EP 464: Stop, Start, Continue: The CEO Planning Exercise That Will Transform Your Spa in 2026

Hello, my dears, and welcome back to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am your host, Daniela Woerner, and today we are talking about one of my very favorite strategic planning exercises. This is something that I do every single year. So we are going to break down exactly what to stop doing, what to start implementing, and what to continue doubling down on as you position your spa for that next level of growth. And here’s what I love about this exercise, it is not about adding more to your already full plate. It’s about strategic subtraction, intentional addition and amplifying what is already working. So whether you’re in the treatment room just two or three times a week, or you’re ready to fully step into that CEO role, maybe you’ve got a team of three to five people, and you know you need to up level your leadership skills to get to that next revenue milestone. I want you to grab your notebook.

Okay? Because we’re going to go deep today. So we’re going to start with what to stop. And this is the strategic subtraction section. I’m going to be really direct with you here, and I’m going to give you a little bit of tough love, because if you’re listening to this episode, my guess is that you don’t need someone to be nice to you. You’re looking for advice on your business. You need someone to tell you the truth about what is actually holding you back from that seven figure goal. And you know in our past 12 years that we have been working with spa owners. We’ve worked with over 1700 spot owners. So I’ve seen a lot of behind the scenes in business. Okay? And what you need to stop to be able to scale to that seven figure mark or more is to stop making decisions based on short term comfort instead of long term strategy. Okay, so you’ve built a successful business. You’re doing well, right? But you’re still making decisions based on what feels comfortable in the moment rather than what aligns with your long term vision. So let me give you an example. You need to raise your prices. You’ve done the math. Your cost of treatment is higher than it should be. Your margins are squeezed. You’re actually undervaluing what you deliver. But the economy is weird right now, and you don’t want to deal with the uncomfortable conversations with your staff or with the pushback from your clients, so you put it off for a quarter and then another and then another quarter. You don’t want to face it right? 1000s of dollars gone because you didn’t want to deal with that uncomfortable situation. Maybe you know that you need to highly hire a spa director or a lead esthetician, a role for someone to take some things off your plate, but you’re worried about the upfront cost and you’re worried about the time that it’s going to take to train them properly. You’re you end up staying in the day to day operations, which means that you’re not spending time on the strategic initiatives that would grow your revenue.

Okay? So every time that you make a short term decision based on that short term comfort, there’s an opportunity cost to that you’re choosing to stay exactly where you are. And look, I understand financial responsibility. I understand, you know, knowing the numbers and all of those things there, that that is something I believe deeply in. But if you’re not going to push yourself to that next level, if you’re not going to do the work to move into that next level of business, you’re going to stay exactly where you’re at. Okay? It you’ve got to rock the boat. So to say, if you want to scale, okay, it’s you’ve got to step out of your comfort zone. If you want to scale, you’ve probably heard me say before that, entrepreneurship, being a business owner is the greatest lesson in personal development, apart from being a parent, and that’s because we’re constantly having to get out of our comfort zones and and make those decisions, have those tough conversations, all things that we’re going to be talking about a little bit more today. Okay, so stop asking yourself, what feels easiest right now, and start asking, What will my future self thank me for six months from now? That is CEO level thinking. That’s the difference between staying at three or 400,000 and breaking through to a million. Stop. Number two, I want you to stop trying to be everything to everyone. This one is huge, right? It’s gonna show up in so many ways in your business. It shows up so many ways in our personal lives as women, right? So maybe you’re still offering every single store. Of us under the sun because you don’t want to turn anyone away. You are doing chemical peels and micro nailing and facials and lack lashes and brows and waxing and laser and body contouring. Your menu is 10 pages long. Your team is trained on 17 different modalities. Here’s the problem with that, you are diluting your brand.

The brand that does everything is the brand that does nothing, not to mention the complications with inventory management, how you’re making it so much harder to train your team to true excellence, and you’re confusing your ideal client about what you actually specialize in. Niche down become known for something specific. You don’t have to get rid of all of these other services. I mean, I do think that there needs to be kind of a container of what we offer, but have something that you are known for, whether it’s a particular service or particular condition, get really focused on that. Okay, that is something that can help you to own a position in the market. I remember years ago, when I had just gone to esthetic school, this is back in 2006 I wanted to get a Brazilian wax. I’m not looking for a spa that does everything under the sun. I’m looking for a wax studio that they specialize in Brazilian waxing. Right? That was what I was searching for. If I have a particular problem, whether it’s anti aging or brown spots or red spots, or I’m looking for hair removal, right? I want to go to a spa that. That’s their focus. That’s what they do all day, every day. They are clearly going to be the best at that thing. That’s what I want. Okay, so keep that in mind. Do not dilute your brand. The brand that does everything is the brand that does nothing. Okay, maybe this concept of trying to be everyone to or everything to everyone shows up in how you manage your team, because you’re trying to make everyone happy. You’re saying yes to every scheduling request, and then you have nobody working on Saturday, your busiest day, you’re avoiding difficult conversations. You’re hoping problems will resolve themselves.

