In this episode, Cameron is joined by Skya Jones, MedSpa Education Manager at Boulevard, and they discuss the importance of business acumen in the medical aesthetics industry. They explore the significance of networking, the transition from being a provider to working in tech, the growth of Boulevard, the necessity of online booking systems, and the importance of data in marketing ROI. The conversation emphasizes the need for practice owners to adapt to industry trends and invest in technology to enhance patient experience and business success.

In this conversation, Skya Jones and Cameron Hemphill discuss the critical aspects of client retention, marketing strategies, and the importance of data and technology in the MedSpa industry. They emphasize the financial implications of retaining clients versus acquiring new ones, the effectiveness of branding and marketing, and the necessity of utilizing data for informed decision-making. They also highlight the significance of streamlining tech stacks to enhance operational efficiency and prepare for future growth in a competitive landscape.

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 guys, thank you so much for taking the time to tune into the podcast. Our goal is to give incredible value and insight for practice owners. So if you currently own a vet, spa guys, or if you are thinking about getting into the industry, every single one of these episodes we create, they’re designed for you and to help you take your practice or your business at the next level. We get into thought leadership. We get into mindset we get into technology, marketing, everything that you need in order to elevate where you are at in your business. So guys, I have a friend and guest on today. I love having guests. A lot of times I do these podcasts solo, but man, that the guests are bringing so much value, and it seems to be growing in demand. So guys, I have skya Jones with me. I met her about six months ago, and we hit it off. I got to know her more over the past six months. We had the opportunity to connect at a recent conference, the 4s Summit, which was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It’s a amazing conference. It’s all about business. And again, if you guys have tuned into some of the previous episodes, I talk about the power of networking and why conferences are so important. And I think a lot of times we get conference fatigue, because we’ve seen the conference Avenue just grow somewhat overwhelmingly in the past couple years. But again, if you haven’t been to a conference, I would highly suggest getting back into it. And this is just a reason. I met with Sky and I obviously knew each other virtually through email and some phone calls and zoom, but having the ability to meet face to face just kind of amplified, you know, having her on the show, and she is the Education Manager at Boulevard, which is a leading EMR and EHR company in the medical esthetic space. And I think that they’re in some other verticals as well, but their name consistently comes up consistently, and they are taking market share. It’s a company and a brand that you definitely need to be paying attention to. And I want to welcome skya to the show. Sky she’s got 10 years at esthetic. She’s from Boise, Idaho. Thank you so much for joining. Thanks
so much for having me. I’m super excited. This is, like my favorite thing to do, as far as what I get to do with Boulevard. So I’m super excited to chat today, and I feel like you have so much good insight. I know we met in person like a little over six months ago, like you were saying, but I’ve known about you and growth 99 for a lot longer, because that was one of my first interactions with Boulevard. Was seeing room as website. And I remember being like, I wish whoever designed this website designed all the med spas I worked for websites because this is amazing and this is beautiful, and it complemented our product so much. So I instantly was like diving in, Googling you guys, learning all about what you guys do. So yeah, it’s been great. Been great to hang out. We were booth buddies at the last show, so it was nice to be able to, whenever someone came to our table, I could be like, Hey, if you need help with your website, I’ve got the perfect contact for you.
Awesome, awesome. No, I appreciate the shout out and the love and, yeah, it’s interesting to see, you know, as obviously, you know the company that I represent growth on united, and I don’t talk about it a ton the show, but you know, it’s, it’s interesting to see how much our products really complement the user experience, from from the practice owner all the way down to the patient experience, totally. And I don’t know if this is just because we’re on the same like path of of seeing what’s happening in the market and what practice owners need, or like what it is, but it just seems like, if you have, you know, I talk about tech stack a lot, and I’m very big on having a front, forward facing tech stack that’s going to give you data points on where to drive the business. And I would look at Boulevard as the back end of that, right? And so when you mirror those two together, like you have a wonderful solution, yeah,
and I think that’s something that you know, hearing you speak on these main stage events, and hearing what you talk about, I think something that’s so important to take away for business owners or anyone looking to open a business is if you don’t have ability to access your data or understand your data. Data, you’re kind of flying blind, and you’re kind of spending money not knowing where it’s going. And I think, you know, there’s the the skill of the actual injections and the medical aspect of it, but I think so many people miss the business side of things, and I feel like that’s where I I’ve learned so much from your speaking and just your wealth of knowledge as you come at it from a business side, and I think that the industry is so hungry for that, like when I was a provider, I got plenty of the medical aspects of training and how to work with patients and how to apply the treatment, but not a lot of people teach you about are you actually utilizing your time as well as you could be. Are you making money as efficiently as you could be? Where’s your marketing spend going to so I think that’s such a want and that desire from people in the industry right now.
