In this episode, Cameron is joined by Shannon Blake, Director Of Medical Spa Partnerships at Podium, and they discuss the challenges practice owners face in managing leads and converting them into patients, with a focus on digital marketing efforts and reputation management. They emphasize the importance of integrating communication, lead consolidation, and tech platforms to enhance patient experience and practice growth. They also highlight A.I. as a potential solution to automate tasks, improve patient experience, and stay competitive in the rapidly growing medical industry.

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, what’s up, everybody? Cameron Hemphill, here your host for medical millionaire. Hey, first off, guys, thank you so much for taking the time to tune into the podcast. Our goal is to give incredible value and insight to practice owners. So if you guys own a med spa, you’re in the esthetic space, the wellness space, all of these episodes are 100% designed for you and to help you take your practice to the next level. So guys, today, I have a friend, a partner, somebody that’s been in the industry for a long period of time. She’s big on AI, she’s big on lead conversion. She’s big on chat, reputation management. These guys, where she works is a very amazing software company, and Shannon has absolutely done a phenomenal job in the space of educating so many practice owners on how to enhance their tech stack and convert leads with all the technology they have. So Shannon Blake, she is the Director of Partnerships at podium. She loves the medical esthetic space. Shannon, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. Kim. I’ve been a longtime listener of yours, and I just have to pay you a compliment to all the time you invest into educating this industry, because it’s pretty special. You don’t obviously get paid to do this, but you just take the time to put together content, bring in folks who specialize in certain areas. So thank you for everything you give back to the industry. It’s pretty incredible. That’s so nice to say. Thank you so much. I love doing it because, you know, it really helps us understand this industry and this specialty, the more that we can just advance our education. Obviously, we were more on the business side right of of how to help practice owners utilize tech, utilize marketing services like utilize all the components out there to ultimately run their practice like a business, right? These practice owners are so educated in their craft. I mean, I look at them is like they’re they’re artists with a ridiculous specialty and understanding anatomy and helping people build confidence. But how do you take that specialty and convert it into a business and have the right aspects of tools and methodology to run the practice truly like a business, and ultimately scale and shoot, who knows, maybe one day even sell the practice. So that being said, I want to talk about, like, the power of lead flow,
right? So lead flow, patient flow, it’s so important. As every practice owner I talk to, I don’t think there’s one of them out there that’s saying, No, I’m good. I don’t I don’t really want to grow. They’re all in this hyper growth mode, right? And so as they go through that, and they understand that, like, obviously, there’s components on how they can grow their patient base or lead base through digital marketing efforts. You know, whether that’s website marketing, social media, paid, search, whatever it is, but when those leads come in, you have to have a solution in order to manage those leads. And that’s what I want to talk about first. So you know, out of all the practice owners you talk to, what are some of the challenges you see in terms of lead consolidation, lead management and then converting those into patients for creating a patient lifetime value? Yeah, that’s a really great, great question. Kim, so it’s interesting, when we first started focusing on the industry, the problem that we wanted to solve right out of the gate was step one. Let’s help you get found, and we can talk about that. That’s where reviews come into play, showing up top in search when somebody’s searching for a business like yours. But once you get the leads, the biggest problem that we hear about is those leads are very fragmented. Some of them are showing up in an email inbox, some of them are showing up in a text messaging software, maybe in an EMR, or with their marketing agency like y’all at growth, do a really good job at consolidating those leads and identifying that problem. But that was the first problem is, let’s just consolidate them all into a single place and then give you a very robust text messaging platform to be able to get back to those leads as fast as possible. Because phones is obviously a very popular form of communication. I shouldn’t even say popular, but commonly used, but it’s not the most effective way to get back to a lead. As you know, we’re all very busy, and so playing phone tag definitely happens. We can’t all answer or call at any given time, nor do some people even want to talk on the phone. So it’s equipping yourself with a modern form of communication like text, to be able to text back quickly. But even after solving that, it’s actually been really interesting. I think there’s actually quite a few good tech companies out there that are solving this problem for the esthetics industry.