You are so focused on being liked, on being a people pleaser, that you are not leading effectively. Being a great leader does not mean being everyone’s best friend. It means having clear standards, holding your team accountable and being willing to have uncomfortable conversations when necessary. Your job isn’t to be popular. Your job is to create an environment where your team can do their best work and where your business can thrive. Now that doesn’t mean that you can’t have personal relationships with your team. My I consider my team chosen family. I adore these humans, but I also can very clearly put my CEO hat on when it’s work time and take it off and put my friend hat on when it’s not work time. That’s a skill that took something that took a long time to learn how to do. Okay, so stop trying to be everything to everyone. Get clear on what you’re best at, what is most profitable, what you want to be known for, and have the courage to say no, no, is a complete sentence. All right. Stop number three. Quit operating without clear KPIs. Okay, so if you are serious about scaling to seven figures, you cannot fly blind anymore. Okay, I know you’re tracking your revenue. I know you’re looking at your bank account, but do you know your cost of treatment for each service? Do you know your exact client retention rate by quarter? Can you tell me your average client lifetime value? Do you know what marketing channels are actually converting to booked appointments versus which ones are just vanity metrics. If you don’t have clear KPIs, you’re making decisions based off of your feelings, not data.

So you think something is working because it feels busy, but when you actually run the numbers, you’re barely breaking even on that service. You’re putting energy into Instagram because you love creating content, but your highest value clients are actually coming from Google, and referrals. See this all the time. We have a client acquisition cost tracker, and it inside of our growth factor program, and inside of there, it’ll have social media, word of mouth, SEO. It’s got all these different like sources, and we’re keeping track of where all new clients come from. And then we’re additionally keeping track of, do they join our membership, and do they rebook their appointments? So we’re understanding quantity of leads, but also quality of leads from the specific channels. And it is eye opening. It is eye opening. We had somebody that was dumping $2,000 a month into Instagram and into ADS, barely getting any clients. And on the other side, she’s getting like, 30 new clients a month from SEO and not doing anything over there. I was like, Okay, let’s change our focus, right? Like, this is data. And yes, it made a difference. So we really want to understand we want to make data based decisions. Okay, stop running your business on gut feelings alone. You’ve got to have a simple dashboard where you are tracking your key metrics every single month. All right, I track them weekly and monthly and quarterly and yearly, right? We’re looking at what is the the cadence of how these are shifting and changing, because it will matter based on the season or best based on your location. Okay, this is a huge priority as we’re heading into the new year. And look, I don’t want you to track 47 different things and spend hours in spreadsheets. I am a lover of spreadsheets, but I just want you to identify, you know, three to five, maybe five to seven, numbers that are actually going to move the needle in your business. I want you to check them consistently. That’s it, revenue, profit margin, client retention rate, average ticket, client acquisition cost, team productivity.

Track those consistently, and you will make exceptionally better decisions. Stop number four, stop under s, under investing in your own development. Okay, so this is the last thing that you need to stop, and this one is specifically for my Type A achievers out there, the ones who are focused on growing the business, so focused on growing the business, that they forget that they need to grow as a leader, something that was a hard thing for me to learn, and I’m still learning. But almost every time there is something wrong in my business, it’s my fault, that there’s your personal development thing. Every day I’m doing something wrong, and every day I have to have the resiliency to get back up and figure it out and keep moving forward. It is. It always comes back to me, because I’m the person that hired them, or I’m the person that didn’t hold them accountable, or I’m the person that didn’t establish the system, it comes back to me. Okay? Now, if you’ve done those things and that person still is not aligning them in your company, then you let them go right, and they they move on and do something different. But for us, as the owner, as the leader, we’ve got to constantly be investing in our growth, and this can be time investment, this can be money investment, right? So you’re probably invested in your spa, you’ve invested in your team’s training, you’ve invested in equipment and technology, but when was the last time you actually invested significantly in your own business education? Not a free webinar, right? But meaningful investment in developing yourself as a CEO, this is something that I have a budget for every single year. It’s it, and it’s also something that has been invaluable to me to help me grow my business, because your business is only going to grow as much as you do. So if you’ve been bootstrapping on your own development, trying to figure everything out on YouTube and free content, time to stop, okay, make the real investment in yourself, because every dollar that you put into becoming a better leader has an exceptional return on what you can build. Okay? So those are the four big things that you need to stop doing. And let’s talk about what you need to start.

