Latest / Beyond the Needle: The Aesthetics Business Podcast / How to Shift From Practitioner to Business Owner with Fiona Macaskill

Transcript

How to Shift From Practitioner to Business Owner with Fiona Macaskill · Beyond the Needle: The Aesthetics Business Podcast

• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Beyond the Needle, the Aesthetics Business Podcast.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Each week, I'm here to share real, actionable strategies and bring on expert guests to help you level up, attract more patients, and build a standout brand.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let's turn your passion into a thriving business together.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone and welcome back to Beyond the Needle.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Today's episode is a really important one, especially if you've ever felt like you're working flat out in your clinic but not seeing the growth, clarity, or consistency you expected.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm joined by Fiona McEskill, a business strategist with a seriously impressive background.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: She started, scaled, and exited businesses across multiple industries, spent five years at SkinVeva as head of academy and clinic, and has worked with countless aesthetic clinics and practitioners to help them move from feeling stuck to actually running like a proper business.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what we're getting into today.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because one of the biggest gaps in this industry isn't clinical skill, it's business understanding.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: So many practitioners start with passion, talent, and great intentions, but end up overwhelmed, underpaid, and unsure why things aren't quite working the way they expected.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: This conversation is all about changing that.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're talking about what it really takes to move from an expensive hobby to a profitable, structured clinic, why so many practitioners avoid their numbers and why that's holding them back, and how to actually create a clear plan for growth instead of just hoping things will improve.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: We also get into the reality of hiring, the fear that comes with scaling, and the operational gaps that cost clinics time, money, and energy every single day.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing I really wanted to explore in this episode because I know how common it is, is that feeling that Fiona describes of constantly pushing a boulder uphill in your business.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Fiona shares a really powerful perspective on why that happens and how to navigate those inevitable peaks and dips without losing momentum.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're ready to get more clarity, take more control, and start treating your clinic like the business it needs to be, this episode is going to give you a lot to think about.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: As always, if you enjoy this podcast, please do subscribe to be notified when new episodes go live.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: And don't forget to leave me a little review.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's get into it.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hi Fiona, thank you so much for joining me today on the Beyond the Needle podcast.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: So you are a business and marketing coach specializing in aesthetics.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are today.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I've got quite a mixed background in the sense that I started in television, started up as a dog's body in television and then became a producer and director.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I will I was always light and fluffy.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: I worked on programs like Stars in the Rise and You've Been Framed and things like that.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that was my original background.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely loved it.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Had a baby, which is actually something that come across all the time is people kind of have a life shift, don't they?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because they have children and they have to think about where their life is going.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that kind of happened to me.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I had a baby, managed to get go back to television, but it was really hard doing the hours because I worked in London, lived in Milton Keynes, and it was lost to travel.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Had a second baby and just realised I couldn't keep that lifestyle up.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't do what I wanted to do.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: But equally, I wanted to replace my income with something I enjoyed.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And as it happened, I did a programme, I was juicing a program on this morning, within this morning, about starting something, a business on something you feel passionate about.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time, completely out of left field, the thing that I love and still love is fabrics and upholstery and curtains.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, oh, I'm going to do a business around that.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I hadn't really thought about it.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't really planned it.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought that's a good idea.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Swapped my garage into a kind of work from home station.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Thought I'll make curtains.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Realised I was not going to make a fortune by making curtains myself.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of going round, trying to sell them to people.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I grew my business from there.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, I got contracts with designers because there were lots of show houses around in Milton Keynes, got contracts with designers, got a team of wonderful women.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: They made the curtains, sold them into the designers.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: People came into the show houses, saw the curtains, went, oh, fabulous.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Buy the curtains from them.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I grew the business that way.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, but it was a question of evolving.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that happens a lot in aesthetics.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of fell into it thinking it would be easier to run a home business than I thought.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Realised I couldn't be profitable doing it that way, had to find a different way of being profitable.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was slightly lucky and unlucky in the sense that my husband got a job in Yorkshire.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had to make a decision what I was doing with the business.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided to sell it.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I sold the business.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was very lucky in the sense that actually that was in 2008, just before we had a housing crash, 2007, 2008.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So in fact, my business would have really, really struggled had I not sold it by that point.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: So although I kind of tell my husband that, you know, he made me sell it, actually it was a very good thing that I did sell it, moved on.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: But that led me into a different sort of world.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: I arrived up in Yorkshire thinking, whoa, I'll start another business again, forgot what caused babies, had another one, and realized now three young children, what do I do?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I think that in some ways that next eight to ten years made me in the sense that I worked for loads and loads of different businesses.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I did project management, I did coordination, I found great speakers, I did all sorts of things.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I pulled on all my stuff from working in television as a researcher and was able to do all these fabulous projects for multiple, multiple businesses.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason that's good, it's given me a really vast knowledge of how you run all sorts of businesses from bricks and mortar businesses, which most aesthetic businesses are, to online businesses and therefore online strategies.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it gave me a chance to to kind of grow and develop my own thought process without actually the pressure of being entirely in charge of the whole thing, you know, doing loads of uh loads of projects.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Luckily, one of the people that I did a project for was uh was a director of SkinViva, and so I started doing some work for SkinViva, and then eventually I was their head of academy and clinic for a good period of time.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you know they did 250 to 300 paying appointments a month through the clinic, and we did it somewhere between 20 and 30 courses coming through each month.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it was, you know, fabulous team, fabulous people, you know, great experience.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, that gave me my next passion, which was doing aesthetics businesses.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I realized, and this is important when you're starting a business, the real when I thought, gosh, I don't want to travel from Yorkshire to across the Pennines to Manchester anymore.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided that I would leave that role.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'd already started doing some coaching with people because I realized that all of these wonderful people were coming through and doing courses.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them did the courses, great clinical skills, did more and more courses.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Couldn't turn those clinical skills into a meaningful business because it's like two halves of a brain, you know, this half is functioning beautifully in a clinical way.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we want people to be clinically really, really strong, but they didn't have the other half of the brain working well, the business, the marketing part of the brain.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very difficult to have a thriving business if you don't learn the other set of skills to go with the clinical skills.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: It comes up in conversations all the time.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, with guests who've come on here, you know, and spoken to me who are practitioners to have their own clinics, because they've spent so long, you know, normally working in the in the NHS, they've never had to learn those business skills, and then suddenly they're thrown into it and they have to know how to market themselves and how to understand the figures and you know how to make those important business decisions.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I mean, people like yourself are obviously very, very important part of that.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, what does your role at SkinViva teach you about what makes a clinic succeed or struggle?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, funnily enough, I mean, obviously SkinViva was was a very successful prize and it'd been going for a while.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what what it made me realise is it's it's very it's all very well kind of stepping into a business and running it when it's a successful business and you can strategize in a different way.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I do work with quite a lot of businesses now that are already very well established and they're looking for different points of growth.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that might be increasing staffing, that might be slight diversification, that might be developing a training school alongside the clinic.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: So running an established business has a whole different set of problems to running a startup business.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what it taught me is that all of the skills that I'd picked up before as a business person, you could very much apply to an established business.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I also realized that there were key fundamentals that people should at least try and walk away with when they do the first training to do, you know, to do with their numbers, to do with their systems, to to do with their mindset, really.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they're they're the key things that I realized were missing from most people.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: They would fall into it as having that passion, a bit like me starting my first business.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love fabrics and curtains and upholstery and whatever.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, without a plan, which I didn't have at the time, developed one, but they often fall into thinking I'll do it without the plan of where they want to be.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Where you know, people talk about a two-year plan and a five-year plan, and you know, that's all very well and good.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's that feels like a long way off.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: But you should absolutely have a 12-month plan.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, decide where you want to be in 12 months' time.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you don't have a plan, you know, it it's kind of a bit like somebody handing you a map and and sort of say, right, fight, find your way to where you want to go.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, oh, well, what where where am I going?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: What route am I going down?