But taking it a step further now it’s okay, cool. You’re helping me consolidate all my leads so they’re less fragmented. But how can I win and speed to lead? Because that’s very time consuming to be able to get back to all of your leads in a timely manner, especially after hours, which is when a lot of people are trying to engage with an esthetic business, they have questions about a service because they work a nine to five job, so by the time they get around to looking into it, are they even still open to get those questions answered? So I know we’re going to talk about this at some point, but it’s it’s leveraging things like AI to help you win with that problem. In getting back to leads quickly, 24 hours a day instead of just, okay, cool, you’ve helped me consolidate now what now? It’s time consuming to get back to all those leads and stay on top of them and nurture them. Yeah, that’s that’s a big challenge, right? Like, especially in this space where you’re going to have people hit you up on DMS, right? And I think that’s the appropriate way to say that, because you do get hit up on DMS slide in their DMS, I guess. And then, you know, you have phone calls coming in, you have text messages coming in, you have emails coming in, and the DMS could come in from Tiktok, Instagram, they can come in from Facebook Messenger. There’s so many different angles on where they come in. And so consolidating that under one specific umbrella and having those communication tools to get back to leads quickly is, like, extremely important. I mean, there’s data out there that shows if you don’t get back to a lead within a certain period of time, you know, and I think, like, it’s like after, I’ve seen different data points on it, but after, you know, one minute or two minute lead drop off rates and conversions, they drop by 80% so, you know, for the listeners out there, you guys, you know, really think about implementing these, these type of tools and workflows and processes into your guys’ strategy. So you have the ability to leverage AI and leverage products and tools and tech to implement effectiveness and convert more leads, right? So that brings up one point I want to talk about is you said phones right? I see practice owners all the time thinking that this device right? Here is their practice phone, right? And I can see how that can work for a period of time, maybe when you’re starting out, and maybe convert it and pass the phone back and forth, or however you want to do that within team members. But at some point you have to really say, okay, like, is it time to get a actual work phone, like implement a phone system that connects with my lead, system that connects with my patient, system that connects with my reviews, and has, like everything consolidated and so, you know, that’s one area that I think practice owners are missing out in a big way. Like I see them all the time thinking that their cell phone, they can have one dedicated iPhone as their work phone. So talk to us a little bit about that, because I know that you guys have some really cool technology around the phones that help consolidate, like all the messaging under one atmosphere. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That’s the another thing, in addition to leads being fragmented and all over the place, your communication to your point. You’ve got DMS from social, you’ve got your phone conversations, your email, as you mentioned. So if your phone system isn’t connected with your texting platform, today, you should absolutely be shopping, because there’s so much value in not only having a single thread with each of your clients to show the full story, right? Did a phone conversation happen? What was talked about? And there’s really cool AI features with phones now, where it will just recap the conversation for you within seconds of completing that call. Where now your physicians have all that information that was talked about pre appointment, for example, and then you can scroll down and see you know, the follow up text conversations, what questions were asked, any nuances about this client that we should be aware of, skin conditions. So it’s bringing it all into a single thread, which allows you to be more tailored, more personable, to know the full story, no matter who at your business is having that conversation with the client, you’re all aligned. It just allows you to level up your client experience holistically, especially from a communication perspective.
It’s, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s an important conversation. I mean, you have the communication platforms, you have the lead consolidation platforms. By combining those efforts together, the ultimate goal is to create an amazing patient experience and patient journey, right? And so, like, especially in this space, like, it’s becoming so competitive, you know, like not understanding your unique selling proposition and being able to put that in the market. But then, even if you nail that part, and you know, you can’t consolidate all the communication points, and you can’t solve the gaps in terms of, you know, converting leads at the highest rate possible. I mean, these people have options. And every single year, in fact, am spot just came out with their annual report. I don’t know if you looked at that at all. I recently, yeah. And so, like, the industry’s grown, obviously, tremendously in the past few years. But you know, the the forecast of the future of the industry looks like it’s just going to continue to do a skinny to do, which has been growth, right? And we’re in an interesting state in terms of, like, the economy. I.
And say the economy is like in full esteem ahead, right now, right? But this space Sure is. People want to have confidence injected in their soul, their system, like they are going to continue to search for practices, right? And so as the industry continues to grow, like you know, you’re in Salt Lake City, Utah, Lehigh, Utah, right?
Which big, big, like medical esthetics market, I think it’s actually might be the biggest in the US.