I completely agree, and I try to lead this podcast and all the episodes from a business standpoint, because I’ve been going to these conferences and obviously, in the industry for over 10 years, and there’s a tremendous amount of clinical aspects and trainings and techniques, and that’s great. Like, I totally get it, but it’s the the industry is very thirsty from a business standpoint. And, you know, we want to bring that expertise to the table, which is extremely important. So that being said, I wanted to I think I remember you saying that you were a provider, but I may have forgot. So talk to me about that. Like going from provider to working for a tech company. You’ve seen both angles, which is a cool approach, right? So talk to us a little bit about
that. Yeah. Yeah. So I was a provider for probably over like five years. So I started as a medical assistant and worked my way up into doing non invasive treatments like Hydra facial CoolSculpting. I really ended up selling CoolSculpting well, just innately, I don’t know if I just had a knack for selling, and that worked really well with CoolSculpting, but I ended up managing a body contouring kind of practice as far as, like, you know, how can we make these machines profitable? How can we book out our machines? So I provided, but then ended up moving into more of a management role once they saw how well I could sell it, and I’ve always just had a passion for Leadership and Development. I’ve always worked really well with people. I love identifying what people’s strengths are and helping them bring those out and helping them be more successful. And that really transitioned me from wanting to work in practice and working more with something where I can have hands in a lot of different businesses and help with our success. So that’s really my main role at Boulevard, is, how can we successfully implement technology? How can we have a piece of technology that actually works? You know, a lot of these big tech companies have never had someone who’s actually worked in a med spa or SAT and spent hours looking at utilization reports and revenue reports and like reconciling those. So I always saw there was a disconnect between the product and the people using it. And I saw when I demoed Boulevard for the first time, and I spoke with the product and engineering team, and even, like our co founders, Matt and Sean, they had a passion for the users and for the clients, and that was the first time I’d ever experienced that with a technology brand. And I was like, Okay, I like this. I could, I can sit behind this like, this can be a tool to drive the industry. And that’s really my goal. You know, I, I don’t sell the product. I’m not a seller. I strictly come at it from an education perspective and how we can grow the industry. I mean, you know, we see business owners put everything on the line, put all of their life savings into opening a med spa, and there’s not a ton of business resources. You know, a lot of these people want to medical school, and they teach you how to treat a patient. They don’t teach you how to run a business. So that can always be that hard part for people to figure out where they need people like you and I to come in and give that advice.
Yeah, well, said, I think it’s, it’s interesting to come at it from that angle, like provider first using tech, and some of it’s just, like antiquated, kind of clunky. And I think, like, to your point, I’ve seen that as well, to where technology companies can be built by somebody that actually hasn’t been in the industry or worked in a practice, or understand how practice operates, and that can be very challenging when trying to build something for long term success that ultimately you think is the right roadmap. But really, you know you’re you’re not you, you’re just guessing. Yeah, you’re just guessing. So, like, I think that’s. Brilliant, you know, going from your position to, you know, being the Education Manager at Boulevard, and bringing your expertise from a provider standpoint, and bringing that to the dev team. Yeah, that’s, that’s huge, you know. And what’s interesting, how long have you been there? Now, I’ve
been with Boulevard almost three years. Okay,
yeah, wow. Okay, so that’s kind of interesting, because where I have seen this brand and your guys’s company take off from, just like hearing about it, people that we engage with talking about it, you know, coming up and just like online search queries and I, you know, follow the company. I mean, it’s come up a in the last three years, a tremendous, tremendous amount. Yeah,
I mean, I don’t, I don’t take, want to take too much credit, but I definitely, we’ve focused a ton on the industry, really, since I started, like, I came in and I was like, We need this, this and this, and this is what we need to be able to serve the industry well. So it’s definitely been like a massive, a massive push in far as you know, new features, releases, improving the product, to make it as good for our users as possible. And then on the other side of that, you know, their clients, because when I’m spending money on tech. I don’t want my clients walking in feeling like they’re scheduling online through, you know, an EHR EMR that’s super clunky from like, the early 2000s that their dermatology office uses, right? We want, like, if my customer spending, you know, 1500 on a laser, I want them to be able to schedule online in less than 30 seconds. So there’s, there’s a lot of aspects to it that that I think have helped us grow so much. And I think, too, it’s just the industry. I mean, you’ve seen it, it’s just growing so fast and so quickly. It’s, it’s definitely been, been a wild ride, but I think it’s just gonna keep going. To keep going. Oh
yeah, yeah, for sure. I’m extremely bullish, especially going into 2526 27 I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of economic forecasts that say, you know, the industry is going to grow anywhere from 10 to 15% year over year, which is phenomenal. I mean, we may not see the growth that we saw, you know, the last prior years. But I’ll take, I’ll take a vertical that grows at that segment all day long and shows to be recession proof as well. Oh yeah, let’s call it recession resilient, at least. You know, something like that, maybe. But because, I mean, if you look back at the data and what took place, you know, this vertical just powered right through the experience we all went through in the last four years. Exactly. Yeah, and you know what, you guys have done a good job of, like, and I’m okay, so I’m extremely critical for online booking, for one, you know, for the listeners out there, guys, if you don’t have online booking, you’ve heard me say it 100 times, or maybe you’re a first time listener, like, make sure to have online booking. Like this is critical. In fact, I just read a data report recently that shows if you don’t have online booking, 80% of the visitors will actually leave your site. You may have more intel on that sky than I do. I can’t remember where I saw that publication. It was, it was, it might have been a laser company that published it. I can’t remember. Yeah. I