All right, so what to start? If we were if that first part was about strategic subtraction, this next section is about intentional addition, and these are the things that we see successful seven figure spa owners doing. And the good news is you don’t have to implement all of these at once. Okay, so pick one right? Pick the one that resonates the most. Commit to that fully. So start number one. Start treating yourself like the CEO that you are. So I want you to do a quick exercise with me. Open up your calendar. I recommend Google calendar if you don’t have Google Google Calendar, start there. Get Google Calendar. Think about your calendar for this week. How much time is blocked for you to work on your business versus working in your business? How much time is dedicated to strategic thinking, analyzing your numbers, developing your team, planning your marketing, reviewing your systems, if the answer is not much or whatever else time is left over after everything else, we’ve got to fix that. Okay, so here’s what I want you to start doing. I want you to block out one full day per week, or if that feels impossible right now, block out a half a day per week only dedicated to CEO time. Now, I know a lot of you have you know what you’ll call administrative days, but those administrative days are not filled with CEO work. You might be catching up on laundry. You might be working the front desk. You might be doing tasks that actually should be delegated to others. This time is dedicated CEO time that I’m talking about. Okay, it’s non negotiable, time where you are not in the treatment room. You are not answering client questions, you are not putting out fires. It is for strategic work only you are reviewing your KPIs. You’re working on your 90 day plan. You’re developing your team. You’re analyzing what’s working and what’s not. You’re planning for next quarter’s marketing. You’re reviewing your P and L you’re working on your systems and SOPs. This might feel selfish, or this might feel like I don’t have time to do this right? There’s other things that are more pressing, because it’s not as clear to be able to see the ROI on this type of work might feel uncomfortable to block that time off when you could be in the treatment room generating revenue. But I promise you, this is the single most valuable time that you can spend in your business, because every hour that you spend working on high level strategy creates exceptionally more value than another hour in the treatment room when you implement a system that saves your your team 30 minutes a day. That’s one hour strategic work, creating two and a half hours of time savings every single day for your entire team, when you refine your marketing strategy and improve your conversion rate by even just 5% that’s 10s of 1000s of dollars in additional revenue. So start treating yourself like the CEO that you are.

Put it on the calendar, protect that time and watch what happens when you consistently show up for the strategic work. Start number two, I want you to start getting comfortable with tough conversations. Okay, real talk. You probably became a spot owner because you love skincare. You loved esthetics. You loved helping people look and feel good. Nobody goes to esthetic school dreaming about performance reviews and team accountability systems. You just don’t but now you’ve got, you know, three, four or five people on your team, and if you want to scale, you’re going to need more, right? That means that you’ve got to have tough conversations. They are in the cards for you. If you’ve ever read Brene Brown’s books, she says clear is kind that was something that was huge for me in kind of reframing these tough conversations, because I’m only having the conversation with that individual because I believe that there is more inside of them, and I am working To help them elevate into their full potential. If I am not giving them that critical feedback and helping them understand what their potential is, I’m doing them a disservice. So clear is kind learning how to give effective feedback, not making someone feel less than or not, making someone feel like they’re being attacked, but giving true, constructive feedback and understanding how to set clear expectations, to hold people accountable without being a micromanager is essential to your growth. If someone on your team isn’t meeting the standards, but you don’t want to deal with that discomfort of addressing it. You let it slide, you let it slide again, and before you know it, you’ve got a culture problem. You’ve got entire teams walking out like that is not good. And that happens, right? That happens a lot. Maybe you’re on the flip side, and you are so hands on with your team that you’re essentially doing everyone’s job for them. You’re the one checking the schedule, following up on retailers, making sure that the treatment rooms are stocked. Your team hasn’t stepped up because you haven’t stepped back. Great leadership is about finding that balance. It’s about setting crystal clear expectations, providing the training and support that your team needs to meet those expectations, and then holding them accountable to actually do it. So start getting comfortable with tough conversations, or, I should say, clear conversations, they do get easier over time, and it is so worth it. Okay? Start number three, start implementing paid advertising strategically. This is a super important word here, strategically. We’ve got to talk about marketing, and we’ve got to talk about advertising, right?