There is practices everywhere. And so if you guys like just for the audience, guys like the power of tech, the power of consolidation and communication is extremely important. And I see it just time and time again, where people are trying to manage leads in their inbox, they’re trying to manage leads in their DMS. They’re trying to manage leads in, you know, in Facebook Messenger, we’re running Facebook ads or Tiktok DMS like, that’s just too much. You can’t consolidate that in all these different platforms and have effective communication, right? And so I’m just a big fan of tech I’m a big fan of implementing, you know, all the tool sets that are out there that are being tailored towards this space to help you guys grow your practice and continue to have that competitive edge, right? And so Shannon, she’s podium. They have great tech stack. They have a wonderful offering. And the nice part, I don’t talk about growth, 99 a ton on these, on these podcasts, because I want to make sure you guys are educated and you guys have options to do whatever you want, but we have a really cool integration that we actually work pretty hard on, right? And so growth 99 we do a wonderful job of patient acquisition, right? So that’s that’s kind of our focus. Is we love to help with new bookings and with the wonderful partnership and integration that we have that now, like, takes that thing to on steroids, right? It now really helps consolidate, like, the lead flow, the optimization and communication, and then we’ve even pushed that back to where you guys can use our, you know, the online booking system through that communication efforts, which has been amazing. So shout out to you guys and podium. Thank you so much for doing that. Yeah, Kim, I’m really excited about that integration. I want to double down on a problem that it solves. Because you might be thinking, oh, cool, there’s an integration between growth and podium like, what is that really tangible value add? And one of the problems that we have been trying to solve very hardly since we started focusing on esthetics, is we wanted to get y’all to be able to communicate with your clients from a single phone number. And cam and his team saw the value in that, because I’m sure you’ve all experienced you’ve got your business phone number, you’ve got a texting software that you probably use, that you’re messaging out from. You probably have a different number for your appointment reminders. In some cases you’re dealing with, like, three or four different phone numbers. So with growth, when we got together, we thought, Is there a way that we could get our shared clients down to a single phone number, and with the integration with the appointment booking and all the lead consolidating that can sit in growth but also flow into podium and have the text messaging go out to all those leads from your podium number, it solves that problem. So we’re really excited that your team was willing to work with us on that, because that’s really important to us, that we can help esthetic businesses get to a single phone number they’re communicating with their clients, because that’s just a better client experience. And I speak from experience, it’s actually very it doesn’t make it very convenient when I forget which number is the textable number of the med spa that I’m engaging with, and sometimes you don’t even get a notice that that didn’t even go through and that that’s not an actual textable number, and then that creates confusion on an upcoming appointment. And so that’s another problem that the two of us partnered up to solve for which we’re really excited about.
That brings up a great point, you know, like, I know that you are also a consumer in the space and, and same with me. And I may be, not be, like, the, you know, I probably should go more than I do go, me too.
But what’s interesting is, like, I Secret Shop some, you know, different practices out there in a way that’s like, what’s the experience like from because the first thing I do is, if I’m going to go to a practice, or if any consumer is going to go to a practice, whether it’s word of mouth, referral, Google search like, they’re going to look you up online. They’re going to look at your work. They’re going to look at your Google reviews, your Facebook reviews, like, anywhere that you guys have reputation out there, they’re going to look that up. Are you credible? They’re going to look at your website. They’re going to look at the booking experience. If you don’t nail that, and I’ve talked about this on previous episodes, if you don’t nail that, they’re just going to go to another site that’s easier to use, easier to navigate. They may have the same review count as you, the same star rating as you like. You have to nail that entire workflow and tech stack, from when they hear your name to booking that appointment to having effective communication and consolidate that right. So that brings up a point I want to talk about, like I talked about reviews for a second, and I know you guys have an offering for that. We have an offering for that, but I think that reviews have been.
Are overlooked because they’ve been around for so long, right? Everybody’s like, oh, Google reviews, yeah, we need to get those. But let’s just kind of dive deep for a second on the power of reviews and reputations, especially in this space, because you’re really dealing with enhancing confidence. They’re not buying Botox, they’re not buying semi glutide, whatever they’re they’re buying confidence, right, and they want to make sure you are the one that’s able to provide that. So if you guys don’t have, like, a review process and system and tech stack in place for that, this is another area that I would strongly consider. You look at options and see what’s out there to automate that process. So you know, I know that you guys have a lot of data behind reviews, reputation management we like, we just share that with the audience in terms of how powerful they are, why you need to continue to get them and why have a strategy? Yeah, absolutely. One thing before I dive into, like, some stats, one thing I did want to highlight is, yes, it is so important that you have a good reputation. When it comes to the injectables, anything altering your face like that matters, right? The reputation matters. But there’s a really cool and I absolutely love watching this unfold. But this transition of there’s traditional Med Spa, and then it’s this blend of health care and Med Spa, with all the hormone therapy that’s coming into it, weight loss programs, it’s there have health care and med spas. I feel like med spas are just crushing the experience, the client experience, and will take a big market share away from traditional health care clinics, which has been really fun to watch. But that as well, if I I’m getting, I get hormone treatment. Right now, I’m at that fun age where I get to, you know, have all the blood tests and figure out all my hormones and get them all balanced. But think about like the reputation of your business, because a lot of people might look at Med spas, is, should I trust them with hormone replacement therapy, with some of these other traditional health care like, that’s a new overall, I would say that’s a pretty new trend. So more than ever, your reputation needs to be extremely strong. So I think last time we surveyed, actually no, no, no, hold on. Let me we so we’re actually partners with Google. There they have somebody who sits on our board, so we have a really close relationship with them. And I think the last stat they gave us was like 85% of all search when somebody’s looking for a business to engage with in their local area of that search happens on Google. And, like, I think it’s 80 some really high percentage of clicks go to the top three that show up on Google. And I’m sure you all have experienced this. Like, if you’re searching for any type of business you want to engage with, you’ll get the first three that come up that they call the map pack. Those are, like, Google’s prime businesses that they want folks to engage with because they have either the most reviews, the highest star rating, they’re getting reviews most often. A lot of people don’t think about that, but the frequency in which you get reviews matters tremendously with the algorithm, and if you’re replying to reviews, I think the last one is the quality of reviews. If you’re getting very specific reviews, long stories where you’ve blown somebody away, that they take the time to leave you a really big review that plays into it as well. So there’s those five factors that plays into where you’re ranked. And your goal is obviously number one, but if you can get in those top three spots, that’s the gold mine, those leads are going to those businesses. So if you all want to, you know, take a break and go search your you know, your esthetics practice in your city and see if you are one of the top three. Don’t put near me, because that’ll be skewed, because you’re probably sitting in your esthetic practice right now. But if you do best esthetic practice in X city. It’s a really fun exercise to see who’s ahead of you and look at all of those things. How often is that person ahead of you getting reviews? Are they getting one a day? Are they getting one a week, one a month? It’s all of those factors that play into it. But to have over 80% of all search happening on Google, your Google reputation matters so much. I can’t express that enough, and getting in those top three spots.