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's there's there's no point to it, is there?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So decide where your destination is going to be in 12 months' time.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Then think, oh, if I'm there, what do I need to achieve to get from there, from here to there?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and actually, a lot can happen in a business in 12 months, you know, if you've got the right tools in place and you're doing the right things and you've got that plan, a business can really, really grow.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen people go from you, you know, very small clinics to having multiple team members within a year.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you often talk, and I think when we spoke before we did this podcast, you'd mentioned it about clinics starting as kind of a passion or hobby, but needing to evolve into a proper business.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that and like you say, that's where they stuck because they've not got that other half of the kind of the brain.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, what what are the signs that someone is stuck in that expensive hobby stage?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody assumes that the expensive hobby stage is just like the first few months.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen business businesses that have been in business for five years and they are still in that expensive hobby stage, which is a long time to be in it.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the signs are just that you are working continually.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know that you may be still in the NHS and you're you every moment you're thinking about your business, every weekend you're doing your business, you you feel like you are making some traction, but actually you're not taking any money out of your business.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems at the end of the month as much money's gone out as come in.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, ultimately you are running an expensive hobby if you're not paying yourself, if you're not making any profit within your business, it is just an expensive hobby, not a business of any type.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why people get stuck in that phase is because they are scared to make a plan, they are scared to name some goals, and they aren't happy about looking at their numbers.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really funny because the phrase I hear a lot from people is, oh, well, I'm I'm not very good at the numbers.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not I'm just I'm just not very good at the numbers.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, Do you know what?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: The truth is most people aren't very good at the numbers, but we have this, I think it comes back to school.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: In school, it's kind of like maths is really hard, and you know, we've got to do quadratic equations or or whatever.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Business numbers are nothing like this.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're adding, you know, adding taking away percentages that you know essentially that's what you're doing in your business.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, in today's world, you know, there are so many ways using AI that can help you with your numbers, but it isn't complicated maths, it is just usually a question of adding taking away in percentages.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you're looking at with the business maths.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it it's a fear factor, really, more than anything that stops people from looking at the numbers.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: It stops them looking at their profitability, it stops them looking at their average sale, it stops them looking at their fixed costs.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is a fear-based thing.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not to do with the fact that they're not very good at it.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why people don't do that first year goal setting and planning.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's it's um if you don't plan, if you don't name your goals, if you don't work out your numbers, if you don't succeed, you can actually kid yourself that, well, if I had tried, if I had done that, if I had, then you know it it might have been different, but I didn't.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, it didn't work out and whatever.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it almost gives you a bit of an out.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas the second you start saying, right, I am planning on having 10k months by month 12, which means I need to reverse engineer it, which means that I've got three days a week to work in my business.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: How many appointments can I see in my business?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: What is my average sale for every person that comes through the door?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what is my profitability for all of the treatments I do?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, based on all of that mix-up, and obviously, you know, I do this in much more detail with people because they have to look at their fixed cost allegation against each treatment and all of that kind of thing.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: But once people start doing that and going, gosh, actually, I could see 16 people a week based on my availability, that would give me an average sale of X, I'm X amount profitable.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, gosh, right, now I can see that my gross income by week, by month six would be this, it would be this by eight, and then it would be this by 12.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you can work out exactly where you need to be.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Then of course the big thing is right, if I'm if I'm building that up, if I need to see 12 people a week, what do I need to do marketing-wise to ensure that I've got enough leads coming through the door to be able to convert 12 people?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: So what's my conversion rate?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Am I really good at converting people?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or am I a bit kind of like, I've got to, oh, I've got to sell to them.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So do I need to work on my selling part as well?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because I might be great at attracting them.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: But if I can't sell to them, then I have to do something about that.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So when you make a plan, when you decide how many people I need to see to get to this point further down the line, you it you start asking the questions of what marketing do I need to do?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: What's going to stop me from converting them?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: What average sale do I need?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: All of these questions start popping up and you can start being business-minded about it.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it starts to get actually quite exciting because it's like little parts of the puzzle start coming together.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like unwrapping little parcels and going, right, okay, I'll work on that then now.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll work on that now and I'll work on that.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're one of those businesses that has been doing your expensive hoppy for five years, you've got a lot of knowledge in your head about what's working and what's what not what's not working.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: What you haven't done is held a mirror up in front of your face and gone, what am I good at?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: What am I bad at?
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: What, you know, what's happening, what's not happening, which is one of the reasons why I do I do offer people what's called a clinic MOT.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because we take our car every month, don't we, to have a every year to have an MOT, a check out what's a diagnostic on it and what are the advisories on it, and all of those kind of things.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it tells us what we need to fix, short-term, long-term, and so on.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do that with your clinic.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Come and have a clinic MOT because you look at all the different elements and have a diagnostic around, right?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I have my customer journey, which is so important, which isn't a whole series of random tactics.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's one long pathway.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have to work out what that pathway looks like in a smooth way.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Work out, have a diagnostic, work out what's working, what's not working, what needs to fix, be fixed.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you can do that in a scorecard fashion, which means that you can look at each element, give yourself a score on each element, which is what I do with people.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if if you're great at attracting and you're scoring a four or a five, fantastic.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, if you're scoring a one at converting, there's not much point in being great at attracting, is there?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you might be scoring a four at attracting and a four at converting, but when you get to the point where you've had the treatment or they've done it, if you're absolutely pans at hanging on to them after that, then you've got you're in this horrible world where you're constantly attracting and constantly attracting, and you've got no relief in your business at all because you're not hanging on to these wonderful people.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to look at this whole journey and score yourself across it.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: But what's great about the score system is you can go doing all right there, I'm doing all right there.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's where I need to work on, or I'm great there, I'm great there, I'm great there, or that's where I need to work on.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it does give you a point of reference, and everybody needs to hold that mirror up and be and be brave.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Stop looking at the competition, stop worrying about what your competition is doing, worry about your own wonderful journey.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and where you're going.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love that.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Clinic MOT, that sounds amazing.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like everybody should do that once a year.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: So do I because there's yeah, and there's so many elements to a business, right?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's always going to be one that you could be doing a little bit better.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Always going to be one.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's so, yeah, so powerful.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: So if someone's listening to this and they're thinking, okay, I'm definitely in that hobbyist stage, what are the first mindset shifts that they can make if they want to move from hobbyist to business owner?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's is as I said, the biggest one I say to people is stop looking at the competition.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because actually that paralyzes people.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: It really, really paralyzes people.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you start going, I can't be like them, or I can't do what they're doing, and and it and it stops you and it frightens you.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very difficult in today's world because everybody puts so much energy into social media, which I could talk all day about.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've got strong opinions on.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: But if you start looking at what everybody else is doing, it will stop you doing you.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I'm YDY coaching, which is is a bit kind of like a bit trite, but it is you do you because essentially everybody is doing roughly the same thing.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some people might have slightly more advanced treatments or a different device, whatever, but essentially most clinic owners are doing roughly the same thing.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: So if we if we accept that, then we have to say, well, the other differences are potentially location, whether you're a home clinic, whether you're a flashy, lovely on the high street or singing and dancing clinic.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: So they're the other things.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Some people say, Oh, well, it's because I give people a great customer experience.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I go, Yeah.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, most medical professionals or people running fabulous skincare clinics, most of them are giving their customers a really good customer experience.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: They care about them, they, you know, they worry about aftercare, all of those kinds of things.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that doesn't really make you stand out.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that you have that nobody else has is you and your audience.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're thinking, right, how do I take this from a passion to you know an expensive hobby to a profitable business?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then you have to look at two things.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, stop looking at the competition, and then I have to look at two things.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: One is what do you bring to the market as a as a person?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: What's your secret source as a clinician?