So up until this point, you’ve probably grown primarily through word of mouth, organic, social, maybe some partnerships that you have in your local community, and that’s great. It got you here, but for you to scale to that next level, you need a more predictable client acquisition system, and that’s where paid advertising comes in. And maybe you’re gonna say, I’ve tried Facebook ads. They didn’t work. I’ve I’ve heard horror stories about people wasting 1000s of dollars with. No results, and I’ve boosted post it posts and hoped for the best. But listen, every business out there advertises like you. You advertise. That’s part of getting in front of people. You can major in advertising in college. I mean, it is a thing, right? Just because an ad doesn’t work. Doesn’t mean that advertising doesn’t work. It means that you’ve got to get clear on the messaging for your ICA, the service, the offer, all of those things have to be in alignment for an ad to make sense. Okay, so the key word here, when I’m talking about start implementing paid advertising strategically, is strategically. We’re not going to just boost posts and hope for the best. We’ve got to have a real strategy that means understanding your CIC, knowing your lifetime value, creating compelling offers for both cold traffic and building proper landing pages, building your email list right not just with patients who have already come in, but with potential patients to be able to nurture them, to get them into your world. Okay, this is very, very important, so I want you to set aside a specific budget for paid advertising and testing. You can start with, you know, $300 a month, you can go to $1,000 a month, maybe 1500 a month, whatever makes sense for your business. But treat this as a learning investment, not just an expense. Okay, start with one platform. I typically recommend Facebook and Instagram. Meta is going to kind of divide. The majority of your ads are going to go on Instagram, unless you are very clear that you want them on Facebook. But meta ADS has really incredible targeting capabilities, and with the visual nature of what it is that we do in Spa, it’s just a really great platform. So create one really strong offer.

Maybe, maybe it’s a service. Maybe you’re wanting to book a consultation, make it aligned with what it is that you are wanting to niche into what it is that you’re wanting to be known for. Build a simple landing page, set up your pixel create your ads, track, test and optimize. Okay, you most likely will not get it right on the first time, and that is why we test, track and optimize. Okay, you’re going to learn so much in those first three months of testing. You’re going to learn what messaging resonates with your market. You’re going to learn what offer converts best. You’re going to learn what your actual cost per lead is and whether your back end support can handle you know that the lead flow right. It’s really an incredible thing. Once you crack the code, it’s game changing, because now you have this predictable way to generate new clients that doesn’t consistently depend on you creating content asking for referrals, you can literally dial up your growth by increasing your ad budget. So if you’ve been relying solely on organic marketing, start building out a paid advertising strategy for next year. This is one of the most powerful tools that you have for scaling All right, start number four. Start delegating based on your highest value activities. So here’s something that I want to you to sit with. If you could only spend your time on three activities in the business, what would create the most value. So is it strategic planning, business development, client relationships or consultations, team development, culture building, marketing strategy, partnership development, whatever those things are for you, everything else should be delegated, automated or eliminated. Now you might be thinking, I can’t afford to hire. I can’t afford to hire right now, but here’s what I want you to start doing. Create a delegation roadmap so that you know who is your next hire. Again, we’re all about financial responsibility. I do not want you to spend beyond your means, but I want you to understand what is the next thing that needs to be passed off with AI. There’s a lot that can be automated and that alone could free up time without having to hire somebody. Okay, so list out every single task or responsibility that you currently handle in your business, literally everything. Okay? I want to know what you are doing, from ordering to ordering supplies, the weekly schedule, posting on social media, handling payroll, training new hires. Get it all written out, write it on paper.

Right? We are. I. If you’re like me, you’re a pen and paper kind of gal, and I want you to categorize them into different buckets so only I can do this and it’s high value. So strategic work, key relationships, CEO level decisions. The next bucket is someone else could do this, but I need to train them first. The next bucket is someone else could do this, and they probably can do it better than me. And the last bucket is this shouldn’t be done at all, or this could be automated. Okay, so everything that you have in buckets, 234, that’s your delegation roadmap. Now we’re going to prioritize and we’re going to say, well, what’s the first thing that I want to get off my plate? Maybe it’s hiring a VA to handle scheduling or admin tasks. Maybe it’s promoting someone on your team to lead Aesthetician and have them take over training and quality control. Maybe it’s outsourcing your bookkeeping to a professional instead of you doing it yourself at midnight. The point is you need to deliberately start moving tasks off of your plate that aren’t your highest value activities, because every hour that you spend on these $10 an hour tasks, you’re not spending on the $1,000 an hour CEO work. Now I know delegation is hard, especially when you’re used to doing everything yourself and when you’re really good at it, but you’re not going to be able to scale if you are still the bottleneck in your business. So start building that delegation muscle. Start with one thing. Get comfortable with the discomfort of letting go. Train someone properly and trust them to do it, then move on to the next thing. Okay, so we’ve talked about what to stop, we’ve talked about what to start, and now let’s talk about what to continue, because I don’t want to forget about the things that are already working. So what are we going to double down on on what’s working and make sure that we don’t abandon the good stuff in pursuit of anything shiny. So we want to continue building recurring revenue. If you have not already implemented memberships in your spa, I am going to keep pushing you on this.