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the show. I’m glad you brought up the near me part of that, and everything you said is fantastic, and so so true. Like, Google’s becoming this informational area, more of a versus, like a search engine, right? Like they’re changing so much with all this AI stuff that’s taking place and But you’re exactly right. Like, if you guys are to go conduct a search, you know, and it’s your practice name in a specific location, see how you guys compare, and then implement strategies to to improve that there is, you know, practices that are going to, you know, launch maybe a year or two years after you I mean, I see practices that have been in the game for, you know, five, six years, and they’re doing very well, and they have under 100 reviews. And so I can look at that and say, well, there’s, there’s not a strategy here, right? Maybe it’s like kind of a strategy here and there, but it’s there’s not like something that’s formed in their checkout process in terms of when that appointment is complete, a text goes out, an email goes out, maybe there’s a QR code of the checkout stand like these are systems that you guys need to have at the checkout process in order to stay up to date with best practices, right? And so by doing that, that’s going to help you guys, obviously be ranked. And then another component too, that I just wanted to hone in on is if you do search the Near Me campaign, like, like Med Spa near me, or, you know, Botox near me, or whatever it is, Google is going to search you up based upon location, right? A lot of that is based off location, especially if you’re searching on your iPhone or your Android, it’s going to fire it up by location because it wants to give you something that’s to proximity. So if you nail the review portion, and you also have like near me campaigns running, then like, you own that space, right? You own the near me space, and you own the review space. So, and I do this exercise all the time, even where I am, I say, okay, like Med Spa near me. There’s a practices that are further away than where I’m located, that have less reviews, but they’re bidding on the Near Me campaign, and so they’re there at the top right. So consumers are like, what’s the easiest path of least resistance? They’re going to go there. They see your review counts high and good, and it’s near me to the top. They’re going to click there. Now that they’ve clicked there, they’re gonna land on your site or whatever, and that’s where the lead consolidation, the automated process, is gonna be super important from a communication standpoint. And so like this comes full circle, guys, this comes full circle in terms of what is the patient experience, the patient journey from lead capture, lead flow, reviews, like your before and afters on your website, how you present yourself on social media to capturing the data, right? Because you can almost nail like I have an amazing social media, I have an amazing website. I have great reviews. If you nail those components, that’s wonderful. You have the ability to like generate leads. But now, where do all those leads go? That’s why you have to have the communication portal, the lead management system, the automated follow up, and then what’s becoming even more powerful now is like AI. So I want to take the conversation to AI, because there is so much automation, crazy stuff that’s taking place. So like, talk to me about AI. We talked a little bit offline for a second about AI. Like, where do you see it impacting the esthetic space currently? And where do you see it going?
I just light up when you say, AI, because we have such we just have a really cool roadmap. And we just launched our AI patient coordinator, so where I see So, like, immediate impact that AI can have in med spas right now, and there are other solutions out there, so I encourage you to shop around, but there are AI patient coordinator, we personally call ours Avery that is available to manage all of your leads. So whether they’re coming in from your website on a web chat, or they are replying to a Google ad or a Facebook ad or filled out your contact us, form whatever it may be, Avery steps in, within however many seconds you want her to it’s really fun because you can customize her quite a bit. Maybe you want her to not reply within one second because you seem too desperate. Maybe you want her to wait 60 seconds. So you can customize how long you want her to wait for, but she will start having a very conversational human like conversation with this particular potential client and whatever service they’re asking about, or maybe they filled out an ad that they were interested in, and so she knows what you’re interested in, and can give a little bit more information about that particular service. So her goal is to just be fast have a human conversation, answer any questions about whatever service they want to know about, and then her end goal is book that appointment. She’s trained to get the person in for a consultation, because that is where you and your team get to wow the client. But her job is get them in the door so AI patient coordinators are out.
