say is that sometimes a practice is more of a deal. You know, you make a choice on what you’re how you’re practicing. Not everyone wants to practice like a Louis Vuitton, you know, maybe you want to be a everyday bread and butter, quick in, quick out, type of practice for whatever you’re doing. You know, do you want to be the deal? Probably not, but you want to feel that relationship to your patrons, your relationship to who is actually going to be shopping there, who is going to be your patient. So you’re designing for your ideal patient, just like you’re designing your website for your ideal patient, yeah,
yeah. That brings up a that’s a great point. And I know a lot of different practice owners have different mentalities, right? Some that want to be the super high end. Some want to be, you know, massive volume. You know, great return when it comes to patient loyalty and coming back and increasing the reoccurring revenue, in some cases with membership, you know, and others as well. But that brings up a good point. So one of the questions I want to have that I’m going to ask you, and I, and the audience is going to love this, but you said something to me the other day that said, hey, look camp. And that’s kind of opened up my my eyes. I’m like, we got to have you on the show. So you said something that your office is your biggest marketing expense. And I normally look through the lens of digital, right? You look through the lens of brick and mortar, if you will. And so you open up my, my, my little but I’m like, Oh my gosh, she’s, she’s so right, because there’s so much content and creative that goes in that. So will you lean in on that really quick? So why is your your office, your biggest marketing expense? What is that statement about? Talk to
us about that. Well, we we were alluding to it already, about it being that retail and hospitality design combo. Okay, so retail design, when we think retail design, is that first impression when someone walks. In what everything they see around this we love to say, you never have a second chance make a first impression. So what everyone gathers in, what you take in with your senses, your eyes, mostly, but all of your senses, it relates to memory. It’s psychology, it’s everything. But you’re making judgments immediately. You know that people make judgments within 90 seconds of them being anywhere, and a lot of it has to do with color and things. You know that from marketing. So that judgment that’s made initially, if it’s a good judgment, if it’s a positive, then you’re on the uphill from the marketing standpoint. But if it’s negative, you’re fighting against it from then on. So you’re you’re trying to win a battle instead of adding to something that you’ve already won. So that’s what retail design is. Then, when you think of hospitality design, doctors offices become a place of culture, especially if you’re in a type of Office that people come often, and that environment that’s being created that those patients want to be there and they want to come back and they it’s, yes, it’s the people, a lot of it’s the people we think of Starbucks, and, yeah, it’s the baristas, but it’s also that warm, cozy environment that that Starbucks has created that makes people want to hang out there forever. So, I’m not saying you have to create a warm, cozy environment, unless you want your people to hang out there forever, but you need to create an environment that makes them feel comfortable being there. So I love talking about pediatric practice. You want them to feel comfortable that their kids are there and they’re not going to mess stuff up. Do you know a geriatric practice? You want to feel that those people can get through there comfortably and easily and safely. So there’s just depending on who your ideal market is, you want them to feel safe and comfortable in your place. Because when you think about hospitality design, let’s talk about a restaurant. Yeah, you think about the you think, Hey, you’re going to go on a date. You think about the food, but you think a lot about, what atmosphere do I want to have? What’s the mood, what’s the experience that I want to have? So interior architecture, and I’m not just saying interior design, because most people think the colors on the wall. Interior Architecture is the three dimensional space, and the way that people move through the space, the way they feel in the space, everything about the space that psychology should be very intentional
as part of, yeah, yeah, you bring up a great point when you said something about the way that you feel right and the environment. And so a lot of us do that when we’re going to pick a hotel that goes to at an Airbnb, right? Is, is what do we look at? We look at pictures, right? We don’t really like, Okay, here’s what I’m going to do the first day that I’m there on vacation. Or maybe you plan it out the second, the third, or whatever. Here’s where we’re going to eat. Maybe some people are more mapped out that way. I’m not. I’m more like, oh my gosh, that sunset looks amazing, and I can picture myself looking at that sunset and feeling warm and feeling comfortable. And so like, I think a picture is like, you know, that goes a very long way. And so being able to mirror that, right, with creating that flow system is really important. Now let me ask you something else. Okay, so I know we talked a little bit about patience, the way that they feel when they show up because they found you online through whatever avenue you want that to match whatever your marketing very important, totally get that. Let’s talk about staff, employees, front desk, other practitioners, Office Administration, a lot of like, they, they show up, and they’re usually like, let’s just talk about the front desk right there. They’re usually in a chair taking phone calls on their EMR systems, their CRM systems, website. There’s a million things going on. I’m checking people out, checking people in, consent forms, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. Like, if they I mean, all the way down to their chair right? Like, if their chair sucks, if, like, the front desk is just not, it’s just not right, like, you’re probably going to have turnover. So I, you know, I know the audience definitely has questions on this, and I like to hear it as well.
