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EP 455: Marketing Month Part 3: Why Blogging is Back (And How AI Makes It Easy)

October 20, 2025
/
business, marketing

Your Website Is a Living Document: Why Blogging Still Matters in 2025

If you’ve been treating your spa website like a digital brochure you built once and forgot about, this episode is your wake-up call. In a world where AI has made content creation accessible to everyone, strategic blogging has become more important than ever for getting found online and establishing your authority.

In this Marketing Month episode, Daniela and Lucy break down why consistent blogging is the most practical SEO tactic spa owners can implement right now, and how AI tools make the process infinitely easier than those midnight writing sessions of the past.

Why “The Year of the Blog” Matters for Your Spa Business

Remember when blogging was the thing everyone did, then podcasting took over, and blogs felt outdated? Here’s what’s changed: with AI making content creation so accessible, there’s more noise online than ever before. The spas that will win in search results are the ones creating consistent, relevant content that teaches Google to trust them as an authority.

Think about your website like a storefront. Most spa owners see it as a static thing: services listed, prices posted, team bios updated when someone new joins. Done. But that approach misses the entire point of how search engines work.

Every time you post new content to your website, you’re essentially feeding Google information about your business. You’re telling search engines what you specialize in, where you’re located, what problems you solve, and who you serve. The more frequently you do this, the more Google trusts you and the higher your authority score climbs.

How Consistent Content Builds Search Engine Trust

Lucy explains this beautifully in the episode: your website needs to be a living, breathing document that evolves as your business grows. When you consistently publish blog posts every week, you’re triggering Google to re-index your site, reassess your authority, and recognize you as an active, trustworthy business in your industry.

This is why having both a podcast feed and a blog page working together is so powerful. At Addo Aesthetics, new podcast episodes go live every Monday and blog posts publish every Tuesday. That means Google is constantly receiving new links to index, which directly impacts how the search engine views the site’s relevance and authority.

The metrics matter too. Google tracks how long people stay on your site, how many pages they visit, and whether your content answers their questions. When you’re consistently creating helpful blog content that speaks directly to your ideal client, uses local keywords, and addresses the searches they’re actually making, your likelihood of ranking on page one increases dramatically.

Using AI Without Losing Your Authentic Voice

Here’s where this gets practical. Daniela shares how blogging used to mean hours of writing, researching, editing, and agonizing over Oxford commas and semicolons. Then she’d have to write a separate email to promote the blog. It was exhausting and unsustainable.

Now, as an AI-first company, the Addo team uses ChatGPT to create first drafts. But here’s the critical part: they always “put human eyes on it.” This isn’t about letting AI write your content and calling it done. It’s about using AI as a tool to speed up the process while maintaining quality, authenticity, and alignment with your values.

Daniela’s approach: give AI the instructions, then ask, “Do you understand? Please ask me any questions you have to make this an exceptional document.” This simple prompt turns the conversation collaborative. AI will ask clarifying questions, helping you refine the content before it even starts writing.

Lucy adds another layer: she regularly asks her custom GPT, “Do you have a good understanding of the Addo Aesthetics company info?” Sometimes she asks it to repeat back what it knows to verify accuracy. This ensures the AI is working from the most current, relevant information about your business.

The “Human Eyes On It” Rule

One of the behind-the-scenes practices that makes this work is simple: AI does the first draft, then a human reviews it. This review process checks for:

Accuracy: Is the information correct and aligned with your beliefs?
Voice: Does it sound like you, or does it sound like a robot?
Style: Are there too many dashes? (ChatGPT loves dashes, by the way. Pro tip: prompt it to remove them.)
Relevance: Does this actually serve your ideal client avatar?

This practice protects you from publishing generic, off-brand content while still leveraging AI’s speed and efficiency. You’re not spending hours staring at a blank screen anymore, but you’re also not sacrificing quality or authenticity.

Practical SEO Tactics You Can Implement Today

Beyond consistent blogging, there are other tactical pieces that matter for SEO:

Formatting and Structure: Headers, meta descriptions, alt text for images, and proper keyword placement all signal to search engines what your content is about.

Local Keywords: Including your town name, neighborhood references, and service-specific terms helps you show up in local searches.

Google Business Profile: This is another living document. Years ago, SEO experts recommended posting on Google Business Profile just like you post on social media. The more you update your services, hours, and posts, the more Google learns about your business and views you as active and relevant.