I am a big believer in memberships. If you have not introduced a membership, I want this to be a focus for you in 2026 why? Because recurring revenue is the foundation of scalable businesses. It’s predictable cash flow that you can count on month after month. It allows you to make better hiring decisions, better inventory decisions, better marketing decisions, because you know what your baseline revenue is going to be. So I have seen spas go from 40% recurring revenue to 70% recurring revenue, and it completely changes how the business operates. You’re not constantly stressed about filling the schedule every single month. You’ve got a solid base, and everything else is growth on top of that. So if you’re already building recurring revenue, keep going, keep enrolling new members, keep improving your member experience, keep optimizing that client journey, and if you’re not there yet. Make this a major initiative for next year. The spas that weather economic uncertainty the best. They’re the ones with strong recurring revenue models, the spas that scale the fastest, the ones with predictable monthly revenue that they can build on. All right, continue. Number two is going to be continue investing in your team’s development. I am so blessed to have had doctors and spa owners who believed in me, who invested in my education along the way. Dr Stolley was one of the first, the first doctor, actually, that I worked for AT MediSpa Valley, and he was so great about investing in our education. Anytime that a product company was putting on something, we would fly over to Oahu, we would fly to California. There were so many things that he invested in us that I’m so grateful for because that was really setting me up for success. So investing in your team is essential. This is continuing education opportunities, advanced training, certification, certifications, and you know how estheticians love certificates, bringing in guest educators, sending your team to industry conferences. But it also can be internal development, like you coaching them, you teaching them about retail sales, you teaching them about client experience, about business operations. When you invest in your team, they feel valued. They become more skilled. They look at it as a career, not just. An hourly job, they stay with you longer. Okay, it’s really important to kind of shift that perspective and get them to look at the spa as a long time career choice, and from a purely business perspective, every skill that your team develops increases the value that your spa can deliver when your estheticians can confidently perform advanced treatments, you can charge premium prices. When your front desk knows how to sell effectively, your revenue goes way up your front desk is a sales team sitting up there, okay, when your team understands business metrics, they make better decisions. So continue investing in your team. Make it a line item budget, make it a regular part of your culture, because that team is a huge part of what is going to help you scale.

All right, so let’s do a quick recap. Let’s bring this all together. I know we’ve covered a lot of information. I told you to grab grab a pen and paper for some notes. So where to stop? We wanted to stop making decisions based on short term comfort instead of long term strategy. We want to stop trying to be everything to everyone. We want to stop operating without clear KPIs, and we want to stop under investing in our own development. We want to start treating ourselves like the CEOs that we are. We want to start getting comfortable with tough conversations. We want to start implementing paid advertising strategically. And we want to start delegating based on your highest value activities and where to continue. We want to continue building that recurring revenue. We want to continue investing in your team’s development. Now, here’s what I want you to do before you move on to the next thing in your day. I want you to take out your phone or grab your notebook, and I want you to write down one thing from each category. And if that feels like too much, just write down one thing, okay, that’s it. And one thing that you’re going to stop doing, one thing that you’re going to start doing, one thing that you’re going to continue doing. Okay, don’t try and tackle everything all at once then. And this is important. This is a very important piece. I want you to put a date on the calendar for when you’re going to implement, not someday, not not on the shelf. I want an actual date on the calendar. Block the time and make it real. You don’t need more information. You need implementation.

You need to take what you already know and actually do it. You’ve got to apply it, right? If you read a book and get the knowledge, but you don’t actually apply it, you just wasted hours of your life, right? You’ve got to apply what you learn, okay? So you have what it takes. You’ve already proven that by building what you have. Remember, believe in yourself. Now it is time to take it to the next level. All right, before we wrap up, can I ask you a quick favor if you have been enjoying the spa, marketing Made Easy podcast, if you’ve been getting value from these episodes, could you please take a quick second to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify your reviews help other spa owners find the show. And honestly, they’re incredibly encouraging for myself and for my team to read, just open up your podcast app. Search for spot marketing Made Easy. Scroll down to the ratings and reviews section. Leave us a few words. Leave us that five star review.

Let us know how this podcast has helped you and has helped your business. Takes just a couple of minutes and makes a huge difference. All right, my friend, that is all I have for you today. Thank you so much for spending time with me. I will see you back here next week on another episode of Spa. Marketing made easy. Now go and take action on what we talked about. Stop, start, continue, and let’s make next year your best year yet.