Well, it have your the concept of reducing friction in operations. Okay, think about that. So if you can make that job space functionally easy for that person, you’ve reduced the friction, you’ve reduced the frustration, and you’ve increased the operational flow. So to have someone be comfortable, to have the lighting that they need to have the materials that they need around them, easy, at their reach and their fingertips, just that amount of function alone. You talk about the front desk, you’re right. It’s like Grand Central. It can be, it can be Grand Central, and to keep that person calm, and to keep that person very centered on the patient when they walk in and. And know that everything’s going to be handled. You know is, it’s not 100% about the space by any means, but the space should support all of it. Because if this, if they’re working against the space, everything gets harder. Everything gets harder, and you have friction, and that reduces that reduces profitability and it reduces the ability for people to stay now, will a person leave a space or leave a business because their space doesn’t work for them? You know, that’s probably not so, but if they know that they’re a practitioner or the owner is caring about that space. They’re going to feel cared for that they care about what that person needs and how they’re going to function. They’ll feel more cared for So, yeah,
I think they’ll operate at a higher level. They’re going to want to, yeah, they’re going to feel good, they’re going to feel confident, they’re going to feel comfortable. They’re going to operate at a much higher level, because it’s somewhere that they want to hang out. You got to think these people are gonna spend, you know, six to 10 hours a day there, right? So, shoot, even weekends, you know, I mean, do you want to work on the Yeah, the weekends is like, sure, if I’m gonna go to somewhere I love to be yeah and, and,
just to make sure, we’ve been kind of talking about esthetics, because that’s more obvious when you talk about interiors, but we really adhere to form follows function. So what that means to us is form. I’m you see my fingers, if you’re in an audio video, if they’re connected, you can’t just focus on the function and then come back and think about the form or the esthetics. You’ve got to think about it cohesively. And as you think about it cohesively, though, function has to lead, because if something doesn’t function, well, it doesn’t really matter how pretty it is. Do you know what I’m saying? So we always start, always start with, how does this place function? So we were talking specifically about the people at the front desk, but just the staff flow, the number of steps the staff is making, the number of movements they have to do to do their job. Well, being able to reduce that so you reduce the energy that they expend to do their best job is also a piece of thinking through, you know, an environment that’s just as important as the esthetics.