Long-Game Mindset: SEO is not a quick win. It’s a long-game strategy that requires consistency and patience. Daniela mentions working with HLM for SEO support because while there are practices you can control yourself, expert help accelerates results.

Your Next Steps

Start treating your website like the living, breathing business asset it is. Commit to publishing one blog post per week. Use AI to create your first draft, then put human eyes on it to ensure it’s authentic, accurate, and aligned with your brand.

Feed Google the information it needs to trust you. Include local keywords, update your services regularly, and keep your content fresh. Over time, this consistent effort compounds into real results: higher search rankings, more qualified traffic, and clients who find you because you showed up where they were already looking.

Blogging isn’t dead. It’s evolved. And with the right strategy and tools, it’s easier than ever to make it work for your spa business.

Resources Mentioned in Episode #455: Marketing Month Part 3: Why Blogging is Back (And How AI Makes It Easy)

Growth Factor Fundamentals (Access done-for-you marketing resources)

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, my dears, Daniela here and welcome back to another episode of Spa marketing Made Easy. This is the third part in a four-part series that we are calling marketing month here at Addo Aesthetics and Lucy and I had a long conversation that covered a variety of different topics of what’s going on in the marketing world right now. What are we doing with AI? And we decided to just break it into four parts, rather than having one big conversation about a variety of different things.

So we this phase. This this part three of marketing month we are talking about blogging. And I never thought that there would be a time that I was like blogging is coming back, but as AI is kind of changing the way that we search and changing the way that we use the internet. It’s more important than ever to make sure that our SEO is optimized, to make sure that our website is updated, to make sure that we are providing the information necessary to come up in search.

And so blogging is a really, really incredible way to do that, and SEO is so vitally important for us in the esthetics industry, because that is one of the top ways, if not the top way, that you are getting new clients and patients into your spas. And so we want to make sure that we have our websites optimized for SEO. We want to make sure there’s meta descriptions. We want to make sure that we’re answering all of those common questions that our clients or patients are asking. So we’re going to get into that. We’re going to talk about a little bit about our process of how we’re using AI to create blogs and always make sure that you have human eyes on it. That is the number one rule here. With any type of AI content, we say that we’re an AI first company, and what that means is that we run everything through to get the first draft, but then we are using our human eyes and skill sets and knowledge base to refine it and add those elements to really make it the best.

All right, so go ahead and listen to that interview. I hope that you enjoy, and I am so excited to see the blogs that you will create. I want to get into that a little bit more, into the importance of blogs, a little bit more, I think for us, I mean, at least I have felt like this has been the year of the blog. I feel like, you know, we when we very, very first. I’m talking like year one, we were doing blogs. That’s what we did constantly. And Huffington Post was still like a big thing. And so we were, we were blogging, and then we sent an email out, and those were all just straight up handwritten blogs. You know that we were, like, writing out and editing like you were in comp one it was time, and so much time, midnight. Oh, my God, and you’re like, researching all of this stuff, and how am I pulling these? I mean, it was like a ton of work. And then I remember thinking, and now I have to write an email to send also, and I have to do this every single week, and that was just to get people on my email list so that maybe they would buy something. Yeah, right. I’ve got to do all of this.

And then in 2018 we launched the podcast, which made my life infinitely easier, because I can talk all day long. I can talk all day long. That’s not a problem, but the writing and the perfectionism that goes into writing is, am I going to use an Oxford comma? Am I going to use a semicolon? Now with chat and it’s dashes, Dash. Pat loves a dash.That’s probably a pro tip we should share in here is chat loves a dash, so it is giving you a lot of dashes. You can prompt it to say, Please remove. Remove the dash. I’m like. So one of the things that we always put on our task board is put human eyes on it. And that’s just a task that maybe that looks a little bit weird or feels a little bit weird, but we are, we say, put human eyes on it, and it’s in being an AI first company, we’re going to have ai do the first draft, and then we go. Through, and we put human eyes on it, and we read it, and we make sure that there’s not 700 dashes, and we make sure that it actually is true in what it’s saying isn’t in is aligned with what we believe, and follow the direction that we gave it. So that’s definitely an important piece of the puzzle as you’re going through and training. But to get into blogs, and the year of the blog, you know, a lot of times in marketing, this is actually one of the reasons that we decided to do the print magazine, is there’s just so much on digital and there’s so many people that now, because you can create content so easily, people, there’s going to be a heck of a lot more content out there. And we saw that where people were blogging, and then everybody went to podcasting.