mean that that aligns with everything we see. I mean, that was the first thing that was built with Boulevard. And that’s honestly one of the things that I first saw in the product that I was like this, is, this is a game changer, because no one wants to call. No one wants to have to email in, fill out a lead form like people love instant gratification these days, especially like the age group that’s coming up into kind of like our target market. I know for me, if I have to call somewhere like it’s it’s a headache for me that takes time out of my day I’m busy, I want to be able to book within 30 seconds. Have it on my calendar, have it confirmed. So we know that having online booking that’s easy, that doesn’t cause any sort of like, friction points with your clients. It’s a non negotiable, like, clients want things that are almost automated at this point. That’s where, like, I’ve seen memberships like, that’s one of the biggest trends I’ve seen, I would say, over the past year, year and a half in the industry, is people don’t even want to have to check out anymore when they leave businesses. They just want their card ran. They want to know, okay, have this on my account. So I think the more that we can streamline for our clients, that’s gonna just help serve our business or our market audience. So yeah, I think anyone that doesn’t have online booking is doing a huge disservice to their business. Even if you’re not comfortable with tech or maybe you don’t like online booking, you’re not familiar with it, you definitely have to implement. In it. It’s a non negotiable,
yeah, yes. It’s like the newer practices I see, like, they automatically go for it. They get it. You know, it’s like some of the older Durham practices, like it big ticket item on the plastics and then big, big esthetics practices I see, I still see a tremendous amount of lead forms, and I’ll have conversations and look, okay, cool. They got something on their site as a form. Great. At least you’re not, like, don’t have a form, right? Yeah? And, you know, it’s interesting guys. Some of them are like, Hey, why don’t you have online booking? Like, this is, you know, here’s, here’s the data. It’s not just my opinion. Here’s, here’s the Yeah. And they’re like, Well, it’s a challenge because it just the way that we have our process. Or if somebody wants to come in for, like, they check out for Bo talks online, and really they need, they need filler, and they need to get an hour and a half treatment versus a 15 minute treatment. I get a lot of pushback like that, and I’m like, couldn’t you just simplify it and have, like, an online booking that’s for a consultation at this day and time, you know, in charge for that consultation. So that’s that’s some things that have been really interesting that I’ve seen even as recent as this past week. Oh
yeah, I did a speaking event a couple months ago, and I asked how many people here are still using pen and paper to manage their schedule, which I thought was obsolete at this point. But a couple people raised their hands, and I was like, I I mean, people get stuck in their ways. They do what they’re comfortable with. And I totally get that. But at the same time, it’s like, I could just save you so much time if you just let me. Let me help you with this. Let’s, let’s look at some online booking. But yeah, I mean, I think that people are used to seeing those out of date EMR scheduling, where it’s like, you have to create a user login, and it’s super cumbersome. You have to, you know, get redirected to this site and that site, and it takes you off of the business’s website. They don’t know that there’s tech out there that’s smart enough, that has automation built in to where it can kind of surface, you know, hey, schedule a consultation. Let us know what you’re interested in, and we’re going to keep you on the business’s website to increase SEO and make it super seamless as far as the client experience. So I think it’s, it’s definitely important to evaluate tech constantly. That’s something that I always preach is like, hey, even though this has worked for you for the past five years, maybe there’s constant changes in the industry. So even though you’ve been working with this specific process or protocol, let’s analyze if it’s actually good for the business. Are you, you know, seeing a benefit from it? You know, I think in terms of marketing too. That’s really important. I’ve worked with so many people that are like, I don’t really know how much my cost per lead is. I just like, hope it’s okay and trust my marketing team to do all that and really pay attention to it. And I’m like, You got to be able to see that and track all of that. You got to be able to see your ROI and your conversion and keep a pulse on that. So it’s definitely, it’s an interesting thing that people kind of just sometimes are like, this is how I do it. I’m not going to change it. But when they do it’s expansive growth for them.
Expand me, frees up time, expansive growth. And they gotta, like, get out of their way. They’re they’re in their own like, mental block, you know, in a way that think it’s going to disrupt, like, how the team works, you know, in their process, it’s like you need to focus on the end user, which is your patient experience. Because if you don’t invest in front, forward, leading technology, that patient is going to go somewhere else. Oh, 100% and the new like, okay, maybe your existing patients, you know, some of them will stay. I get that. Hopefully you guys have a higher retention rate for the listeners out there, but for people that are searching online, like, you could have a you could have a bang and SEO, you know, placement, AdWords strategy, and then they send them to your site, and you’re missing out because they’re like, Oh, I can’t book. I got a call. I gotta fill out a lead form. Someone’s gonna get back to me like you’re just putting up blockers. It’s almost like shopping in like, let’s say you’re going to target, for example, right? I’ll just and you go around the whole store and you’re shopping, and then you go to check out. And you can’t check out exactly. It’s almost like, there’s like a security guard there that’s like, No, we’re not allowed with checkouts today.
You got to wait for us to call you back.