That brings up a question that I have. So let’s just, let’s just take me as a use case. I’m Cameron. I’m gonna open up XYZ medical spa in downtown LA. I got a budget for, you know, whatever it is, let’s just say I have, I have a budget which we can make this space beautiful and functional. What are some of the steps that that you take someone through after I’ve identified my space, and maybe you help them identify the space, I’m not sure. But we just talked to us about that process a little bit, all the way to Okay. Plans are done. We’re ready
to go. I’d love to, love to. Um, so we have broken it into what we call six steps, and it it’s the natural design process. You can relate this even to you designing a website, but I’m just going to break it down into these steps so that people don’t have to learn all of our vocabulary, right? So step number one is, we call it discovery, and it’s where you basically decide what the requirements are for the space, both functionally and the esthetic form. So the the requirements functionally would be as simple as how many exam rooms we need, or how many treatment rooms we need, or how many people are going to sit at the front desk. It’s quantifiable, typically. And then we go all the way down into how big each one of those spaces need to be, based on what’s going to happen in the space, etc, and we end up with literally a spreadsheet. So we recommend people do that before they ever go look for space, so that they’re very, very aware and very, very intentional about the kind of and the amount of space they rent or buy, whatever their case is, and we always do it in a minimum and a maximum. So that when someone goes out to look for space, that if they find a wonderful space that’s in a prime location, and they know that that’s exactly where they want to be, but it’s on the low end of their square footage spectrum. They at least know what they can get into that space to function. If it goes below, though, they’re going to start to lose some of their ability to serve their patients and their their profit, their profitability, their so they need to know that going in it’s a numbers thing, right? Just like having a business, it’s a numbers thing. The same way with the high end of the space, they’ll know maybe, maybe they want three treatment rooms ideally, but they could function on two if they find a better space. So those are the kind of things they go into. So that’s our step one, which also includes. Looking at esthetically, what your space is going to feel like and look like from a big picture, the concept. And so you’re matching up, once again, you’re matching up who you’re going to show up your brand with your ideal patient, and your image that you want to portray. Then when you go out into the marketplace already having that. What we found is that you find the space faster and better. It’s that Reticular Activating mechanism. You just You just know, you just know that’s the right space for you. You spend less time negotiating. You spend less time. So it saves a lot of time and money. Then the second step is actually once that space has been identified in the in the design world, it’s called Space study test fits. But it’s basically, we call it step two. It’s like, how does this space, space actually physically lay out based on what I identified in step one? So we’ll do we, what we do very differently, is we do lots and lots of space plans we want to look at every which way it could possibly be turned around and moved around. And it’s like paying plan Tetra. You know what can happen here? Then once we find this functional space time, focus first on function, then we’re going to start to lay over that three dimensional form. Like, how is this going to feel? And the goal of Step two is to identify spaces that are going to work for you. End up with a space plan that you love, and end up with the design direction that you want to go generally that can also turn into a pricing exercise. It’s going to be very high level pricing, more like a cost per square footage, because not everything’s been identified, just the general focus. Then that’s step two. Then once everything’s together, then that’s when you quote, unquote, sign the line, sign the lease, definitely buy the practice, whatever it is you’re doing. Then you go into full fledged design process, and we break it into three, four and five, which three is architecturally driven, four is interiors driven, and then five is the permit and engineering part of it. And then our step number six is we actually stay with our clients all the way through construction to make sure that the design is built, the space is built the way it was designed. So that’s our whole process, yeah, and we, we, we have decided to break it into these six steps, and there is a stopping point at the end of each step, if that’s important to our client and where they are in their journey. Okay, that’s well
thought out. Yeah, super, super thought out, super methodical, and definitely gives you know the audience kind of what the experience would be like. Would you say you do stop at where the furniture comes in? Or do you guys also provide the furniture like the F Anthony as well?
We don’t sell anything, so think architecture firm interior sperm, okay, sell anything we do what’s called specifying so it will help select it. And in the case of furniture, we have some patients that are patient. We have some clients that just really want us to give them a direction on the furniture, and then they want to do their own searching and shopping, and in most doctors offices, there’s not a lot of furniture. There really isn’t. There’s more equipment than there is furniture. But we also can go all the way and specify every little piece of furniture with all of its specialties, every piece of art on the wall. It just depends on where that where that client is and and how much they want to spend on a having a designer, because that’s where you really get into the designer piece. So our goal is to give the direction and then be available to do all the the work. It’s the shopping. I would call it on the back end as needed to.
I i Thank you for listening to medical millionaire. I wanted to take just a few short moments and tell you all about growth 99 University, naturally, if you’re listening to medical millionaire, the success of your Med Spa is extremely important to you, and as it should be. And if you’re listening to medical millionaire, you are obviously looking for the best, most effective ways to take your Med Spa to the next level in both profit and customer success. Enter growth 99 University ranging from online education courses all the way to the full suite of marketing and web services. Growth, 99 has your Med Spa covered. No matter the challenges that you’re facing, we are ready and able to help you achieve your next level in business profit and freedom to inquire about all of our support services and products. Please visit growth 90 nine.com and while you’re there, click the university link and check out the companion core. Course, to this very podcast, back to the show.