There was a lot of people podcasting, and I was like, I think the blog is going to come back that people can just read right and read what they want to read. With the print magazine, we’ve got a lot of pen and paper kind of people in our world that are still doing paper planners and like, I’ve got my highlight, my color coded highlighters right there. Like, that’s, that’s our people, and so for us, like we got so many requests to have the print magazine, and I, actually, I love it. I love having the print magazine too. Okay, so the year of the blog, the year of the blog, is important because I do think that this is one of the the most tactical things that you can do if you’re trying to improve SEO.

There’s obviously SEO like headers and meta descriptions and and things like that. Formatting, yes, but the more content. Every time you post something new to your website, there’s going there’s these directories, like, I’m not an SEO expert, but there’s these directories that get posted to, and that’s what Google and all of these other search engines are looking for to see how up to date is this site. How long are people hanging out on this site because they’re trying, they’re looking at those metrics to analyze how relevant this piece of content is so if you’re consistently posting blog posts that are speaking to your ICA, that have your town’s name in it, that have like the keywords of the things that they might be searching for, the likelihood of that coming up on page one increases the more frequently that you’re doing it.

What do you know about SEO? What’s your Yeah, what I was going to piggyback off with you is the when you were talking about the pages it’s indexing it okay, then also will be applicable to your overall like authority score. So basically, that’s how much does Google trust you? So the I think the most important thing that I have learned about websites is that it’s a living, breathing document, and a lot of us see it as a static thing where it’s like, Okay, I’ve got my services, I’ve got my prices, I’ve got my team up there, and now we’re good. And I’ll change it if I change prices, or I’ll change it, if, like, I add a service, but other than that, we’re good to go. And that’s not necessarily the case, because it’s another, what we want to call a storefront. It’s essentially living and breathing as your business evolves. So what I think our website does really well is, technically, we have two blog pages, because the podcast is considered what would be a blog on a website. So that is updated every single Monday, and then the blog is updated every single Tuesday, meaning Google is constantly getting a new link from us to index, and then it’s reassessing our authority score in within our industry, so the trust that you’re building with the search engine is extremely important. And I know it might seem confusing, but it’s essentially like the more active you are, and the more you’re giving your content to the search engine, the likelihood increases that it’s going to recommend you and show that you are a trustworthy business, essentially. And I think that’s probably like a easy one on one type way to explain that, because there’s way more that obviously goes into it. And we know that, and we’re, we don’t claim to be SEO experts like we I know a good a bit about websites, but obviously we have discussion.

We invest, yeah, we invest in SEO as well. We work with HLM, and I’ve worked with them for years to invest in our SEO. And SEO is a long game. And. Um, it’s not something that happens overnight that is like, Oh, I’m gonna start paying this company and and like, what is it actually that you’re doing? And I don’t know, I don’t have

habitual practices that you can control and do yourself. Is what’s important to understand. So, yeah, to leave that to the experts, it’s like, yeah, I don’t know all of the things that are going on, but I don’t need to know all of them. Point the practice was Google business profile was also like a social media platform. And so whatever you were posting on Facebook, you needed to take that. This was in 20. This was in 2020, and I was working at a sports conference when it was g plus. It was g plus from the SEO expert that we were working with.

Like, whatever you post on social also posted on Google business, like in your profile, because that’s also a living, breathing document, and the more you upload, like the services that your sports complex is offering, it’s just going to continue to learn more about you. So if you kind of see your website as almost like feeding Google the information that it needs from you, that’s kind of like how I’ve always viewed it is. The more you give to it, the more it’s going to know, and essentially you’re going to become more of a trusted source on the internet.

That’s a really important piece, and we think about that too of you know, just the same way that we are. That’s essentially how you’re training these AI tools as well, right? Like, the more content, yeah, the more content you give it, the more feedback you give it on what works and what doesn’t work. That’s going to make the content that it puts out so much better.