Their podium has one, but do your research, they can come in very handy for any of you who don’t feel like you’re getting back to leads as fast as you would like to, maybe you have a lot of leads that come in after hours and you feel like you’re maybe missing some losing, leaving some revenue on the table. That’s where an AI patient coordinator comes in handy, because it’s an employee that you basically are paying around 75 cents an hour, which is really affordable, to have these conversations after hours and book appointments. And you can, of course, have her working during business hours if the front desk maybe wants to shift their focus on engaging a little bit longer in the checkout process, inquiring about their experience, building relationship, asking them if they wouldn’t mind leaving a review. If you sent them, you know, a text link with a link in there for them to leave a review, it allows them to focus their time on more relationship building and anything else revenue generating that you want, and let ai do all the lead conversations and booking of appointments. So really excited about that. That’s phase one, where things are gonna get so fun is, and I know that there’s other companies out there thinking about this. So you guys are gonna have options, which is really fun, but being able to manage in a very smart way all your leads long term. You asked me earlier cam, what we hear often are the challenges of med spas. It very much is like consolidate leads make it easy for me to get back to leads. But how in the world do you stay on top of those folks who maybe didn’t book an appointment right out of the gate? Maybe the price was a little bit high, but there was something they’d consider later. There has not been an incredible solution that we’re aware of yet that does that easily. There’s a lot of manual efforts around like updating statuses of different leads, but it takes a human and you have to stay on top of it, or you can’t rely on it right? And so with Avery Her goal is to, based on your feedback and the guidance that you train her, she will follow up with any conversations that went cold. She recognizes they never booked an appointment. She’ll check in with them after however many days that you want to check back in and reignite those conversations. So she will be able to do that with any leads that are not regular clients of yours, and you’ll be able to customize that. So that’s coming phase two, but and text marketing is coming. Any text marketing you send out, she will be the one to engage, even with your current clients, on any questions they might have about your promotion, so you don’t have to worry about getting blasted, which is a good problem to have. You’ve got people engaging and asking questions, but it’s very time consuming to text them all back and keep up on those conversations, but she’ll be able to manage all of that for you.
Sounds like I need an Avery for my personal life.
Oh, you’ll have one cam. That’s all I’ve seen. Like, I’ve seen so many crazy like, just like, use cases and case studies and what people are doing in terms of AI on the personal assistant side, on the patient assistant side. So, no, it’s really cool. It’s super exciting. And you got to think, like a lot of these practice owners are, they are behind the chair, right? There’s, there’s, there’s people that are in their chair, and they’re conducting work, whether you are the main provider or you have multiple providers, like having the ability to have an assistant that follows up with leads, follows up with conversions, has a real like communicative back and forth conversation that I know, like some of the experiences I’ve seen, you can you can make these bots or these patient AI assistants, if you will, like, they can form a personality, yeah, and they shoot, I was actually recently on a demo looking at a piece of software, and it was voice based as well make personal phone calls, like, have a phone call back and forth and be able to book an appointment with, you know, you not having to do anything, you know. I think we, the world has a little bit to evolve to, like, flush out a lot of the nuances that come with AI, but at the same time this phone conversation I was engaged with, I mean, it was hard for me to tell it was not a real person. Well, yeah, Cam, and have you heard? Like, there’s even authors who just have to record a little bit of their voice and then AI will do a full audio book, read of the entire book without the author having to record himself reading through the entire book for Audible for example. So think about like that’s coming with our phones as well. That’s not phase two, that’s probably more phase three, but the ability for Avery to answer calls, answer questions, book appointments over the phone and have it be the voice that you want. It’s pretty incredible. What’s coming you really you’re going to be able to invest your salaried employees elsewhere and let ai do the stuff that she can do, he or she, I should say, Can Do. Yeah, that brings up a good point, because I think, like a lot of times, people think of AI and they get freaked out. I.