And you guys have been doing this a long time, right? Like you’ve been around a long time doing this. What year did you guys remind me? What your response?
So we started specializing in doctor’s offices holistic. We focus on holistic health care. Okay? We started out in chiropractic, expanded over into, you know, physical therapy, functional medicine, functional neurology, med spas, choices, I’m going to say, doctors that want that their patients have a choice on whether they’re going to be there or not. They got it functional. That’s that tends to be our niche. And we started that in 2010 our background is we, my husband and I are in this together, and we have a staff of 10 people. They’re all virtual. And before we started this, we were doing design and construction work in the Atlanta areas. And our largest client was life University, which is a chiropractic college here in town. And that was 2003 on So, yeah, started out by teaching classes to the university to students on why this is important. And here I am talking about it again. You know,
20 years later, yeah. So,
yeah, well, I mean, you know your stuff, and you have a great process and, and it sounds like a wonderful team. I’ve spent a lot of time on your website, and you guys have so many, like, cool resources and links and all sorts of great stuff there, so I love seeing that stuff. Now, question for you, I’m sure there’s been a time in your career after all of the projects that you’ve been involved in, right? And so you’ve probably got into a space you’re like, Wow, this is beautiful, but it’s not functional. Have you ran into that? And can you talk about that? Because you talk a lot about about function and how that’s more important than than esthetics, right? Esthetics is also important. Totally get it. But you can have those. I say this as well, when it comes to, like, when our when we’re talking about websites and marketing, look, you can have a beautiful piece of art, but it’s not functional and meant to, like, grab someone’s information. It’s really not the best use of it. Yeah, have you found yourself in that experience and had to kind of redo something and help someone out? I’m sure
you have, well, what’s interesting is we will have, okay, this is a very common scenario. Someone starts out and they find the cheapest way to design and get into that space. So that may be that they buy or rent a space that’s already built, okay? And maybe it’s built and it has. They know they need three treatment rooms, and it’s got three rooms, but maybe those three rooms are smaller than they really need them to be. Do you know what I mean? Or maybe they’re one of them’s bigger than they need to be, and the other two are smaller, but they make do. They just make do. And so to me, one of those, those are what some of the hardest things to deal with, because they’ll come to me, or they’ll come to us and say, you know, we really want to increase our patience. We want to, you know, we want to do something. And they are thinking just esthetically, but then when we start digging into it, they really need some functional changes to make them flow. So I don’t know if that exactly answered your question, Have I seen beautiful spaces that don’t flow? I’ve the places that I think of. I’ve read it. You were talking about you didn’t say Bed and Breakfast. Did you say you didn’t say bed and breakfasts? But you said, Have you ever
home? I said, hotels are Airbnb. So
you rent an Airbnb or someplace, and you’ve been in, and you look on the pictures, and they’re wonderful, and then you go in and go, This just is a mess. My Kitchen is connected to my, you know, my master bedroom, instead of, you know, it’s just interesting, like to go through something to get somewhere. So that’s probably more than the than I’ve that’s the ones that come to mind. So yeah, if it doesn’t function, well, it doesn’t really matter how pretty it is. I know when we did work at life University, a lot of the stuff that they had there for years was just basically band aided together, you know, to do it quick, to do it fast, to do it they were doing things when the break was happening. So they only had a week. And a lot of those things, we had to kind of go back and redo and re rework those things. Reworked that. Yeah, so sometimes people make decisions. I mean, I understand why they made the decision. You know, I need to get in this space as fast as possible. We have, you know, we have situations where we have clients that the architect is going to be paid for by the landlord. And I. Speak this very clearly, because I was, at one point in my career that architect where I was the landlord’s architect, and I literally had about an hour to meet with a patient or meet with a client and design a floor plan for them, an hour and and