Obviously, you want it to be the most relevant, the most up to date. So I think it’s pretty self explanatory to say, like, don’t give it five years ago descriptions of your services, like, make sure those things are updated as you’ve evolved. But you can ask it, like, I asked chat pretty, pretty frequently before I start this project with you. Do you have a best understanding of the Adam esthetics company info, and sometimes I will ask it that to repeat back to me. So I’m not just always up uploading the company info. I want to make sure that my custom GPT is giving me the most up to date information.I still upload it every time I do, I do, but I’ll be in place. Yeah, I copy and paste. And then I ask, like, Okay, do you have a good understanding of this? And then it’ll usually give me, like, some debrief document of something that I’ve already uploaded, which is good, yeah,I say, I give it the instructions. I say, do you understand? And please ask me any questions. You have to make this an exceptional document.

And I think the fact that you’re saying that, I think that’s a lot of things that people don’t know, is that it will ask you questions.Oh, every time ask me seven questions,one side of conversation and they think, Oh, I asked the questions, and it answers. No, you can say, I’ve uploaded this document, like, what, what’s confusing about it, or, like, what questions would be helpful to clarify details? And it’ll, it’ll come up with, like, five bullet points of questions. And I think that’s probably something that a lot of people might be missing. Yeah,it’s sometimes, especially with Sentra I use so central pen will ask me, like, millions of questions, and I’ll answer them all, and then it’ll be like, just to be clear that, and I’m like, come on, pen, just show me your draft.Don’t be overanalyzing.

All right. I hope that this conversation gave you some practical ideas for how to approach blogging and SEO in your spa and such an important thing to remember that your website is a living, breathing document. Okay, it’s not something that you set and forget. So really hold yourself accountable whether you’re using monday.com whether or whatever type of project management software you’re using make sure that you have check ins with yourself to update the website, to make sure that everything is accurate on your website, on your blog post, on your podcast episodes, on your Google business profile, all of these things that are going to help you to come up in search and remember you want to come up and search so that you can attract new clients or patients into your business. All right now, with the AI tools that are available out there, if you know how to use them correctly, there’s really no excuse to not get this done. It is. So quick and easy when you have aI creating that first draft for you, but you’ve got to put human eyes on it.

You’ve got to make sure that it’s aligned with your voice and your values, and you’ve got to make sure that it has that human component, all right, so again, we’re an AI first company, but we always put those human eyes on to make sure that it has that softness, that aliveness, the the different isms that you have in your business. All right, so I hope you found this episode helpful, and if you did come hang out with me in the spa, marketing Made Easy Facebook group. I am going live in there every Thursday at 11am Eastern Time. We’ve got some cool trainings and spa Marketing School, and we’re actually going to start something cool in November. We are doing some laser coaching over in there. And we get a lot of questions. A lot of people are submitting questions to us, either in the DMS or sending us emails, and we decided that it would be really fun to start just answering those questions live over in the spa marketing Made Easy Facebook group.

So if you have a question that you want me to answer, send us a DM send us an email, let us know, and we just might pick your question to get answered. So few more spa marketing schools going in October, and then in November, we’re going to start with our laser coaching series to make sure that we’re getting your questions answered. So be sure to be in the group. We’ve got a link below this episode, come hang out with me over there, and I cannot wait to see your blogs and what you’re doing with AI in your business.

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About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Daniela Woerner is the founder of Addo Aesthetics and creator of the Growth Factor® Framework, a proven system that’s helped hundreds of spa owners build profitable, systemized businesses. With nearly 20 years in the aesthetics industry, she transforms overworked aesthetic professionals into confident Spa CEOs through strategy, systems, and soul led support. Daniela is also the host of Spa Marketing Made Easy, a top ranked podcast with over 1 million downloads, where she shares real world strategies to help spa professionals grow with clarity and confidence.

EP 454: Marketing Month Part 2: Using AI to Solve Real Marketing Problems (Not Just Add More Tools)

October 13, 2025
/
business, marketing

Stop Collecting AI Tools and Start Solving Real Marketing Problems

If you’ve been feeling the pressure to adopt every new AI tool that hits the market, you’re experiencing the same shiny object syndrome that once had estheticians buying every new device on the market thinking that would solve their lead flow problems. AI isn’t about adding a bunch of $20/month subscriptions to the latest AI tool out there. It’s about solving specific problems in your spa business faster and more effectively.