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And who are you offering that secret source to?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Stop randomly trying to give it to everybody because not everybody wants it.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we all know the pain points for somebody of my age looking in the mirror and deciding what I need are so different to the pain points that somebody else might need who's 20 years younger than me.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: But how can you, as a clinician, truly, truly show that you understand all of those pain points for everybody?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as you're a growing clinic, maybe you can, because maybe there are a multiple of number of clinicians working in it and you've all got a different kind of expertise or a different voice.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so, as a larger clinic, you can start offering it out to lots of people.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, if you want to move your business into a profitable, unique place, you have to take your own secret source, your own USP, combine that with who you're offering it to, and then come up with the correct messaging.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And take time to do that.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just go, right, I'm just gonna do what I've always been doing.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Stop, decide who it is you're offering to, what it is you have to offer.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there are there are lots of examples of that.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: For example, you know, as a you know, a woman of my age, I am unlikely to go to a clinician who is 30.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I don't think there are there are some amazing clinicians out there who are 30, but a woman of my age, I am going to struggle to sit in front of them and tell them all my particular issues and the fact that my might be sliding into my jawline and what can they do about it?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel menopausal and all of those kind of things.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my comfort level isn't necessarily going to be with a 30-year-old clinician, but my comfort level is probably going to be more aligned with somebody not necessarily of my age, but who I felt is perhaps in the same phase of life.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it may be to do with an age thing, it may be to do with an emotional thing.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: I have an amazing clinician I work with, and actually she she specializes with people who perhaps have some.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Slight facial difference, and and so they're looking for a clinician who really wants to help them unpack their emotions around that and come up with really fabulous solutions that make them feel really comfortable.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and she speaks to them in her marketing, she speaks to them, and people, you know, flood to her from far and wide.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you actually get away from this trap of you know, the average person what travels five to seven miles to see their clinician.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: But isn't it amazing if people try travel 25, 30, 40 miles to come and see you because they can hear you're saying the thing that nobody else is saying, you are speaking to them directly.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, of course, wouldn't you travel to go and see that person?
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely would, because they really understand you.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that is that is the starting place, really understanding what you're offering and who you're offering it to.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then after that, you have to do your numbers.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: That has to be the next point.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: You have to understand what are your fixed costs.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it when I randomly say that to people, people generally go, Oh, I think it's around, it is rare somebody can say it's£1,274.59p.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I need people to say exactly what their fixed cost allocation is.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you went to bed with flu next month and couldn't do any work, what would you have to pay out every month if you if you couldn't do anything else?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, people have to understand that.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then this is the big piece that if you're in that hobby stage that people really struggle with is doing a full profitability exercise.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because usually the reason why people aren't profitable is because their pricing structure isn't correct.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was based on the prices that everybody else is charging around them rather than actually doing their own numbers.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: But often they're offering treatments which just are making no money at all.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there might be a route to market to bring people into the clinic, but that they're they're skewed that they're doing 70% of those treatments and 30% of the profitable treatments.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, of course, generally speaking, they're not profitable.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it's treatment menu and going, what's it costing me to deliver it?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: How much am I paying myself to deliver it?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what are all my product costs?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: What's my fixed cost allocation against every treatment that I'm doing in clinic?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what am I left over before tax and if I end up paying tax, you know?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I have clinics who are over the VAT threshold and still aren't profitable, yet they're paying VAT because being people in a non-profitable way, they've hit the VAT threshold, gone over it, having to pay a VAT bill, and yet they're actually still not taking money out of the business themselves.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to not be scared.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why I do make people cry when I do this exercise sometimes because it's such a shocking thing, but it is a business-changing moment for most people because you suddenly go, Okay, that's what I'm doing wrong.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it inspires people to not be scared to put up the prices, it inspires people to go and get better deals on things, it inspires people to look at their business in a different way, and almost the next month people become more profitable.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like an almost instant fix in terms of it.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Helps you to be brave.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, after a little cry.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you get a lot of businesses who are totally unaware how pro unprofitable their business is at that moment until they've done that exercise?
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Even even bigger clinics.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can grow a clinic based off of very little profit because you get seduced by the idea that, oh, I'm really busy, my diary's full.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm seeing people.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I saw this thing last Black Friday, which was I was a bit shocked by.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I I always try and be, I mean, I I absolutely don't sit in judgment of how people run their businesses.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: I I go back to when I ran my first business and kind of like sewing away in my garage thinking this was my route to the future.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, what are you doing, Fiona?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: You've given up a really lucrative career in television.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: You now sat in your garage, your children are in the house with your husband, and you're sewing these curtains madly without any hope of making any money of them at all.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't sit in judgment to the fact that people are in this position, but that choice of trying to move out of it is so important.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you do get seduced by the idea of, oh, I've been given this contract, or I've been given this, I'm seeing these amount of people.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you get really busy, and then because you're busy, you look at the detail even less because you're staying up with it.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there was this woman I I was watching doing Black Friday, and I I read this in December time, and it was all quite, in fact, it wasn't, it was the uh November before last.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought she was posting on how she was so busy in December and she was on her knees, she was so busy, and all of this kind of thing.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking it was at a time when people weren't as busy as they might expect it to have had expected to be in December.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I was thinking, I always go and have a little snoop and think, I wonder how how you've done that.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: What are you doing that is different to what everybody else is doing?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: But when I deep dived on it, I realised that over the Black Friday period, so in November, she had sold all her treatments at 45% off.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: So of course she was madly busy end of November into December, and she was on her knees busy and she was posting about how busy she was and and whatever.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and I thought to myself, that is that's so smoke and mirrors to to everybody watching her, they're probably going, gosh, that's amazing.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: She's doing so well.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: And from a business perspective, I was thinking she has worked like nothing on earth for that whole of that month, and I bet you she didn't make a penny in profit out of it.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And how how demoralizing is that to give your heart and soul to something who works so hard and to actually look at the bottom line at the end of the month and go, right, okay, I've I've I've worked like that, I haven't paid myself, I've paid for all of that product, I've seen all of those people, I've probably not done all the nice Christmassy things that I wanted to do because I've been working so hard and yet I haven't got a profit.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, I don't know her circumstances.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: She might there may be something magical that she's done that I don't know about that made her profitable.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're giving 45% off your treatments, it's a lot.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a lot.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to avoid that.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go again, that comes down to what am I offering?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I offering it to, what's my secret source, you know, what what can I charge for these treatments?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: What do I need to be charging for these treatments?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get to the point of what does my overall profitability look like?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it is different for other people.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Some people might be 45% profitable, some people might only be 25% profitable, and that that all depends on where you're based and you know, all of the fixed costs that go into it and how many devices you've got that you're paying off big loans for, and you know, all of that kind of thing.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: But you you have to hold that mirror up and check what you're doing and don't just be a busy fool because that's life, life's too short to be a busy fool.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Going back to the secret source and or the subject of the secret source and understanding your target target audience.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: I talk a lot about niching and the power of niching in a specific area because, like you say, you become well known as the go-to person for that specific thing rather than trying to speak to anybody and everybody who might be interested in necessity treatments and how that can help you stand out.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is that the kind of thing that you mean when you talk about secret source?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, like becoming the go-to expert for specific treatment.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, maybe non-surgical rhinoplasty or really natural, beautiful lip filler, or full-face rejuvenation, you know, is that the kind of thing that you that you mean?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and it does really, really vary from person to person as what your secret source is and what you're offering.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, you know, if it's full-face rejuvenation that can take a while to develop, you know, as you're developing your clinical skills, then you're you're kind of you develop into perhaps the clinician you want to to be.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: But then equally, I do know some clinicians who those people who come to me, they they do the courses and they come to me straight away for business and marketing.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, you can plan for that sort of thing really well because they they haven't spent kind of a couple of years going around in circles trying to work out, you know, what it is they're doing.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: So some people come to me directly alongside the training and say, right, this is where we're going for what we're going to.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if they've done training that allows them to go straight into full-face harmonization and really understand it, that can work really nicely from minute one.