I could do that’s your pen and paper. Yeah, I
could do it, but they only got one, you know, they only got one shot. And then they can make a couple of little changes. And if they wanted more changes than that, then it was kind of like, well, we can’t do more unless you start paying us. And then they didn’t want to pay because they thought it was all free. And they just kind of stuck with, you know, stuck with the plan that we first did, and wasn’t like, it was horrible, but oh my gosh, it could have been so much better. So that’s what we specialize in. We we just really want to blow the envelope open and see how many different ways something can be laid out. Yeah, obviously, yeah. We’ve come up with, like, our typical, let’s just say, under 2000 square feet, we can lay it out eight to nine different ways, totally, okay, you know, yeah. And every time it’s laid out differently, there’s a different flow and a different function that needs to be considered. So
now, okay, so let’s just say, Let’s take 2000 square feet, and let’s say, Okay, do you have like, templates that you could help people with of, hey, here’s 2000 square feet. Here’s a template of this, template of this, like a, like, a floor plan, like match, to kind of give them an idea, and then they can, kind of, hey, I want to pick this one and kind of tweak that. Like, is that? Is that a process that you guys go through? Because I would enjoy something like that. You would, okay,
well, what, what we do when you hire us, is we create your templates for you, and then so we’ll create the boxes, the puzzle pieces, for you from inside out, and then we actually will move them around. But in our meetings, we actually have two hour meetings. They’re working meetings. And so as opposed to just we draw it, send it over to you, you give us some emails back. We actually together, play on the screen, move things around, as far as as far as templates, though, one of our free resources is we have floor plans that we offer. We have 15 floor plans we offer right now, and we have 100 plus floor plans that people can buy. Part of the the that landing page we created for you people can actually go on there and buy the floor plans for a discount and ideas. You know, just to get ideas, we’re getting ready to roll out 300 floor plans that are going to be in a library type situation where, and then we’ll continually update them, so whoever buys into them will be able to get them for the lifetime. So we update them every quarter. So just because it’s like people like to see what other people have done and how it’s worked out. And I, yeah, no,
I can relate to that. I absolutely. I mean, you know, people will come, even come to the company that I work with, growth 99 I don’t talk about a ton on the podcast, but same type of concept, you know, they want to say, Hey, you’re the expert. Show us, you know, some layouts that you’ve done, maybe a catalog or something like that. So, like, we’ve, we’ve taken initiative to kind of build stuff like that out so they can kind of get an idea what they’re getting into. Yeah. So 2000 square feet. Let’s say, how many treatment rooms could you for? Let’s just call it medical esthetics. For example, med spa. How many treatment rooms can you fit in 2000 square feet ideally? I know you probably got, like a great tons of different answers for that. But what is ideal? Like? What is ideal for 2000 square feet to function? Well, front desk, you know, what do you think? So
I wish I could just pull that up off the top of my head, but I don’t design anymore, so I don’t do that. Don’t do that very well. Let’s just see. Let’s let’s say each you got 2000 square feet. So let’s say each treatment room, nine by 11 is kind of our ideal size of most, almost all treatment rooms, depending on what you have in the, you know, the table in there, etc, what you’re doing, but nine by 11. So let’s call it 100 square feet, and then you’ve got, so let’s say probably five treatment rooms. You know, do you have any other kinds of in a med spa? You might have smaller rooms that are doing a more of a medical procedure, don’t need a big table, etc, in there. Maybe blood work in some rooms, blood draws. So let’s switch on the wellness side. Yeah, yeah. So maybe, like, five rooms, plus a lobby and, you know, seating, and maybe, you know, a lot of med spas will have like, a soft room or weight, weight type, yeah, chill, chill room. I’ve heard them called, or resting rooms and things of that. Oh,