In this episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy, Daniela and Lucy walk you through the strategic framework for identifying your real marketing challenges, gathering the data that reveals what’s actually working, and then and only then, choosing the AI tools that help you solve those problems.

Understanding Your Lead Generation Reality

Most spa owners in the Growth® Elite program identified lead generation as their biggest challenge currently. But before you can solve a lead generation problem, you need data. You need to understand where your leads are actually coming from and what it costs to acquire them.

That’s where the Client Acquisition Cost Tracker becomes invaluable. This tool helps you track every new lead each month and categorize them by source: SEO, social media, word of mouth, strategic partnerships, or walk-ins. But it goes deeper than just counting. You’re also recording how much you spent on each channel, including payroll costs for content creation, ad spend, and even the consumable costs of referral incentives.

When you divide your spending by the number of leads from each source, you get your true client acquisition cost per channel. This data tells you exactly where to focus your marketing energy and budget.

For many spa owners, the data revealed that most new leads were coming from Google. That’s a clear signal: the problem to solve is SEO optimization. And that’s where AI becomes a powerful tool, not just another subscription.

Using AI to Solve Your SEO Challenge

Once you’ve identified SEO as your lead generation opportunity, AI can help you execute the solution faster than ever before. You can ask ChatGPT to scan your website and provide SEO optimization recommendations. You can use AI to write weekly blog posts that improve your search rankings without spending hours at your computer.

Here’s the process Lucy outlined: Take five to ten minutes to speak into a voice recording tool about one of the ten most common questions your clients ask. Use Wispr Flow or a similar transcription tool to convert that audio into text. Then upload it to ChatGPT and ask it to write a 1,000 to 1,200 word SEO optimized blog post with meta descriptions, using your specific terminology like “guests,” “clients,” or “patients.”

This isn’t about replacing your expertise. It’s about leveraging AI to communicate what you already know in a format that attracts your ideal clients through search engines.

Moving Beyond Shiny Object Syndrome

The most important shift happening in this episode is moving from “What AI tool should I use?” to “What problem am I solving, and can AI help me do it faster?”

Most AI tools cost between $10 and $20 per month. Compare that to the $2,500 per month many spa owners used to spend on marketing teams to take photos and write blog posts. When you use AI strategically to solve specific problems, it becomes your marketing team at a fraction of the cost.

But strategy comes first. Data comes first. Understanding your client acquisition sources and costs comes first. Then AI becomes the accelerator that helps you implement solutions quickly and consistently.

Your Action Steps This Week

Priority #1: Track Your Lead Sources Grab a notebook and create three columns: SEO/Google, Social Media, and Word of Mouth/Referrals. Add additional columns if you have strategic partnerships or walk in traffic. Place this notebook at your front desk and have your team check the box for every new client inquiry. At the end of the month, review the data to see where most of your leads are coming from.

Priority #2: Calculate Your Client Acquisition Cost For each lead source, write down how much you spent that month, including payroll for content creation, ads, and referral incentives. Divide that cost by the number of new leads from that source. This tells you what it’s actually costing you to acquire each new client from each channel. Use this data to decide where to focus your marketing energy and budget.

Priority #3: Audit Your Website for SEO Opportunities Go to ChatGPT or your preferred AI tool and ask it to scan your website and tell you how to optimize it for SEO. Provide your website URL and your primary service keywords. Review the recommendations and identify the quick wins you can implement this week.

Bonus: Create Your First AI Assisted Blog Post Choose one of the ten most common questions clients ask you and create your first blog post using the process Lucy described. You are an expert at what you do. You have the knowledge. AI is just the tool that helps you communicate it faster and more consistently.

Remember: great spa businesses are built on systems, not shiny objects. Focus on the data, solve real problems, and use AI as your strategic partner in growth.

Resources Mentioned in Episode #454: Marketing Month Part 2: Using AI to Solve Real Marketing Problems (Not Just Add More Tools)

Wispr Flow for voice to text transcription

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back to part two of marketing month right here on Spa Marketing Made Easy. I am Daniela, and I’m back again with Lucy, our marketing manager here at Addo Aesthetics.

Now in part one, we talked about the foundational documents that every spa CEO needs when you’re going to be incorporating AI into your business operations, your company bio and your ideal client avatar document. Those are super, super important. So if you didn’t listen to part one of marketing month, then go back and listen to that, because those are super, super important. Those are going to be crucial for getting your marketing to sound just like you, so that you’re speaking to your ideal client.