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: For a lot of clinicians, it does take a while to get to that.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, you know, depending on where you're based, I I mean, I have a uh wonderful clinician I work with, and uh, she wears a hijab.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so her her absolute passion in life is to bring aesthetics to her own community because she said, you know, there are in within her community, there are masses of wonderful women who want to access treatment, but they want to access treatment from the right clinician who who she who they feel are is is coming from the place that really understands them and and what they're trying trying to achieve.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so so sometimes it's about that, sometimes it is to do with liquid rhinoplasty, something like that, you know, that you you feel like you've developed a new technique around or something really interesting around.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: But often it's difficult to get down to a specific thing like that early on, but you can get to uh a more niched place, which is it it might be based on the person that you're the age of type of person.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it might be to do with menopausal women, it might be or mums, you know, if you're a if you're a mum, yeah, in your thirties, you know, it might be other mums in their thirties who want to prevent signs of aging or feel that they look tired because they're not sleeping very much.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it doesn't have to be specific treatments or facial areas, yeah.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And for some people it does develop that way, but the other interesting thing is that I think people worry about niching down, don't they?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because they worry that they're cutting out all the possible.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: That was the other piece I was gonna say to you.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and actually you should never worry about that because actually niching down to begin with is more about being able to really align your messaging in terms of what you're offering and who you're offering it to and helping people understand that you understand them.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what the niching down is really, really useful for.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's so much less exhausting doing your marketing on that basis than it is trying to market everything to everybody.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: But interestingly, my daughter would always go to my clinician because my daughter's 26, but she would always go to my clinician because I would recommend somebody to her and say, What, you know, what do you think, Mum?
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say, All right, you know, if you want some microneedling, go, you know, go to this person and do it.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just the same way is you know, I might recommend somebody to my mother.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I trust them.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so that happens a lot anyway.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just because you're talking to your audience out there from a marketing point of view, actually, from a word of mouth of referral point of view, you will actually get quite a mixed bag of people because people talk to people, don't they?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so that personal recommendation, that social proof, also brings people into your business.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, they recommend other people on and so on.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so you actually don't just end up with one type of person, you end up with a whole variety of per people.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: So don't be scared that that's what you kind of you're boxing yourself into a corner.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, because there's a saying in marketing, isn't there, that if you're trying to speak to everybody, you're actually speaking to no one.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can pick one specific type of person who you really resonate with and you connect with your messaging is going to be much more powerful and it's going to be heard by the right people.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, are there any common mistakes that you often see practitioners make?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: I know we've obviously covered a couple of them, making in their early years of running a clinic that you would say you see, you know, common themes of when you speak to people.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: So this one's going to sound controversial, but doing too much clinical training and not actually putting the clinical training that you're doing into practice.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, clinical training is so important.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is important that you do the right clinical training, it's important that you feel competent.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: But the clinical bit's the easy bit for most practitioners.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's their comfort zone, it's what they can do really, really naturally.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so when they feel stuck or they think, oh, I need more clients, their go-to is to do another course because they think somehow that's going to bring them in more clients.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it isn't, if you are competent in something, by all means, I want you to develop those skills and continue to develop them.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's really important, but isn't going to be the thing that solves your business issues.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, learn the business side of things, don't do more clinical courses.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do clinical courses, more clinical courses if it's a route to market in the sense that you're being asked for tear troughs or liquid rhinoplastics or temples.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then, of course, if your people that you're speaking to need those services and you don't do them, go and get that training, really important, and and develop from there.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: But don't do them just because that's your comfort zone to do them.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the first mistake, because you can spend thousands doing that and still have no more patients coming through the clients coming through the door.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, that's not that's not ideal.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that is one of the biggest mistakes.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: The other mistake I see is people taking on big pieces of kit or devices too soon because it is a burden every month to pay off to service a loan for something that you don't haven't developed a route to market for.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's so burdensome.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And trying to stay positive, it can be can be one of your biggest challenges in business.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Keeping positive while you're pushing that boulder up the hill.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it is one of the things I say to people all the time for a long time in business, you are literally heaving this boulder up the hill.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you think almost any time that boulder is going to run, roll back and squash you flat, go the wrong way, and you're just gonna be lying there, oh Lord, what have I done?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you're pushing that boulder up the hill.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you are adding more weight by adding loans to it that you actually don't have a route to market for, that that is just layering on on the weight and and the pressure.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately you have to stay strong enough to keep pushing that boulder right up to the top of the hill.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then the funniest bit about that is you have a really happy moment for a period of time where you push the boulder off the other side and you think, Oh, happy days, my business is working, this is all coming together, and you have this sense of relief and it's rolling down the hill and you're chasing after it going, this is so exciting, so exciting.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: What happens is that boulder ends up in another ditch.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it might be a ditch that's higher up, but it might be a better ditch, it might be a more abundant ditch, but it ultimately it'll be in another type of ditch that you then have to pick the boulder up and push it up the next hill.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the next hill will be to do with growth, it might be to do with bringing staff into your business, it might be to do with diversifying, and then you have to gather yourself together again and push it back up the hill again.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: Off you go, back up that hill again.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's what business is.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's pushing it up, get a little bit of relief, down again, push it up.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so, from a mindset point of view, I want people to start off with the idea that this is a marathon, it is not a sprint.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: It drives me insane.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm too old to be putting up with people that I see on social media mainly that say, do these seven things and you'll have a seven-figure clinic in seven weeks, and it'll be absolutely marvelous, and people fall for it all the time.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it is rarely a sprint to the finish line.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is rarely that you everything will line up and it will happen beautifully.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time, it is a marathon, not a sprint.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be equipped for that marathon.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have the right clothing, the right nutrition, the right support team, you have to have all of that, and you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And some days it'll feel like just a big toe you're managing to get in front of the other.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: But keep keep going, keep keep going forward and pick up a bit of speed, and you will absolutely get there if you run that marathon and just keep moving forward.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it's having that mental capacity to go, right?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm keeping on moving forward.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna do what I need to do.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to take on more burdensome loans or devices that I need to do.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to learn to sell the services that I already have.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to look at my whole journey, work out where my weak spots are, plug those weak spots, and I'm going to do multiple layers of marketing because the other mistake I see is that people get on board with their business and they spend 90% of the time doing social media and 10% of the time doing other marketing tactics.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, social media, fabulous.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: We all have to do it.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: People are terrified by it most of the time.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: So again, that can be impairing to getting going.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it is, you know, fantastic people like you around who, you know, have real expertise and knowledge in that.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are some fantastic people around.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can learn in the early days to do loads of it yourself.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: So absolutely, it is a a route to market, but it isn't the fast burn that everybody thinks it is.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: You don't just hop up onto social media and then you have this wealth of people running towards you because you've got all the scrollers, you've got to get through all the scrollers before you find the people who are looking for you.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I also know with SEO, obviously, it is a quicker route to market now because people can search you and find you and all of that kind of thing.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it is still not a gallop across the finish line social media.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if that is the only form of marketing you're doing, that is a mistake.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because people on social media to be able to tend to be the out-of-market people, and you need to find some of those in-market people, you need to be putting yourself in front of those people who are actively searching all the time for you.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, because they're closer to the buying process.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: So if this is for you about getting bottoms on seats and selling treatments and starting to bring money into your company, you have got to find a route to market for those in-market people who are already on the edge of buying rather than just chasing after people on social media who might be quite far along or back from their decision to buy.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: The social media is full of lovely lurkers, which, you know, will potentially turn into buyers, hopefully.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: And as I said, with SEO, you can make that faster than it ever used to be without a doubt.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: But there are still other, many other multiple layers of marketing which we haven't got time to go on to.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: But no, but yeah, even I say that all the time, you know, do not put all of your eggs in one basket with social media, you know, it's it's silly.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the first things I say to people when I have a discovery call with them, even if they've come to me because they want support of social media, is I say, where do people find you?