I’ve been in like, uh, waiting areas where there’s a, there’s a massage, uh, chair, which is, which is amazing. So, yeah, okay. So that definitely gives me an idea. I mean, 2008 really? Really, really, quite a lot of trade rooms that produce income. So
yeah, and, and the goal is, is to think about all the spaces as creating income. And one of the things that’s hard though, is to realize that a pleasant, wonderful, comfortable waiting room is creating income, because it’s creating the ambience and the atmosphere and the the expectations and all of those things that before the patient goes into the rest of the space too. So what you don’t want to spend a lot of we try to do everything we can to reduce bulk storage spaces and use the vertical space for storage and for things of that sort. So that’s kind of how we think about maximize
square footage value for income, right? So yeah, and I completely agree with that, yeah. So yeah, that brings up, like, a an experience I had, I’ve been inside of a practice, very nice. And they had this display area of all their product, skin, you know, treatment, oils, all sorts of different product, whether it was Zeo or it was revision, healthcare, you know, so like and a few others, but I almost felt like, I’m like, Man, I kind of want to buy something here. It looks so pretty, like it’s just displayed nice, yeah, so completely different mindset, if that was just not thought about and just put over in the side of the corner like that. That’s a, that’s a income producing area that they really need to be, you know, cut into about, yeah, it is. It
is. And once again, looking at retail design.
Okay, I’m going to put you in a place where you’re in Walmart, versus you’re in a higher end esthetic store, okay? And you’re in Walmart and you’re in their pharmacy cosmetic area, and everything’s really crowded, hard to get to, hard to see. Versus over here, everything’s, you know, there may be one or two of each item showing it’s very display oriented. There’s lots of space you feel comfortable. It’s a different, it’s a different emotion. It’s a different totally an emotion, yeah, and it’s but what do you want to have? Do you know? Where do you want to be? And once again, I never want to criticize Walmart, because they make a lot of money. You know, they make a lot of money. They know what they’re doing. They know what they’re doing. And you know, there are usually not in the med spa area, but in in some health care, it’s important to feel like you’re not like you’re the like you’re a low price leader. I’m going to call, I’m going to say that. Do you know what I’m saying? Yes, not,
yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I wouldn’t suggest going to like, the, the cheapest area, the cheapest practice around, right? You want to, you know, make sure, I mean, you have needles touching the face you might want to, you know, do some diligence there.
Yeah, I’m trying to think of something that I could relate to, um, but without criticizing anything, I don’t want to, so just stop,
right? Well, yeah, I mean,
the experience, okay, you’re talking about, you were talking a bit about function, right? So, like, this is, we were talking about Airbnb a minute ago. And this kind of brings up an interesting story. First place you go is like, VRBO, or Airbnb, right? And we’re going to Costa Rica, and I’m like, Hey, cool. I want to get a house, and I want to have a pool, and I want to be by the beach, and I want to be by the restaurants, cool, found the spot. Have had great pictures, had great reviews. Like, I’m like, Okay, go to the spot. Take my kids down there, my wife down there. Couldn’t find the house on some dirt road, incisive back alleyways. Finally found the house and like, Okay, we got inside. It was, it was, the pictures were nice inside, but it didn’t have anything in terms of, like cooking barbecue, like utensils, very just, you could just tell, like they didn’t think through function. Their whole purpose was take pictures of the pool. Show that’s close to the ocean, show that we have good reviews. And they got me and I, and I was so disappointed, because we wanted to cook food, and it showed that they had cooking supplies and stuff like that. You know, there’s, there was some other issues as well, but it was so I would have rather have had a fully functional unit versus having a pool that we barely use, right? So just to kind of lean in on your important Sarah function, which is so, so important to practice owners and patients.