That’s the reality. It’s crazy, you know, and especially when you look at the millennial market, the Gen Z market like that. Those are the rising stars right now for practice owners, guys like, yeah, I was analyzing am spauz data and skytails data again recently, and it’s interesting to see how much Gen Z millennial is on the rise. So if you guys are still thinking that those cohorts are not growing and investing in medical esthetics, appearance and confidence, I’m telling you, we have surveyed the industry, and they are and they want simplicity. They want. Ease of use. They want to even like click on your Instagram handle and click on a link and book there, right? You almost would have like your online booking there and also your website. It’s got to be super easy, super seamless, and just to kind of build on that just a little bit. So stay with me, guys, because I’m going to go a little bit deeper, and I’m going to criticize some, I won’t call them out, but some booking systems that also do a disservice. Okay, you mentioned, you know, the ability to like, let’s say you go to a site, you do a search query, you find a website, you click on it, you go to book online, and the first thing it makes you do is register. Okay, this is a hard No, like you now, just got them to the end place. They click the book on the site, and then you’re making them register. Like, they’re gonna bail. They don’t want to, we don’t want to register.
Yeah, for password. They’re like, I you know how many people will stop the booking process if they can’t remember their password, that it, I think the cutoff rate, or, like, decrease rate and conversion is like 68% if you force a login, so it’s no go on that
no go, even if they’re a, you know, even if they’re a patient in your practice, right? And they’re coming back like they’re not going to remember their login, like we have face ID. Now I’m going to remember my login for, you know, online banking or whatever. You know, that’s, that’s like a more secure environment. We want to just log in and or just click a button and book. So what we’ve seen, and this is interesting from a marketing standpoint, we, you know, have the ability to drive traffic to sites or whatever. And I’m extremely critical of that booking experience, because I see if we as marketers, for example, are getting judged on conversion, and we’re driving to that booking widget, and that booking widget stalls them, right? It’s, it’s a complete waste of spend marketing dollars, because you’re going to have, you know, north of a 65% bounce rate. You You just crushed your tech stack. You just crush your conversion in your patient experience. So it has to be seamless. It has to be easy. And, you know, the best thing is, too, guys, is now with Google Analytics four. Okay, this is extremely important. I’m going to talk about attribution for a minute with Google Analytics four and with robust booking widgets. I’ll call them aka Boulevard. You can actually tie Google Analytics four directly to the events. So this is the cool thing. If you guys are always wondering, like, Hey, I don’t know. I want to invest in marketing or ads, or social, paid ads, Google ads, but I’m scared to I don’t know how to like, what does success look like? What should conversions be? How do I know my ROI, Google Analytics, four, baby. You tie that directly to the booking widget, and you can actually see dollars in and dollars out, and then actually hold your agency accountable and have conversations with your agency of what’s working what’s not working, and work together to get a really good ROAs return on investment. But if you don’t have these components, then you’re running blind. And you know that’s another reason why, like, I’m super critical on a robust booking engine that actually gives us credibility and gives us data in order to know what to do on the front facing marketing side. Well,
that’s I think so many people don’t ask those questions, whether it’s on their marketing firm side of things or on the tech side of things they they don’t even realize that it’s important to be able to track that conversion of a client coming from, you know, a Google ad or a Facebook ad, whatever it may be that they’re spending a ton of money on, but they’re like, Oh, I didn’t know I could even track that. And it’s, it always pains me when I see businesses spending so much on marketing, but they don’t understand the importance of that, or they’re like, Oh yeah, my booking link redirects to like a marketplace, where they log into that booking software on their website. It takes them away from my website. I’m like, you’re paying all of this money. Why would you want your clients to be sent to a third party website. You want them to stay on your website and increase your SEO. I also think it’s also really hard to teach that to somebody who isn’t in it every day. So that’s where I’m like, Hey, pay the experts to do this for you. Pay them to help you set it up and nurture it and monitor it and have conversations with them, because I wasn’t a marketing expert. I mean, I can look at the numbers. I can, you know, do AB testing, but I don’t know, you know how to set all that stuff up on the back end correctly and do it all on my own. So it’s, it’s always important to, like, have the support. Of those businesses that are experts in it and know what to look for and what to do, because you can’t just fly blind and hope it turns out okay. It never, it never works out that way.
No, it never does. And that’s where the fear kicks in, you know, if you I hear people say I tried, you know, marketing, it didn’t work. Or I tried, you know, paid ads on Google and Facebook, and we could never figure it out, telling you, you know, for the audience, guys, like most practice owners, spend, you know, less than $1,000 a month on marketing, and the revenue to marketing spend ratio is way off. Like, oh yeah, way off. And what’s, what’s really cool, you know, guys just, just stay with me for a minute. What I mean by way off is, you know, like most practices are spending less than 1% of their marketing spend to the top line revenue. I mean, you guys should be north of eight to right now, after my recent reports, should be eight to 12% of top line revenue. Most practices spend less than 1% and there’s demand out there, and if you are not capturing that demand again, like the data shows that when you get a patient, they stay with you for three years. So if you are not investing appropriately, let’s say you live in, you know, a city that has, you know, good population, affluent, whatever, and you are not investing in in the marketing spend those patients are going to the internet. They’re going hanging out on Facebook and Instagram. They’re going to find a practice. And you just miss out on three years of service and revenue.