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: And if Google isn't up there as a top top answer, then that's an issue because that's still where a lot of people are searching for practitioners in the local area.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're not showing up in those searches, that's an issue.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think social media is so powerful when it's done right, but it's definitely shouldn't be your sole focus when you're growing a business.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: It should be there, should be balanced between all of the different marketing channels and all the different areas where people are potentially looking for you.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Google, I think, still being a really important one.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Search engines are still still massive.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you Google business profile, massive.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can do people probably, I would say, do their business profile to about 20% of its capability.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if they really, really optimize it every month, and this is something that I I look at a lot with people, they really optimize it every month, that can make a world of difference to to where you appear.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because SEO feels like a really big deal for people, it's an expensive deal to keep doing it, but you can manipulate SEO to a certain extent yourself, and then obviously involve other people in that from a from a technical point of view.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: But there are so many routes to market as a new business.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of local collaborations, and I talk about this a lot, are really good because you can actually develop local collaborations offline and online and make them work really nicely together with social media, but also make those relationships.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because remember, people need to remember they are a bricks and mortar business.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: And because they're a bricks and mortar business, what you need to do is you need to find people in your local area that want you.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're still learning the tips and tricks of how to do that from an SEO point of view and how you to do that from a social media point of view, plug the gap by having real human conversations with people, see what you can do within your local community to promote your business and push it forward.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, the world is full of other business owners like you, who are also struggling.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: So when you reach out to them directly and say, shall we do this?
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: Could we do something online that's collaborative?
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Could we do something offline that's collaborative?
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: You serve the same people that I serve.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: What can we do about that?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: People are really excited to work with you on it.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, a lot of people don't do that because they feel it find it's a bit awkward reaching out, but don't let your business fail because you feel a bit awkward about life.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like selling.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: Don't not sell because you feel awkward about selling.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it it's a phase, you get better at it the more you practice it.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: Might you make a bit of a fool of yourself in between?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: Might some people be a bit blank faced and not respond to you.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you go and try and do some local collaborations, of course, but I guarantee there will be out people out there who respond to you really, really well.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's like that's a balm to your soul, anyway, because you suddenly go, Oh, I'm not alone.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: There are people around that can help me.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: But it can make a difference to actually getting your services out there, services out there in a really local way.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, when you're new, people want to do things at their convenience.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: So they want appointments in evenings and weekends at their convenience.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: They want you to be just round the corner at their convenience.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: So find those people.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be scared of trying to find those people and and draw those in while you're also working on things like your social media and things like your SEO and your Google Business profile, which take a little bit longer to learn the tips and tricks and make them tip in the direction you want them to tip.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just about not getting that kind of tunnel vision with one thing and forgetting about everything else that's important.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Are there any, you know, I love talking about local collaborations as well because again, so powerful, yet so underutilized by people.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Are there any kind of collaborations that you've seen work quite well with specific types of business owners?
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh do you know what?
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think it really depends on the business because I've seen club local collaborations work from a local chicken shop next door to the business where they've done some really funny videos together, which hasn't but you know, which they've put into local Facebook groups and whatever, and they've done bits of filming together.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: They advertised outside each other, and so you would go that there's no way that can work.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: A local chicken shop and an aesthetic clinic by a medical professional, but oh my goodness, they had so much humour going on between them that they went went up in the community visibility line, and everybody's like, oh, that's the chicken shop, oh that's the aesthetic clinician, and of course the visibility rose for both of them, and they both got tons of business out of it.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I've seen that work.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the the usual ones is when you think about is there a fabulous hairdresser in your local area who serves the same similar customer that you're trying to serve, and what can you what can you do together?
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I've I've seen all sorts of different collaborations work.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: The truth is you have to be brave enough to go out there and join business groups, do all of those kind of things.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and just remember that this business journey you're on, all of these emotions you're feeling, it actually doesn't matter whether you're an aesthetics business or actually the local funeral parlor, everybody has similar business issues to conquer.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: And for a bricks and mortar business within an area, it is great talking to other people about your struggles.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And usually when you start having conversations, people are kinder than you think and they want to help.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it might be a more established business who remembers the days when they were a less established business and they're happy to help.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: It might be wonderful women empowering other wonderful women to do well.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so not only is it often a source of customers for people because they're talking to people and they go, Oh, yes, I could do with a clinician.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a source of knowledge, a source of way of getting to build collaborations with nutritionists or a physiotherapist or a or whatever.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't know what you don't know until you get out there and try it.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: So bravery is is difficult to find sometimes, but really important to your business, being brave and just kind of shoving your shoulders back a little bit and going, I'm gonna do this.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to fail because I feel a bit awkward about it.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, no, I love that.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Going back to the one-year plan that we spoke about, what are some key things that should be included in a strong one-year plan?