Yeah, very much. So, all right, that’s an interesting story. Put some, put some thought process into people. And they’re like, because, yeah, you look at the reviews, you look at everything, and yeah, exactly. And then that’s,
that’s kind of like, where your mind goes, Okay, other people, then there must be good pictures. Are. Great, cool, checkbox, checkbox, checkbox, right? So, and I won’t be going back there, but if it was functional, and if it was what it said, it was right this I would, I would say it was kind of false advertising. I don’t want to be too critical, but it kind of was right. I’m like, Oh, shoot. Like, what are we into? We’ve already paid the money. So, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s not the experience you want to give your patients, and that’s not the experience you want to give your employees and culture, right? If you’re going to interview someone, maybe they’re going to move across town or or move like, make sure to set the expectation up front so they really know what they’re getting into. A lot of people are using these virtual consults nowadays, which is very important screen sharing capabilities, like you and I are doing now. But, but, yeah, so, okay, you’ve designed the space. They’re in there. They’re happy. They’re producing income. Patients are flowing. The team’s thriving. Now they go from, let’s say they’re doing a million in revenue, to 3 million in revenue, 5 million in revenue. Let’s just talk about scalability. They probably need to refresh in their space at some point, right? So can you guys, how do you, how do you look at that?
So there, there’s two different fresh in your spaces that happen. One is that they’ve outgrown their space. So that’s a, you know, that’s an issue. Did have they outgrown it? Do they need to get another office so that they can expand? Do they need to move their office so, you know how, how there’s you want to design with the future in mind, but then you don’t want to. We’re talking about 2000 square feet and and five treatment rooms. You’re going to get a point where you’re going to max out those five treatment rooms. And what do you do next? So that’s a process of talking through now we see a lot of that open another office, you know, especially if they can get one running, well, they can open another one. As far as esthetics, though, everyone needs to understand that things date, they’re just going to date, okay? And the average is seven to 10 years that things will date. The more trendy something is, the faster it’s going to date, the more classic it is, the longer it takes to date. So colors are the fastest things to date. They just are because they’re the easiest things to date. So just like clothing, you know, I’m sure that there’s some things in your closet that are probably 10 and 15 years old that you can still wear. So there are some classics, you know, some stuff that you could you can just wear forever, until they wear out. But a lot of things, especially in women’s closets, not so much. They tend to be more trendy, you know? And so what we just help people is to understand when they invest in things that, especially things that can be expensive, you know, we want to try to get 1012, years out of them before they look like, oh my gosh, this is horrible. And we’ve been able to, you know, we have some, we have some projects on our website that still don’t look dated, and they’re going on 15 years old. So, you know, if you can do that, you can do it. And I’m going to tell you, there’s no designer that has a crystal ball that’s going to know if it’s going to date or not, but we know instinctively This is a trendy thing. And we’re going to see it, we’re going to say, Oh, that was so 2023 that was so 2022 you know, I remember when there was, everybody remembers when barnwood was the thing, barnwood, barn Oh, yeah. And, you know, we would start having clients that would come to us wanting barn wood when we knew barn wood was on the way out. But we’re seeing it ahead. We’re kind of like the fashion designers. You know, we’re seeing it ahead. So that’s why, sometimes hiring a designer can help you if as long as you’re not really stuck on this is what I have to have, or it’s a way to have a touch of barn wood, but have it be more future approaching so styles and things of that sort are just,
they’re tricky. They’re tricky. Yeah,
that’s a great point. Last thing you want to do is, you, you know, spend a ton of money and deck out the space on something that’s, you know, trending out versus something that’s trending in, so you can catch that seven to 10 year window at the best way possible. I know it’s not perfect, but, yeah, that probably brings up some challenges, right? When you’re when you’re growing your practice, and you’re at X amount of treatment rooms, X amount of space, and, you know, let’s say you got to sign a 10 year lease, right? And all of a sudden you maximize it, and maybe you don’t want to open up another location. Um. Um, is there any like, what do you suggest in that regard? Like, I mean, maybe they’re just forced to open up another location, or forced to stay or maybe there’s a a facility that is next to them that they can knock the wall down. Maybe, like, what do you suggest there? Well,