Right? Like, this thing’s gonna come around, it’s gonna take everybody’s jobs. But if you embrace it in the right way, and he used it the right way, it actually just creates efficiencies across the board, where you can focus your time and energy and efforts on other things that matter most, right? Like, you’re always gonna, there’s always a need for people that actually, like, need to use our, you know, authentic intelligence, and really, you know, understand, like, am I spending the right hours and of my days doing the right things? Or can I just automate this process with tech, with AI, you know, and even on the digital marketing side, like you can create so much content, there’s a there’s great ways that you can actually create unique content inside of open AI, chat, GPT is a great use case where you can create rooms and you can create specific themes, and you can actually make this understand your brand. You can make it understand your unique selling proposition, and it will learn your content structure over time and actually push out unique content that becomes like a great SEO strategy for your website, you know. So if you guys are not starting to think about AI, I know that there’s a lot of practice owners and just people in general that are like, not there yet. Don’t want anything to do with it. Not going to happen. Somehow Tesla’s out there driving cars without a driver behind them, which is insane,
scary. I mean, shoot, Uber disrupted the taxi world. And now, you know, like, I think Tesla’s going to disrupt the the Uber world, like, it’s pretty interesting what’s taking place, and it’s if you embrace it correctly, use it correctly, you can offload a lot of these, these components of your practice to where you can leverage these tools and tech and AI, and then really just focused on on what matters most. And that’s really, like, engaging in the patient experience and really focusing on the craft so you guys can actually, like, give the best procedure possible. So everybody just rants and raves about you, because that’s where your area of focus should be. Yeah, exactly. I think I’ve had a lot of conversations about this lately with owners, and it’s interesting, their hesitation with AI is they don’t want to lose that relationship, that human connection aspect. And I tell them, like Avery is answering questions, booking appointments, the esthetics industry nails the experience when people are in their Med Spa. There is. It’s like a family when you walk in, the ones who do it right, right? And so AI isn’t gonna take over your I mean, I hope never. But like your job as an esthetician, for example, or a nurse practitioner, you have that time in person where you can create those human connections, the questions about services and booking appointments they don’t need that level. I mean, Avery does a pretty damn good job. So you really think you’re talking to a human. But I just wanted to call that out, because I think people get nervous about losing that connection, but there’s perfect there’s a time and a place for that, and that’s when they’re in your seat.
Yeah, 100% I completely agree. And, you know, I’m a living example of building a connection with my provider being in the chair. I mean, it’s kind of interesting. It’s like, almost like, you know, when, when women go see their their hair girl, I mean, like, it’s almost like a freaking you guys have conversations. It’s like a therapy session, right? Truly, very similar to the med spa space. So I wouldn’t worry about losing the connection in terms of the relationship there, it that’s almost like, if you look back in history, being like, Well, someone can book online. You’re not losing the relationship there. It’s the same thing guys. It’s like, let them book online. They want to book online. It’s easier for you. It’s easier for them. It’s convenient, and therefore they don’t need to text you back and forth to book an appointment. Like, if you if your thought process, like, 10 years ago, five years ago, you might have been doing that, texting back and forth, making phone calls, booking appointments, even, maybe even on like, you know, a calendar device that’s not even in the tech stack world. It’s more like a planner, you know, like, shoot, I remember my wife was in the hair business for 20 years, and she used to book her appointments on a planner, like a physical planner, Yeah, crazy, right? And I feel like, you know, so that’s the mindset you guys should have, is terms of, we didn’t have online booking years ago. We do now. You probably wouldn’t run your practice without online booking. I still see some that do, which I think is not the best patient experience, but then taking that approach into the AI world, where you can automate text flow, you can automate, you know, voice flow, because all they want to do is get the answers as fast as they can, and then make the decision, and then come in, and that’s where you can just shine, if you can just nail that right. It’s almost like them showing up to the game, and you’re coming out as the all star. And that that just now you don’t have to focus on anything else, right? And so I think that’s the mindset shift that that practice owner should, should really lean in on, for sure, yeah. And I think if we were to rewind even, let’s see cam, when did open API come to be? Has it been about a year to.
Know, two years ago, something like that, yeah, before, yeah, yeah. I feel like, before that, having a bot, we would all know, right? We’d be like, Okay, I’m not talking to a real human. It’s very obvious. I’m asking a very general question. It’s getting it wrong, and it created such a frustrating client experience. But now, since open API and chat GPT, which open API is what we use, integrated into podium, it is so wildly accurate, it is creepy, and now is when we would say we recommend it. We don’t feel like the person on the other side is going to even know that it’s a bot. Because I would agree five years ago, you wouldn’t. You’d have to be pretty careful about stuff like that, because it really could really could impact the client experience. But it’s just so good now it’s come a long way that now is the time to seriously consider implementing something like an AI patient coordinator. Absolutely. I mean, have you used the chat for Delta Airlines by chance? Yes. Isn’t it just fantastic. It is fantastic. And I love that it moves it to a text message on your phone, and you’re not like an app somewhere that you have to stay in or you miss the message. It’s incredible. It’s incredible. I mean, it’s like, I mean, shoot, I remember calling them back in the day, and I remember booking flights, and now I can do that online, and I can chat with their customer service through the chat widget, and it’s just like, I mean, I get the information immediately. Imagine the reduction of like inquiries they have, and now their their team can focus on other things. I don’t want to talk about Delta Airlines, but I’m just trying to take, like, a life example outside of the Med Spa space, in terms of, you know, I’m sure you guys have done this. Like, you don’t call delta to book airline tickets, you know, like, we just don’t do that. That sounds awful, calling them to change a flight that just doesn’t sound like a fun experience. And so that’s the mindset that your patients are going through in terms of, hey, you know what? I can’t show up tomorrow at three, even though I’ve had the appointment book for a couple weeks, something came up. They can go in and they can easily reschedule. They can communicate with chat, they can communicate with AI, and then just have it automatically work, and so you’re just focused on what matters most, which is the patient care, right and safety and really enhancing that, that confidence within within your patient base. So yeah, I think it’s a serious thing. Yeah, we all live in whether we love it or hate it. We live in a world with companies like Amazon, Lyft, Uber, Door Dash, all of it, they have changed the game on client experience, and that is the world you live in. You’re running a business in a world where consumers have experienced ease and convenience on a whole other level. So you have to be thinking about in the same way, are you offering a Door Dash, Uber, Amazon type experience of convenience for your client base. And if you’re not, there’s a disconnect, because they’re living in a world where they have that in many aspects, and you’re another business that they’re going to expect that level of convenience as well.