Now today, we’re actually going to take that foundation and show you how to use it strategically. Okay, the AI tools that are out there and that are available, they can cause shiny object syndrome to those spa owners who are on this path of experimentation with me, who are out there testing the different AI tools and seeing what is available. And it’s honestly like, every two months, there’s something new and exciting that you can do, and it’s really, important to not get shiny object syndrome with AI tools.

Okay, we’ve seen how that doesn’t work with devices and equipment, and we’ve got to stay focused on solving the specific problems in your business and using AI to do that faster and more effectively. Okay, so we don’t want to incorporate everything that we can with AI just because we can. We want to look at, what are we trying to achieve. What problem do I have in my business, and what can ai do to make me get more time or get more money effectively in the business? All right, so in today’s episode, Lucy and I are going to walk through how to identify the real problems in your marketing and your lead generation, how to use the data to understand what’s working and then choose what AI tool is going to help you solve those problems. Okay, so we’re diving into one of our favorite lead generation tools, and we’re talking about how we have been using this to with our own lead magnet.

We’re using our Growth Factor® the digital version of our Growth Factor® magazine, which has been working really, really well for us. It’s a high-value piece of content. We don’t hold anything back, right? We’re giving so much incredibly valuable information away so that we’re setting the stage of like who we are and what we’re about to build that first impression with our potential clients.
All right? So I’m gonna let you go ahead and listen to part two of Lucy and I’s conversation for marketing month. I hope you enjoy. Just before recording this, I was wrapping up a call with our growth factor elite beta members. And we do a lot of AI inside of that program, where it’s a lot and today we were talking about these different tools, and it’s very easy, you know, in previous years, aestheticians would get shiny object syndrome because of the latest technology that has come out. And, oh, if I buy this device, then it’s going to, you know, make me make all of this money and make all of my problems in my business go away. And now there’s so much talk and pressure and all of this stuff around AI that it’s very easy to be like, Oh, well, I’m not using that tool. Or should I be using this one? Or should I be using, you know, like, what should I be actually doing? And so we had this, like, zoom out conversation, and I was like, Look, you have your ICA Doc, you have your company bio. What we need to do first is understand what is the biggest problem you’re facing in your business right now. And almost all of them said leads. And you know, I need to make sure that I have lead flow. And you know it is really important to understand, like, Do you have a lead flow problem, or do you have a retention problem? So we’re first understanding that. But because there has been, there are, there have been a lot of changes, a lot of shifts, what we’re seeing is the patients or clients who used to come in monthly, are now coming in every six to eight weeks. They’re they’re kind of spreading it out a little bit in in different areas, and so clients are neat, or spa owners are needing to get more clients than they used to have. Have to ensure that they have that 80% booking, and they’re still doing well, they’re still booked, but they’re just seeing that they need more people to keep their capacity up to the same.
So we have this document inside of Growth Factor® Elite. It’s called your client acquisition cost tracker, and essentially, what it does is calculate the cost that it takes to acquire a new client. So every month you’re writing down, you know, how many new leads come in over the course of the month? And did they come from SEO? Did they come from social media? Did they come from word of mouth? Did they come from a strategic partnership, or were they a walk in? Right? We’re looking at these different things. And I used to teach, you know, just grab a notebook, write it down if you don’t have this tracker. This is the easiest way to do. It is just have a notebook next to the front desk and have three columns on the side.
One says SEO, one says social, one says word of mouth. If you have a lot of strategic partners, or if you’re in a storefront that you have walk-ins, go ahead and add those tabs there, but you just write the name, and you check the box of where they’re from. And every month you review that and you see, what is the trend of where are most of my clients coming from? What our tracker does to make it such a powerful tool is it’s going to break down. You’re going to put in the amount of money that you spent on SEO, if any, the amount of money that you spent on social media, including payroll, cost of people that you’re paying to create content for you, even if you’re not spending money on ads, right? And so we’re looking at that and saying,
Okay, well, it’s costing you this amount to get a new lead in from social it’s costing you this amount to get a new lead in from SEO, or it’s costing you this amount to get a new lead in from referrals, and the cost would be if you’re offering any sort of complimentary treatment to one of your guests to invite somebody else in. So the consumable cost of that would go there, and what that does is give us data. So most of them were saying that the majority of their new leads were coming in from Google. And so I said, Okay, so now we know the problem that needs to be addressed. We need to look at, how do we improve SEO on our our website? And I said,