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 course to this very podcast. Back to the show.
I’m serious like going into 2025 my number one thesis for practice owners is get your ratios correctly on revenue to spend, there’s a return on investment. I don’t, I can’t be more crystal clear about it. When you look at the report and that you look at the numbers, it’s, it’s, Hey, Sky, if I’m going to give you 1000 bucks and you’re going to give me back, let’s call it 5000 bucks in 30 days. Who would not do that
exactly? That’s just speed. It’s just smart business.
It’s smart, it’s simple, right? We all know, like, hey, if I give you 1000 bucks, you give me five grand back in 30 days. Like, anybody’s gonna take that deal. That’s what we’re seeing. Guys we are typically see, like, what I like to see is a 3x a one to 3x this is on paid search, okay? But when I you know, like, I’m seeing some practices north of nine. So if you give them 1000 bucks or you can pay back. And these are big markets where there’s lots of competition, and the companies that are spending are taking that market share, and what’s going to happen is they’re going to take those patients for three years, and if you look at what your patient spends with you over the course of those three years, and how many referrals they give you some cases, it could be like $50,000 like, you know, let’s say you have a patient that comes three times a year, and let’s say they spend, let’s just call it 1000 bucks per visit. Like, this is a great patient, right? Because normally, you know what the data shows is it’s like 550 bucks per visit per patient. So let’s do the math for a sec. You got three years. You got, well, it’s just one year, three visits, $1,000 a pop. That’s three grand. You times that by three, that’s nine grand. Okay, that just costs you $9,000 by not spending the money. Well, that patient, you’re going to do a great job, because you’re a provider. You’re excellent at your craft, they’re going to give you referrals. Oh my gosh. Your lips look amazing. You look so confident, like you must be feeling good. Whatever it is, they’re going to send you referrals, right? So let’s say they send you two per year, like, if you compound the return on capital and the opportunity miss, it’s. In some cases, really is north of 50 grand per patient, which is nice, yeah.
And I think there’s such a skewed view of the relationship between retaining clients and getting new clients or getting leads in the door, I find that businesses usually either focus on one too much, or they just ignore one or the other altogether. And it’s such a symbiotic relationship between you have to have a good retention rate, and then you also have to be bringing new patients in the door, right? So in order to grow you have to have people in the door. You’ve got to have people coming in buying services. You have to have them coming in for more services. And then, even now, we see businesses are having revenue through the door without even seeing clients in the door. So it’s like they’re having people buy memberships online, and they’re shipping their products. They’re shipping whatever it may be directly to them. And it’s it sucks to say, but a lot of the time these med spas that are spending a lot in marketing just dominate the area because you see them on Instagram, you see them on Facebook, they come up on Google as the highest search result. So it’s like they just everyone sees that, and who you see the most commonly, you know, they say it takes like seven touches sometimes. So you see them consistently in the market, you’re probably going to end up going there I see so commonly now to the the franchise model working really well, because it’s a recognizable brand. So it’s like that marketing plug and play, of like they’re already doing mass marketing, and then one opens up in your area and it just blows up. So I think a lot of SMB, like single location or three location med spas really can hone in on that, like, hey, they’re doing marketing, they’re doing Instagram ads, they’re doing, you know, whatever it is that that surface them to their market audience more, and it’s working. So the data is there, the marketing works. It’s just you have to plug into it correctly. Yeah,
you do. You’re exactly right. And I think like for the multi site, multi location, let’s call it like what you’re saying two to three. If you have two to three locations, you have a brand, right? There’s no way from like one to two without a brand. And so building a brand and building like an organic social, following and and patient base, that is extremely hard to do, right? That’s really hard to do so for the audience, you guys, if you have that, like even one location with brand following, good, organic social, great organic visits. You’ve already done the hard part. Now you just need to put, you know, just put oil on the fire, if you will, or fuel on the fire. And you’re going to absorb the market share and demand that’s out there, which you deserve. Like, the last thing I want to see is, you know, I’m seeing more and more franchise models like open up. You’re seeing private equity come in. Everybody’s aware of that. And all private equity does is they make decisions based on data instead of emotion, and they’re like, Wow, I can go to this market. I can open this here’s the search demand, here’s the results, here’s the average utilization rate. Okay, cool. They you already know you’re going to be successful before you even, like, figure out where you’re going to open up. You know, they do research, yeah. So, you know, for practices that have been around for five, you know, I mean 356, years, where you have a brand and are not taking advantage of robust tech, great tech stack. Know how to look at, you know, success, conversions, ROAs, these types of things. It’s absolutely critical. And, you know, another thing I want to kind of hone in on that I think Boulevard does exceptionally well is the reporting aspect from commissions utilization. Then this is, like the back end. So end stuff. So talk to us a little bit about that, because I’ve been on this utilization kick for a while, because it’s been jaw dropping on the information I’m getting. But talk to us about that.