Yeah, exactly. You know, I wish that EMR companies would lean in on this more. I think that they’re just a tail that behind. But I think they’ll come around in terms of having a systematic solution, and turn internally to to leverage AI and leverage like texting back and forth and implementing strategies in that regard. Because when I look at like, if you were to take like, zoom out and look at what a medical esthetics practice needs to run an effective system. They need marketing, they need the website. They need, like, all the front end systems to bring in the patient, flow, the communication wizard, the lead like flow and Management Wizard, the EMR component. And then after the EMR component, like memberships and all that stuff like it, there has to be a way at some point to combine all those efforts together. And so, I mean, we’re talking to a lot of the EMR EMR companies now, and we always have been. But,
you know, I imagine a world one day to where you literally have your website and your all your social platforms tied directly into the communication platform that is tied to AI that’s tied to the EMR system and all, and then the post patient care almost flips it all the way back to the website, and the whole thing is integrated. Like, that’s where I see this going probably three to five years from now. It could be sooner than that,
you know, but the EMR companies, man, I wish. I really need them to start getting behind, embracing this type of communication, because that’s exactly like, that’s the last puzzle, and then integrating it all together. Yeah, it’s been really fun working with more modern companies that are open minded to integrating and making these the lives of the esthetic, press practices easier, Cam, and that’s where we really appreciate growth. Like you guys were on the ball as soon as we mentioned that solution of let’s get them to a single phone number. We had an integration bill, I felt like overnight, it was really fast. We’re hopeful about the EMRs. We’re in a lot of conversations with a few of the major players. Got our integration with the nodi next Tech, but it’s on our minds. It’s top of our minds, and I know it is on yours as well. Cam is how can we all work together to make one powerful?
Solution for these esthetic practices, or at least a few really solid options, right? Because it is, it’s fragmented tech stack. Tech stack is generally fragmented. But just find peace in knowing there are companies out there that are trying to solve that for y’all and it will happen. It will happen. I mean, five years ago, talk about fragmented, my goodness, we didn’t even, I mean, it’s come a long way, and there’s been a lot of new tech companies that have come out that I think have also made some noise, and it’s like, unwanted noise or unnecessary noise. But, you know, like, if you really just kind of analyze what a practice needs, it’s that new patient, patient flow, automation, you know, and then, like, post patient follow up, and yet, right now you have to bolt on some systems, which is fine. Like, that’s, like, I’m sure at podium you guys, I mean, I don’t how much technology you guys pay for to run podium is probably just insane. There’s lots of tools that you and things that you subscribe to, and same with us, right? Like, that’s never gonna go away. You’re always gonna need products like Canva, or like cap, you know, or whatever it is. Like, you’re gonna need QuickBooks to manage your, you know, your finances and all that stuff. But you know, I’m talking, I’m really talking about the patient complete experience, and then getting them back into the practice, right? Hey, you haven’t been here in six weeks. Like, here’s what we did last time. By the way, we’re having a special because it’s Botox day next month, like hit them with that type of ad or component, or follow up, and then bringing them back into that flow. And then that entire life cycle happens again while you’re just focused on, you know, your craft. Yep, love it. Good stuff coming. Good stuff coming. For the esthetics industry, it’s been fun to hear all of the tech companies out there and the cool stuff everyone’s doing. I think if the best advice I could give folks is, as you’re shopping around for any new tech, whether it’s a client communication platform, a digital marketing agency, an EMR, ask about AI, what are they doing in AI? Because that it will absolutely play a big part into the future and could simplify your lives tremendously. So if they’re not thinking about AI, that should be a red flag. So just, just a good question to ask. Cam, do you want to share? I’m curious, like, what how growth is thinking about AI, both now and into the future? How do you see things changing for you all, considering AI is growing so quickly? Yeah, totally like we’re completely embracing it. You know, we have a big investment into an AI arm that we are, we are doing, and we’re using, you know, open AI and chat GPT. A lot of it has to do with automated content creation. A lot of it has to do with landing page creation, website creation, you know, some of the challenges with it are making sure that the content that comes out of it’s unique and great content. So there’s some challenges around that. But you know, when it comes to the text flow, when it comes to the lead flow, like we’re 100%
behind it, because what we want to do is, if somebody here’s what happens, right is,
all the sudden the practice owner wants to run a special or they forget that Black Friday is next week, for example, right? And they’re like, oh my gosh, I better get my ducks in a row. I didn’t actually plan for that. And so having the ability to quickly spin up an ad in the landing page and then put ad spend behind that, and have that automatically target campaigns by leveraging AI and like, all the way to the audience list just by the click of a button, like, grab a couple pieces of content, put out the offer, put out the hook, the landing pages, build push play, adjust your ad spend, and then the leads flow into the system.