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously numbers, we'll we've talked about that.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you have to know your numbers, you have to know every month how many people you're aiming for, what your average sale is going to be.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a more established business, is that split between, you know, new patients and existing patients and how are you facilitating that?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: So your numbers are your big key thing.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: As I said, establishing who it is you're aiming for and getting that messaging right and clear throughout the year and sticking with it.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, a lot of reasons people don't set goals is because they're scared of failing.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: So if I say next month I'm going to see 20 people or 40 people or 60 people and you don't achieve it, the fact that you've declared it makes you feel like you failed if you don't achieve it.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: But a goal is something you aim at.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you know, sometimes you hit a goal dead center, sometimes it goes over the net, sometimes you just miss and it goes sideways.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it is something to aim for.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is not something that, oh my goodness, if I don't hit those numbers every month, I'm going to fail.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to be determined to keep going.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have to make a little readjustment, make a readjustment.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: But be realistic in the first place.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're at zero customers, you're not suddenly going to turn to 20 customers next month.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: It it's just not going to happen.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, if you're at zero customers, you may well be able to get 10 customers the next month if you if you stir the pot enough.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: And and so build in a in a realistic sort of way.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget, you know, you should be getting to a point where they're coming back to you regular for a toxin treatment, then obviously you've got them returning as long as you're you're speaking to them in the right way and and have the right systems in place.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the other thing that I do say about a 12-month plan is systems, automation, AI, and how you run your business have never been more important than they are now.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because it used to be that everybody was in the same boat with slightly dodgy systems, you know, not much automation, not much AI.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so everybody was in that same boat.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: But now some people are really getting on board with great systems, great marketing systems, great business systems.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing about that is they will speed forward faster than everybody else because it's the way the world is going.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're the person who isn't prepared to embrace it, then you're going to get less of the business.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think in a few years' time, the people who've embraced automated marketing, personalized automated marketing, but automated marketing, follow-ups, business systems, AI, those people will be getting 75 to 80% of the business.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that only might be 25% of the market who've embraced all of that, but they'll be getting 80% of the business.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, those other people, that other 75% of people that really didn't want to embrace it or didn't have the time or didn't want to learn it, they'll be fighting over what's left, you know, the 20% of business that's left.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be that person.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: You want to get on board now.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: And personalized marketing is really, really important.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, it's never been easier to do that now with automation.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I when I'm coaching people, I work with a system now, I put them on the system with them.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: They work on it for the six months that they're with me.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it is about, you know, if I've always come to you for toxin and nothing, everything else on nothing else, how do I put you?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: How do how do I put you onto a journey that is all about skin boosters, that feels personalized, but ultimately is a sequence of emails and messages that go out in an automated way?
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is every part of the follow-up journey automated?
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is your recall and rebook automated?
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: Personalized, but but automated.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to make sure the messages within it sound like you, your emails sound like you, not chat GPT version of you, but you take your time to do that.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: But then you automate it, and you know, you use AI to assist you to run your business so that you're not sat on the sofa every single night going, I have to reply to that message, I have to send that person, that person to that, I need to redirect them to that.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I've forgotten to send them the skincare for that, because that leads to burnout pretty quickly.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it also leads to a point where you resent the fact that you're not getting to spend time with your children or you're not getting to spend time with your partner, or your whole weekend is one long guilt trip where you feel like you should be working, but you're not working because you've got other things you've got to do, and you arrive at the end of the weekend going, I haven't done those 154 things I should have done.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: I talk a lot about Friday finishers actually because you, or it might be a Saturday finisher if you work on Saturday.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, I do talk about the fact from a business perspective, you should work out your Friday finishers.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that means looking back on your week and going, right, okay, what have I achieved?
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: What should I have achieved?
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: What did I need to achieve?
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what do I have to do next week?
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because then you look at your Friday finishers and you can either say, Do you know what?
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't need to work this weekend because I've achieved quite a lot of stuff, and those things that are left on the list will absolutely wait until Monday morning and I'll do it then.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or you'll be able to say, actually, that's the one thing I should have done that I haven't done.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll I'll get up on Saturday morning and do that between seven and nine, and then I've done it over the weekend and I'm not feeling guilty for the rest of the weekend that I haven't done the thing or panicking that I haven't done the thing.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: So trying to build that kind of structure into your business is super important because as a small business owner, and you know, a small business owner is still somebody who's got a couple of staff, so it's you know, it's quite a breadth.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: But as a small business owner, you do need to build some relief into what you're doing.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot feel permanently guilty for all of the things that you haven't done because your life will be full of things you haven't done, but it'll be of preference of what you know, or order priority in terms of what you haven't done or have done.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: So try and do your Friday finishers to work that out so you don't spend your whole weekend feeling guilty.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like you're on top of it, don't you?
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you you can just switch your brain off.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're not thinking, oh gosh, did I do that?
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: Did I do that?
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you've got that list of things that you need to focus on on Monday, yeah, and you know that all of those other important things have been taken care of and all take I mean something really satisfying, isn't it, about ticking off a do list?
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, then you can switch off better, I think.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: Love that.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: So another thing I wanted to ask you is when you when you walk or you work it work with a clinic business that isn't necessarily performing as well as it should be, what operational issues do you usually spot first?
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the the biggest operational issue is uh is around pricing, uh I think, you know, it because as I said, most people have to have developed their pricing based on what everybody else is charging.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: Very few people have based their pricing over what they what they need to charge in the first place, which is really important to get any level of profitability out of it.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: But then operationally thing is if you don't look at your pricing and you don't look at your fixed costs and you don't look at your suppliers, then actually your cost of goods and that type of thing, you know, you're not paying any attention to.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth is, as a small business, there are so many great pharmacies out there who will all do you a deal of one kind or another, whether that's key products or sundries.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, if you're not paying attention to your price pricing and what's going into your pricing and your profitability, then you're also not paying attention to where you're getting your products from, whether you're getting a good deal or a not good, uh not a good deal.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I still know, even of quite large clinics who just buy all their sundries off Amazon because then they've not got themselves organized enough to look at the the different pharmacies and see what they can get.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: So they literally go, go for run out of that, and they go onto Amazon, buy it, which is a very expensive way of doing it.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: So operationally they don't look at that.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: They don't look at different pharmacies, you know, everybody uses slight different fillers, or there are a lot of really great fillers around now.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: And whereas Jubiderm and Tioxane used to kind of dominate the market, they don't so much now.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there are other good fillers out there that you know, very credible, great clinicians use, which are less expensive than those.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things you need to explore is is the product you're using, the key products you're using.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: Don't be scared of you know speaking to reps and finding out more about their products, you know, asking for samples so you can try uh these products or have training from them.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: So operationally interesting, pricing and profitability is is one of those things that makes people pay attention to other areas in the business.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the cost of goods of keeping that to a place where you you need it to be.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing is operationally people panic about whether they're a home-based clinic, whether they they're renting a room a certain amount of days a week, whether they're taking on a premises full-time themselves that maybe has got one room in it, but they've tied into a five-year lease and and they realize two years in that they want to take on a skincare therapist or another injector, and then they're suddenly tied into this premises.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: That so what you have to do is think operationally, that 12-month plan, and then if you're in that 12-month plan is I want to get to a 15k month, so you know pretty quickly you're going to want to get to a point where you're taking on a skincare therapist.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: Don't tie yourself into somewhere that that has no growth within it.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: And again, goes back to devices.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: Decide what treatments are really relevant to what you're doing.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: So often a device that people bring in quite quickly would be something like a skin scanner.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of people take on a skin scanner and therefore the loan within their business thinking that they're going to monetize it.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is actually quite hard to monetize a skin scanner.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're a big establ established clinic, it is slightly easier to do.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you are a newer clinic, you are much more like to use your skin scanner as a way of bringing people in for consultations, which means you're not actually monetizing the skin scanner because a lot of people do free consultations with a booking fee, but a free consultation.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: So they're so they're so they're almost a nice to have rather than a really useful thing to make you money.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: But if you pay£50,000 for it and you're facilitating that loan and it's not making you any money, huge burden.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: So operationally, that's uh, you know, not a really great thing to do.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all of those aspects, but also it's things like policies and risk assessments and making sure your insurance is up to date.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: I did a podcast a while ago with an insurance company and I and I was talking to them, I was saying, what is the biggest thing that you see?