I love that, because for so many years, like working in the device world, utilization was the metric that ruled my life. I like checked it obsessively every single day, and was kind of psychotic about it, because that was, you know, revenue was great, but if I wasn’t utilizing my machines over preferably, 90% of the time, I wasn’t very happy. So, yeah, the reporting aspect of Boulevard is something that wins over a lot of business minded people really easily, because, if you’ve worked in other platforms or old tech, I’ve, you know, I spent hours of my life trying to pull, you know, simple revenue reports or simple KPI reports for staff, or, you know, even utilization and. And having unintegrated or not streamlined tech, it’s kind of impossible. So if, like, your scheduling system isn’t integrated with your point of sale system, it’s pretty hard to do all of that, because you’re having to basically combine all of these reports and do a lot of manual calculations. So with Boulevard, the thing that that people love is it’s all in one you just go into your reports tab. You customize what you want. You know, you can get really segmented with your data. So, you know, seeing what your your membership average spend is or utilization is, versus your non member. Or, you know, seeing how certain staff are retaining clients compared to other staff members. That was always, you know, staff performance and development is something that I was always super passionate about. So being able to sit down with a provider and say, hey, look, your revenue per hour is, you know, 25% lower than other injectors at your same level of experience. Like, let’s see how we can increase that. Or let’s focus on some some tips, whether it’s, you know, hey, let’s add more units to your injections at the time of service, so that no more not as many people are coming back in for complimentary touch ups. Or, you know, let’s look at what we can can add on to your services to increase that revenue. So I think reporting is probably one of the most important aspects of owning a business, in terms of understanding your numbers, business acumen is pretty, pretty sparse in this industry, just because it’s been so underserved for so long, we’ve kind of just been winging it so as it grows more and more it’s It’s very vital to be able to have a robust reporting system and to keep a keep a really close eye on it, be monitoring it, use it as a kind of guiding light for your business, and give that, give those numbers to your staff. I always feel like owners are sometimes hesitant to share out, like, here’s what we actually made this month. Or I don’t want my staff, like seeing our revenue, knowing how much we’re bringing in, or what they’re bringing in. I just want them to know these specific numbers. But like, hey, I want all my staff to know this is the goal that we’re setting, and let’s try and surpass that, or at least get there. And the expectation is we work as a team to get that. So I think knowledge is power in any arena of life, and the more that you know, the better you’re going to be able to succeed. So that’s that’s my perspective on it and what I’ve seen. And I think, you know, you see it from all of the different data points, and you’ve done so much analysis on different kind of powerhouses in the industry, you know, pulling from Terry Ross, skytail, am spa, those are the, you know, the big players. They have that data. So pulling it together, knowing those things, is just, it’s huge.
It is, I mean, it’s, you know, you see more and more companies coming out with data now around, like benchmark reports or industry updates. And, you know, I’ve been on the hunt for that data for a while. You can get it from like gal Derma or Allergan. You know, that’s public, but if it’s the data and benchmark reports that are coming out now are amazing. You know, I’ve Matt, I have, like I’ve said, on a couple other episodes, I’ve just dissected them. In fact, I brought them all together, and I’ve put them all into one segment and kind of built the chat GDPs tool around it. So
gold just basically mining gold over here, making a new form of currency. That’s what
I’m trying. Yeah, that’s what I’m doing. We got a we get the new cryptocurrency of data in the med spa space.
It is, it’s, I tell people it’s, data is a form of currency, knowing what the actual metrics are. It’s, it’s, seriously the most valuable thing. It’s,
it makes the world go round. It’s interesting. I mean, it’s,
yeah, I could. I could kind of tell you any benchmark, or what failure success looks like, or what industry you know, where it’s really interesting. I’ve had a lot of fun with it. And so if anybody’s curious to know where you’re at, feel free to drop me a note if you want. I have had a lot of fun with this tool, like super early mornings, late nights. Maybe, you know, sounds kind of boring, but I can be a geek in art sometimes.
No, it’s, I’m like, the when you told me about this, I was like, this is, this is game changer. This is, like, everyone’s gonna want to get their hands on this, because it’s so much packed into a tool. It’s
huge. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s amazing. It’s a lot of fun. And it like, goes into like, what, what is good SEO, what’s bad SEO, what’s great patient acquisition, patient lifetime, value, what is, what are the private equity companies looking for? For, like, retention, for patient base, for EBITDA, it’s. Is mind blowing. And so yeah, if anybody’s interested, feel free to reach out. I’m happy to talk to you guys through it. And one of the things that really kind of was most shocking was utilization. So I’m glad that you touched on that. And so for the listeners out there, guys, if, if, when we say utilization, and you’re like, What are you talking about? It’s basically, how efficient is your practice running per provider, per hour per room, and with a cool product like Boulevard, or, you know, something with a robust reporting engine. You can see this because you have your providers in there. You have how many hours you’re open. You have how many rooms are in there, devices like and you can just click a button and see it. It’s like, oh, there it is. You don’t have to do all this math, right? That’s like talking about a time save my gosh, these are questions that a strategic buyer or private equity group is going to ask you if you are ever going to sell. Maybe that’s not today, or maybe it’s not 10 years, but it’s at some point. There is some point there will be a transaction within your practice.
Everyone’s wants an end game. No one wants to be doing this forever. Eventually, we all want to retire and be on the beach in Florida somewhere. So I tried that. Yeah, you’re living that right now. You just held the chat GPT of med, spa data.