That’s what we’re really looking to do in terms of, like, fast marketing abilities, to really focus on just like speed to market, and helping, you know? Because, like, if you look at,
there’s a practice that I work with a lot, and if you look at their, like, social calendar run rate like they’re, they’re probably planning right now for September,
you know? So,
I mean, shoot, you know, we’re recording this, right? It’s not even July 4, right? So, I mean, there’s so much work and effort that goes into that to where, if you can lean in on AI to help create a lot of the content, help create a lot of the ads, and you have a framework to go off of so it knows your brand, it knows your unique selling proposition, and who you are. That’s how we’re thinking about it. And then the ability to, just like, hit the exact target audience you want, so you guys get more bookings. Very, very cool. I love how much thought you guys have already put into that. I as soon as AI started growing quickly, I was thinking of all the ways digital agencies could be leveraging it. So really cool to hear that you guys are that deep into it, and how you’re thinking about it totally now we’re embracing it. It’s here to stay. There’s a lot of room for it to grow, you know. But,
yeah, it’s, it’s definitely, yeah. Something else I would give the audience to is, you know, when you guys are shopping around, make sure that you know you you find a tech stack, somebody that knows the space they’re in. The space they go to the conferences, they go to the shows. They understand the content flow. They understand the patient journey.
Like, and, and they go to practices, you know, like, they literally get services done so they can understand it from a user standpoint, you know, like, do your diligence, and, you know, pick the right partner. I’m a big fan of people that hone in on the specific area and specialty and understand the world. I mean, this is the medical medical practice. Like, there’s a lot of acronyms that are hard to understand, and a lot of, you know, a lot of services and treatments that and modalities that are that are hard to keep up with. So I think it’s that’s very important understanding that. But yeah, that’s my take on Yeah, that’s really good feedback. That’s what I love about growth. Is you guys are very clearly esthetic practice focus. There’s a lot of agencies out there that focus on a lot of different industries, and it makes it honestly, difficult, like, but you guys living, breathe it, and you’re at the events, and you’re talking to the owners, and, like you said, doing site visits, it’s it makes a difference. 100% it really does. It really does. And it’s changing so fast. This, World of, you know, esthetics is changing just rapidly, especially with the wellness, like you said earlier, like it’s it’s crazy, all right, Shannon, I know that you have, like, 100 clients downstairs, and let you get back to your event. I know that we had this plan for, you know, today, and I know you’re super busy, and you guys are creating such cool tech over there and doing such a great, great things in the medical esthetic space. So thank you so much for your time. By the way, I will be in Utah in a couple of weeks, so I’ll come by and pay you guys a visit. Please come hang out with us at headquarters. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So if people want to learn about you, find you like, what’s the best place for them to go? Do they hit you up directly? Do they go to your website? What’s what’s like? Where can they connect with Shannon, yeah, if you want to take a peek at our product and go to podium.com, we’ve got a couple different industries we support, but you can choose Med, spa and see all the products that we’ve built for esthetic businesses. But I’ll also throw out my number. I love having conversations from folks in the industry. And I know this is probably a bad move on my part, but if you want to see I’m not in sales, so I’m happy to just answer any questions that you might have to learn more about. Podium but my number is 8019. 7980, 096, Shannon Blake, shoot me a text, call me. Love chatting with folks in the industry and just learning. So yeah, thanks for having me on Kim. It’s always a pleasure. You know, with you, you’re welcome. Thank you so much, guys. So there you have it. Shannon Blake with podium. She’s responsive guys. She’s on it. She loves it, and they’re doing great things. So make sure to check them out. Make sure to connect with her. And we’ve really enjoyed the process and the partnership with them, and super excited to see what comes in the future. So thanks so much, Shannon and podium, everything that you guys do. And guys, I’ll leave it at that. So my one ask for this is, if you guys found this episode valuable, like, if you found the content great, please share it. Like, we just do this stuff for fun. We want to give back to the community and give back to the network, so like just share it. If there’s anything valuable in this that you guys know that that whether it’s your team, it’s another practice, whatever it is, that’s my only ask. But I’ll leave it at that. Guys, you have a wonderful week until next time. Happy injecting you.