and there’s so many maybes, there’s so many things, if there’s a space next door, if you really have maxed out your space, have you maxed out the number of hours you can use your space? Is another thing. So what’s possible is to expand your working hours so that you have I don’t want to call them shifts, but think of them like shifts of sorts, where you’ve got a doctor base that’s kind of working the more afternoon, and another doctor base is working the more morning, and it’s expanded both directions. So that’s one of the things that we see doctors. I mean, I laugh, because we work with a lot of chiropractors. They work the most interest. Most of them work the most interesting hours. If you know they work, you know they’re off on Tuesdays, they’re off on Thursday mornings, they’re off, they’re they don’t work a lot. And so when they need more space, and they’re expanding a adding a associate, it’s just we’ll open those hours and let the associate work those hours, and then you can have your space. So I laugh. Chiropractors can laugh with me, but I don’t know that that’s necessarily a med spas, you know, they tend to have more consistent schedules, and then obviously, you who your patients are. Do you know? So the more you have to me, the more you have a type of product that is a choice, the easier you need to make it for your patients to be there without having to make a choice between a couple of things, you know. So like, if they’re working, do they have to take off work to come to see you? Or can they see you right after work? Or can they see you? Yeah, super important. So those are just, but that’s that’s very operationally driven. Do you know, I’m saying that’s not Yep, but that is one of the things that we talked to, you know, we talked to doctors about that they’ve outgrown their space, and they’re only really occupying it 24 hours a week, like,
right? Brings up a good point. You know, it’s funny you said about the chiropractors, because I go to the chiropractor quite regularly, and they do have quirky hours. I thought it was just my chiropractor. He has weird hours, like Tuesdays at 7:30am Wednesdays open at 2:30pm I’m like, Well, okay, yeah, maybe that’s just how he wants to run. But you’re saying we’ve seen that trend. Oh yeah.
And the thing we laugh about is, well, in school, especially well in life that I knew so well, they were pretty much closed from 11 to one every day. Just totally closed. When they get out of school, they think they can just close from 11 to one every day. I’m going, that is the prime time for you to have a lunch crowd, you know. And but they do. They close. We don’t see patients during that window.
And that philosophy came
from, I don’t know. I don’t know. I laugh about it. So I’m speaking very openly right now. They’ll hear me laugh about it. And when I teach the classes to the students, I’m going, I don’t know what that is, you know, and no one can ever really answer me. The only thing that I ever get is, well, we’ve designed a lifestyle practice so we have a practice built around what we want out of our life, etc. And I’m like, Okay, I you know, I get that, are you making enough money? Then if you make enough money, you got it and you’re good,
then you’re good. Yeah, you’re golden, yeah. Sorry, Carolyn, well, you’ve been You’ve been wonderful to have on the show and offer so much insight. So thank you so much for jumping on and really educating us on our spaces, design, architecture, how to maximize value. Where can people find you if they would like to have a conversation learn more about what you’re doing.
So our website, our company’s name is cross fields. Our website is cross fields design.com and we do have a free resource landing page for your listeners. Cross fields design.com, forward slash millionaire, and they can get some free resources there, but we do a complimentary consultation for someone that’s got a specific project that they want to talk through and see you know where they go from there. And we do what we can to give them advice free. And you already said it, we have lots and lots of resources. So once again, this started out as just teaching. It started out as a blog and a Facebook page and just educating, and then it became a business. So we’ve continued to believe that that’s how we want to support the community, leading
with education. I love it. Okay, well, well. There you have it. Guys, you got Carolyn here. Carolyn bolt, she’s with Crossfield design. You can go to Crossfield design.com she’s got all of her social links on there. She’s got lots of resources on there, and been in the industry for a long time. And so I’ll leave it at that. Guys, if you found this episode valuable, if you find this podcast valuable, all I want to do is ask you to just share just, please share the content. If you know somebody in the industry that may be needing for help, or maybe needing any help when it comes to all the content that we create in this podcast, please share it. It’s the only way that we can help expand our reach when it comes to getting value in the space. So I’ll leave it at that, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much. Carolyn, until next time? Happy injecting. Thank you. You.