You’re like our Elon,
just building stuff to change our lives. But, yeah, no, I think, I think it’s interesting that a lot of businesses don’t always understand the importance of that. They’ll pay, you know, $300,000 for a machine. Maybe that’s a little exaggerated, but they think it’s okay. This is going to be the best machine ever. The profit on it is huge. But are they even utilizing it that well, you know, when I look into it, are you utilizing the machine more than 50% if not, it’s probably not the best machine to be paying a bunch on monthly or being making a bulk purchase on. So those are things that people are also going to be looking at, like when private equity comes in, if you have, you know, a machine that costs a lot, that you’re not using, they’re going to say, sell it and bring in something that’s higher utilization, or let’s devote marketing spend to it. If it is something that we think can be successful, my vote is, usually, if it’s not working, then sell it, especially if you’re still making a payment on it. But yeah, it’s those are numbers. You have to know,
yeah, yeah, it’s, it’s so true. I mean, you made a comment earlier, too about how important it is, like, where people don’t have their booking tied to the POS. Oh, yeah, I see that still. You know where, for example, they’ll use square online booking, and then they’ll use an EMR for their POS, and they’re wondering why they are struggling in terms of getting the information they need. But they love square, and they love their EMR, and they don’t want to use their EMR because they have really good rates at Square. And you’re missing the point, you know, like, do the analysis on time and merchant fees, and then let’s talk
well. And the thing that people don’t realize is you might have a really good upfront rate. I always thought I had a really good rate. That was always, you know, sellers are there to sell. They’re there to tell you you’re getting the best deal possible. And then you actually get your rates analyzed by, you know, an independent party, or by someone who knows how to look at rates. And you’re like, Wait, my effective rates actually, like, a whole percentage higher than what I thought. But, you know, I spent hours reconciling between a payment processor, my scheduling tool, my EMR and, I mean, I’ve probably made over a 500 different phone calls to patients being like, hey, my front desk girl accidentally typed in a number wrong on the point of sale. We’re actually going to have to ring you up for 500 more dollars than we initially ran your card through. Most people, if that that don’t have don’t want to pay that, they’re going to be like, Yeah, I’m not going to give you my card information if it’s not on file. So it’s really a disservice to your business if you’re not using integrated platforms, you know, in the world of technology now you would, you would never have, you know, not have your banking app on your phone. You’re gonna want to log into wells, Fargo well, you’re, you know, on flying or, you know, on the subway to work, whatever it may be. So I think not using integrated tools is just it’s such a disservice. It’s so inefficient. So definitely, even if you love something, if it’s not increasing efficiency bringing in money, then you’ve got to look at a change. Yeah,
do an analysis on it. I mean, just like you said, you know, you spend hours like trying to tie the data points together find out a patient was charged incorrectly, making that phone call Talk about a bad patient experience. She’s probably not coming
back exactly. Well, I even think, you know, if I’m seeing someone manually type something into a point of sale when I’m checking out. I’m like, oh, hopefully it’s correct. Like, there it’s it’s so much more of a cumbersome client experience when it’s just not automatic. They walk up to the front, their services, their products, everything is just on a screen for them. They’re able to sign if they take gratuity, they’re able to leave gratuity. Like I even, you know, think to at the hair salon, like, if I’m leaving gratuity, and I notice that it’s just a bulk amount, and they’re not separating my products out from my service, and I’m leaving, you know, 25% gratuity on expensive hair products, not the best client experience. So you have to have a system that does all of it well, that that’s
going to pull into your P, L as well, right? You need to do it like, and that’s like with Terry Ross and her team. Talk a lot about is, you know, having everything separate, I know, like setting it up, may sound easier, like, because you can just group everything, but you’re never going to find out what you’re selling, how effective it is, what your true cogs are. You know, your margins, like anything, if you guys don’t group it and set it out in, Terry’s got numerous examples on that where she does a wonderful job getting into so if you guys actually haven’t, if you haven’t talked to Terry and her team or been to the forest Summit, it’s, they have three shows next year. I went to it in Fort Lauderdale. It was, it was phenomenal, because it’s all business, all business, all numbers, all tech, all marketing, all P, L, like, it was just really, really a fun time, and I learned a lot Isaac
and Terry. I mean, Isaac and Terry, anyone who meets them knows they’re they’re just a wealth of knowledge. They’re awesome, and they’re very big powerhouses in the industry. So such a good event to network at.