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, the biggest thing I see is people think, what can I get away with from my insurance?
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, what's the least amount I can pay to be covered?
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then they realise when something happens, they're not actually covered because that least amount actually was perhaps not the most fulsome explanation of what they did and where they were operating from, and therefore the insurance is declined.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: So operationally, look at things like does my insurance actually cover what I need it to do?
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: If I'm working from home, do my home insurers know that I'm doing it and are they happy about that?
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because they might not be if you hold, if you bring Botox onto the premises, even if you're not holding stock, if you've got Botox on your premises, your home insurance might say, nope, not our bag.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll need to find new home insurance.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: So things like that, do you have a risk assessment, whether it's a clinic where you've got people coming in off the street, or whether it's a home clinic, do you have a risk assessment?
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is it uh if it was a fire, do they go out the back, the front, through the window?
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have a route out of there?
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: Things like this operationally, really boring, tedious, boring stuff.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: I know it is, but set up in the right way because then it just clears it out of your head.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when we when we look at regulation, I know that at the moment there is no regulation as such in place, but some councils still do require you to have a license now and always have done.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not all of them, but some of them do.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: So do have you checked with your council?
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do you fall fall under their licensing or premises use scenarios?
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_00: In which case have you have you got that in in place?
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: And operationally, do not be scared if you have staff or you're bringing staff.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you contract people properly and fairly and appropriately, even if they're a friend that you're bringing in to do something, make sure that you have things like that in place.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: And they are both it's the boring stuff.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: All of that stuff is the boring stuff, but it is part of your business, and ultimately, especially if you're not a limited company, there are certain things you have to be super careful of and be really mindful of.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: Limited company, you're obliged to do more of these things, so they tend to be in place.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the amount of people I meet who do not have any type of real policies apart from maybe the terms and conditions attached to their payments, they don't have anything else in place, and you know, it it is a mistake long term to not have them there.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it well, it protects you, doesn't it?
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's better to get it set up at the beginning, you know, when you're less you're less busy rather than then having to play catch up when you've got full clinic days and yeah, all the other, you know, things to worry about when it comes to running a business.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: I also wanted to ask you how what your thoughts are on on deposits and cancellation policies, actually on the note of policies for protecting a clinic's income.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: What are your thoughts there?
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a really interesting one because I know people do have very mixed opinions on on when you should whether you should take a deposit, whether you should charge for your consultations, all of that kind of thing.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's very hard to charge free consultations in the beginning because you know you're trying to encourage people through the door.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it is very reasonable to say that you have a free consultation, but I do think you should take booking fees.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the way I say to people is put it down that the consultation is free, but it's a booking fee to guarantee your time.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: So have a system in place that means that they have to pay a£50 booking fee, which is redeemable against treatment when they when they go ahead.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that that's really, really important.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's a really interesting thing, and again, from I I talk to lots of people, I love doing chats with people like you know, pharmacists and insurance companies because you learn so much.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things an insurance company was saying to me, and I have seen this happen, is that if you charge for your consultation for injectables, you are on a bit of a sticky wicket wicket with insurance because imagine the scenario that I come to you because I'm thinking about having lip filler, and I put I paid£50 or£75 for the consultation.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: I decide, I can't quite decide whether I'm gonna go ahead or not.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I think to myself, oh, right, if I don't go ahead, that's fine, I'll get my£75 back.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: But if I if it's somebody who's charging and and you think, God, if I don't go ahead, I'm gonna lose£75, you know, I do know what I'm gonna go ahead and have it done.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: So all of that happens, I go ahead and have it done.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: Something goes wrong for for whatever reasons, and you know, you can you can have a VO or anything can happen.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: Even with great clinicians, things happen.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: It ends up going to insurance.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the insurance company say, Were you coerced in any way at all to have that treatment?
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: And say, and if if I was getting the deposit back, then no, no, I wasn't coerced.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: If I hadn't gone ahead, I would have got my money back.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, no harm, no foul.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's very straightforward.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the insurance company are much more likely to go, right?
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: The clinician has done everything right, there was no coercion, there was no persuasion, it was a very genuine consultation, it was patient choice, they were aware of the risks, they went ahead.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so an insurance person is going to look very favorably on the clinician in those circumstances.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_00: However, if the client says, Yeah, no, well, I I paid£75 to have that appointment, and so I felt like I didn't want to lose£75, so I felt pressured into having the treatment, then the insurance company are going to go, that not so clean cut, not so clear as to where the fault, oh, maybe there was pressure involved.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so they they might lean much more towards the client than they will towards the clinician.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I feel like, you know, that that's not cut and dried.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: It may not happen that way.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: But if there's any any chance of that, I feel like don't charge for your consultation, charge your booking fee to guarantee your time.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: If they don't turn up, absolutely keep that booking fee, especially if they're a serial defaulter, then you know, hang on to it.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: I do, in in the system that I put people onto, we do have a no-show automation in there.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: And in the no-show automation, it is based for somebody that's a new customer, they didn't show up for whatever reason.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_00: You don't automatically hang on to their deposit at that point.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_00: You basically say, Oh, I'll roll it over to your next appointment rebook.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_00: They have a lovely automation that follows up that sort of says, Oh, life happens, you know, really sorry you couldn't make it.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let us know what's going on, and we'll roll your deposit over to your next appointment.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: Please book in.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you have a series of little emails and messages that basically makes that person feel all right about the fact that they didn't turn up and hopefully encourages them to rebook.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't lost the potential new client and you go forward.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, if they never contact you again, you keep the deposit because they haven't contacted you again.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, in that scenario, you wouldn't automatically just take the the booking deposit and you know, you have to rebook in and pay again.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: But again, if it's a serial default, you just like take money, gone, don't feel guilty about it because the booking fee guarantees your time.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody else can book that appointment because they have, uh, but consultation different.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, my my take on it is it call it a free consultation with a booking fee to guarantee your time.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: What would that booking fee look like normally?
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is that£50,£95, and it's not a good thing.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so the book the booking fee would go against treatment.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: So if I went ahead and had treatment, that booking fee would go against treatment because ultimately it's a book the time, but they're paying.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: For the time by having ongoing treatment.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_00: So absolutely, the booking fee would go against future treatment.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: But if they turned up and you had a very genuine consultation and they decided not to go ahead, then redeem their booking fee, give it, give it back to them.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because actually, from a PR point of view, if I come along, have a great consultation with you, but I decide not to go ahead for whatever reason and say, don't worry about it, that's absolutely fine.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for turning up.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: Great to have a conversation.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: Come back in three months if you've changed your mind or if you want skin boosters or whatever.
• 1:06:32
  SPEAKER_00: You have that meaningful conversation, you return the money to them.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, interesting, most people say, oh, well, actually, what I'll do is I'll just roll that point that booking fee over to the next potential appointment.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_00: Is that all right?