Yep, I totally agree. And you know, the the other thing too, is, you know, the commissions on providers I hear a lot of times is, hey, I struggle with, you know, knowing what to pay them, or doing the reconciliation every month is very challenging. And, man, my office manager hates it because it takes her four or five hours. That’s a big thing too, right? You want that to be super easy, so I guess what I’m getting at, guys is it tech saves time and and it’s cheaper than time, right? We’re never gonna get the time that you put in, maybe to avoid investing in Tech because it’s scary or avoid and maybe you don’t want another monthly bill. You’re you’re actually just trading your time that is the most valuable asset on planet Earth, period, for not investing in it correctly. So I would encourage you guys to it again. You guys know my background and what I’m into. You know it was interesting before I know that we got to jump off here in a second. But what this was an interesting conversation I had the other day. Okay, so let me walk you through this one, Scott, you’ll, you’ll appreciate this one. I have a one of my team members that was on a call with with a customer, and I don’t, I’m not gonna say any names or any products or anything, but he asked me to join, and I actually really like to join some of these phone calls, because I really like to give value in education. And I get on the call and I start asking this woman questions. Great brand, expensive area. I think that the founder was a former doctor, has put a lot of money into this practice, okay, this new venture, this new practice, and I started asking her questions on her tech stack, and what her EMRs booking system, what you know her site’s built on, what phone systems they have, CRM systems, all the questions come to find out she had two EMRs. Okay, two EMRs, a separate system for charting, a separate system for booking. This is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. So I had died to bring it up. And this is recent, a different system for booking. She had her memberships combined, and then she had two different websites for two different locations, and then she was evaluating a CRM system. No, actually, no, she had purchased a CRM system, which was, I’ll name this one because it’s not a verticalized CRM. It was Zoho CRM, which is a B to B CRM system. Wow. And so I went through the list with her, and I’m like, Oh my gosh, we have a problem, massive, massive tech stack issue here. And the last thing I’m going to allow you to do is deploy marketing to a broken tech stack. This is beyond broken. And she was it was an interesting conversation. I think it was eye opening, but also daunting at the same time, because I, you know, it’s like education. First, I want to help you and. Yes, the only way we can truly help you is you have to clean this up. That was interesting, and I’m sure that was, I’m not on these calls a lot. I’m sure it happens a lot. So clean tech stack guys make it simple. Well, it’s
like, think of her. Change is scary. Regardless, we know it’s uncomfortable. Growth is generally uncomfortable, and it should be, but for someone like that, the change might be scary, but think about how much nicer her day to day and her business is going to run once she streamlines her tech stack and actually has an effective tech stack. All of her data right now is just everywhere, lost, basically it’s unusable at that point with her
marketing company. She was frustrated with her marketing company, and I said, you know, like, I
I’m sure you guys are mutually frustrated, yeah, I’m sure
they’re like, we can’t do a lot because there’s 17 platforms we have to try and use that aren’t specific to what we need to be doing.
Yeah, the Zoho one really threw me for a loop. I was that was the first for me.
Yeah, just get just text me that one. So
it was a wonderful product, wonderful product, but it’s a B to B product. It’s not a B to C product. You guys sell business to consumer. There is technology in the industry that’s designed for you as a practice owner. It’s super, super important. So, can I bring that up?
That’s a good story to end on. That’s it. Change is uncomfortable. Growth is uncomfortable, but it’s necessary. It’s necessary,
absolutely. So sometimes, you know, maybe this is a good time of year, you know, as if you guys are in a situation like that. Maybe it’s or, you know, if you have tech overlap, I’m seeing a lot of that right now too. If you can kill some tech and utilize your booking systems, your EHRs, your CRMs, your agency you’re working with and streamline things. You know from from now, we’re recording this at the end of the end of the year in 2024 late December, from now until January, it might be a good time while things are, you know, kind of maybe quiet around the house or whatever, to just kind of work on the business versus in the business and gear up for a very successful 25 because, you know, I think, like the ones that do a good job, invest correctly, have a good tech stack, they’re going to be The winners. And it’s not going to be like the Wild West, you know. Let’s call it from 2021 to 2023 Yeah, I feel like that was wild west. Crazy amount of growth. I think if you had a, if you were in an NP, if you will, or had a med supply for me, is making money. It’s going to change. We have to get smarter, and we have to use tech and invest correctly. So I’ll leave it at that. But sky, if, if you know the audience, wants to reach out to you, I know that you do a tremendous amount of education. I know that you’re at conferences like, where’s the best place for them to find you talk to us about that? Yeah.
So you can find me on join blvd.com and we have a ton of resources there. So Boulevard, we have a podcast that just released. We just did our first season. So we have some amazing med spa owners and industry thought leaders on there, and we’re going to continue that. There’s also always amazing blogs, case studies, a lot of stuff that I work on, just as resources to help you guys. And then Instagram, LinkedIn, we’ve got all of those good social sites. So definitely reach out if you guys have any questions. We love educating and working with you guys.
Perfect. So you guys have a check out Boulevard, check out sky up. She’s amazing. I’ve been super impressed getting to know her, and it’s cool to hear her from the provider standpoint and the tech standpoint, that’s really, really a cool skill set and talent to have, and super important for the industry. So thank you for for doing that. I think that the owners need it so much. But I’ll leave it at that, guys. It’s uh. If you guys found this episode valuable, you know, just do me a favor. Share it. If there’s a colleague, a friend, a you know, staff member that needs to hear it going in at 25 you know, I’d encourage you to share it with them. And then do me a favor if you haven’t taken the time to give me a rating. I’d love a rating on Spotify or Apple music would be great. I don’t ask for that a ton. And again, I want to generate all these episodes just to help you guys. That’s that’s the entire purpose here. So thank you guys so much for joining. Have a wonderful weekend until next time. Happy injecting you.