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_00: But if you do return it to them, can you imagine the conversations they're having with their friends?
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: Went to see this great person.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: She told me all about this.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: I decided not to go ahead.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: But do you know what?
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: I got my money back.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_00: All of those other people listening to that conversation will be like, ooh, I might go and book in and have that conversation because I'm not, I don't feel pressured.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't feel like I'm going to be forced into having a treatment.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: So from a PR point of view, it's absolutely flipping marvellous.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth is, you're not going to end up giving loads of booking fees back.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: Generally speaking, most people will book for some type of treatment off the back of a consultation because the reason they came for the consultation is they want help.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you have to give the occasional one back, fine.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them will either roll over or get used against treatment.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not a big deal, but think about it from a PR point of view.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it from a compliance point of view as a medical professional.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: Always, even the most wonderful clinicians in the world get bad reviews and occasionally have a problem that goes to an insurance company.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is not a reflection on you as a clinician.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: It happens to the best of people sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes they don't, you know, but always have an have a nod to it, an eye to it.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why policies are really important.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you have your policies in place, then again, from an insurance point of view, you're much more likely to be all right in the end.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, love that.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_01: Super, super helpful.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: And just before we wind down the episode, another, you know, key question I had for you is what do you think a strong client journey or a strong patient journey should look like from inquiry to long-term retention?
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, communication is everything.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that is, I did a webinar the other night on it.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the biggest things you need to think about is those leads that are coming into you.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: There may not be a, oh, I need to have a consultation really full-on lead.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_00: There may just be a little nibble, there may just be a little gentle inquiry in your DM or a little filling in a form of on your website.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it may be just like a little gentle nod.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: You have to capitalize on every single gentle nod in your direction.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_00: You need to plan for that.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why automation is huge.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because trying to stay on top of every little nibble is pretty hard work, especially if you're the clinician with 64 hats sitting on your head and you're wobbling down the road, trying not to drop the hats off.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure that you automate every section of your journey so that you can respond to people in a really, really meaningful fashion.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you just get a little nibble every single day and you ignore all of those nibbles, well, if your average sale, an average average sale for a clinician in the UK is about£250.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason it's that is because three areas is roughly around the£250 to£300 mark.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_00: One millifilla is roughly between£250 to£300 mark outside London, this is.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_00: So if you ignore every nibble that you came and you assume that you've got 20 of those a month, so four weeks, five days a week, you get one little nibble.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's 5k a month you're ignoring in nibbles, potentially, you know, of people that you could convert.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So a good journey, a good pathway, which isn't just a series of random tactics, is to, I said, come for an MOT and look at that whole journey, work out what needs to be in place at if every single point.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_00: What's a you thing that you have to do, what's an automated thing that it has to do, make sure it's personalized and make sure that every nibble that you that comes your way, you're capitalizing on it.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then there will be stalls at every point in that journey.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it may be that I've made the inquiry, had a meaningful conversation, haven't booked, go back to that person.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_00: It may be that I've had the consultation, didn't book the treatment, go back to that person.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And do not be afraid of doing that follow-up.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Follow-up is everything.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you have your conversation, 24-hour follow-up, then you do a 72-hour follow-up, then you do a seven-day follow-up, and then you put them into a nurturing place where they continue to be followed up, but in a more automated way.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So any good customer journey has those those little moments within it where you have to be prepared to follow up on them in different sets of scenarios.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can crack that in all areas of your customer journey, and that includes people you've treated and you're wanting to retain, your business will become thriving and healthy, and you will get to that golden point where you have predominantly returning patients every month, you have a percentage of new patients every month.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_00: The new patients feed into the returning patients.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_00: The returning patients are your mini ambassadors and flow through.
• 1:11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's not always uh, I have to chase everything that's going, because you actually just have to do meaningful follow-ups with people.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so important.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, just goes to show how important those clinic MOTs are for identifying the gaps at every stage of that journey.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_01: This has been an amazing episode, and you've given so much great advice, and I feel like people will take a lot away from it.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, there's so many things that I still want to ask you, but I don't think people are gonna stick around for a two or three hour episode.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_01: So if somebody's listening and they're thinking, okay, yeah, this sounds great, and they want to find out more about you, you know, maybe they're feeling a little bit stuck in their business and they're not sure, you know, what the next best step is to get them, you know, to hit their to hit their goals.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Where can they find you?
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Where can they learn more about you?
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_00: So go on to my website, which is aesthetic business coaching-wdy.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you find me there.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you can find me on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So follow me.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Lovely, lovely to have followers, even though I don't try not to worry about social media.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I do love to have followers, so follow me.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got lots of links in my bio.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you can you can book a clinic MOT there, you can just book a free strategy call, do those all the time with people.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's just 45 minutes of of kind of picking my brain and me getting to know you and seeing whether you want to do further one-to-one coaching, because I do a lot of six-month one-to-one coaching.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Six months is perfect for people because it gives me a chance to kind of keep poking and prodding and and and helping everybody move down the journey.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm a very, I'm very practical.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's my USP.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a very practical, hands-on sort of person.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I'm coaching somebody, we have our sessions, a couple of sessions every month, nice long sessions.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_00: But actually they message me all the time on WhatsApp and we have ongoing dialogue, which means that if I'm if they're hitting decision points or actually just feeling flat on the face, which can happen, then they can message me and I I can hopefully lift them up.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And most of the people, if I'm if I'm honest, most of the people I work with for six months go on to continue to work with me in one form or another as a retention program, or they come back for pockets of time because it is so important to have somebody else as a sounding board.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and that might not be me, but I I absolutely suggest everybody goes out there and finds a knowledgeable sounding board because it's a lonely place running your business and it's it's often demoralizing and a bit frightening, and it's not always easy to talk to your family about it because you know they care about you and they love you and they give you advice, which isn't always the best advice because they care about you and love you, or worse with families, they can be a bit critical of you and make you feel very demoralized because you're doing something, they're like, Why are you doing that?
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_00: So a lovely sounding board because it will help you keep going on the marathon rather than feeling like I have to get off, you know, I have to get off because it's it's all too much.
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And a couple of people that I've worked with won some awards at the aesthetic awards this year, which was great.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Best injector and rising star.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, when I when I talk to people, when they get to that point, because I had quite a few um clients who were finalists, all of them at some point sat a few years ago going, I feel like I'm an imposter, I feel like I don't fit in with this world, I have no idea what I'm doing, that could never be me.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, they they do all the right things in the right way.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it it comes down to that person.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I love those people who were prepared to just get stuck in.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_00: They might not have all the answers, but just get as stuck into it.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Have have a bit of faith and kindness to yourself, just keep going.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Help hopefully somebody will hold your hand and pull you through that tunnel until you're at the light bit at the end.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_00: But everybody I know who is getting success now has been through that place of going, that couldn't be me, that's not going to be.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not very good at this, I'm not good at the business, I'm not very good enough clinically.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_00: You will get there.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you, you'll get there if you just on the journey.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've all been there, especially, especially feet women in business.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, we're far more likely to suffer with imposter syndrome.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_01: It just goes to show that with the right tools, the right support, you know, anything's possible and the right mindset, you know.
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_01: But no, love that.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do, yeah, everyone, do go and check out Fiona.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'll pop her website and her social media links in the show notes as well.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for coming on.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's been so wonderful to talk to you.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_01: My pleasure.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've really, really enjoyed it.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for asking me.