How many of you have put into ChatGPT, please scan my website and tell me how I can optimize it. How many of you are doing blog posts every single week? How many you know like we’re going through, and we’re saying, these are, these are use cases where you can first understand the data, right? Like you’ve got to understand the problem that you’re trying to solve, and then you need to, then say, How can AI help me to do this faster. What other you know you for our marketing meeting every week, you’re obviously going through the stats and then kind of giving me the updates. What do you think for you as a marketing manager has been the most important stats to keep an eye on.

I think that, honestly, it’s similar to our students, and what they’re talking about is the lead generation, because we want to make sure that not only are we attracting the right person, but then when we have attracted them, what type of messaging are they initially getting from us? And I think what we’ve done really well in the last couple months is we’ve built a new welcome sequence. Obviously, the last year, we’ve been transforming our programs, and we’re getting very clear on the tracks that we’re offering now. So obviously the signature program of growth factor framework is something that everyone knows about, but now we have to educate them on the two different tracks. And the best thing that I think we’ve adopted into our business is our Growth Factor® magazine that is used as a lead generation tool, which is right there behind

that, right here

now it’s now it’s printed, which we’re so excited about, but that has been such a great source for us to get very clear that we’re attracting the right people, because that’s a very specific piece of content that is only applicable to this industry, but it is including. So many different sections that can be applicable to employees. It can be applicable to a spa owner, a doctor, or whatever it may be. So I think that’s definitely been really important for us to track.

And I did also want to say that I think a really big issue that a lot of people will bring up with their website is not having the time to update it, and I think you hit the nail on the head with talking about AI with that, because a lot of people are like, Well, I’m not a writer, and I don’t know what I would talk about, and I don’t know what I would I just don’t know what I would post if I was going to post a weekly blog. You are an expert at what you do in your business, and I think that’s a confidence thing, but it’s also a reminder that you have to say to yourself that I am an expert on this service, and I can use AI as a tool where I talk to it like I would talk to a client, and then I ask it to formulate that for me in a 1000 to 1200 word blog post that’s SEO optimized. And when you get really granular on those keywords, like we know that we want to say spa CEO, that is a that is a title that we use to describe our people.

Then you can tell chat things like that, like this. I want to call them guests. I want to call them clients. I want to call them patients.

Whatever it may be to like, make yourself stand out. I think the the when people say that time is a big issue there that’s that’s being solved in real time right now, because I’m able to take just five to 10 Minute transcripts of you talking and turn it into a 1500 word blog post.Yeah, there’s, there’s a really cool AI software tool called Whisper Flow, and it does a phenomenal job of translating voice into text. So there’s a lot of you know, you’re you, you can text message like that. There’s a lot of things, and it will maybe not do the best job, or it’ll misspell things or get the wrong word, especially if you have an accent, you know, it’s not going to hear it correctly. But whisper flow does a phenomenal job, and you can even use that. You can just talk to it in your car when you’re driving to work, and answer whatever specific questions it’s going to dictate.

All of that. And then, you know, think about the 10 most common questions that people are going to ask you, or how would you explain this specific service to a patient? Or how would you you know those types of things that you are answering all day, every day, and then you upload that into chat and say, write an SEO optimized blog post with meta descriptions, right? And so we’re using it to solve the problem. I think the thing here is, like AI is not just one more thing that you have to learn how to do when you’re already overwhelmed and exhausted. It’s something that, if this is a tool that you can implement to make your life easier than do so and and the thing that’s great is that you can have most of the AI tools are somewhere between 10 to $20 a month for a subscription, so they’re not expensive. I know some people are like, Oh, I don’t want any more subscriptions. But if you think about like, this is your marketing team, if you were before, spending $2,500 a month on a marketing team that comes in and takes photos and writes blogs, you can do that for $20 a month, right?

I mean, it’s, a whole different thing. Okay, so now we are going to hit pause there for this part of the conversation again. If you did not listen to part one in the series, be sure to go back and listen. Next week we’re going to have part three of this four-part series. So every single week we’re having a new section of the conversation, and I’m giving you some action items so that you can listen and then apply so that you’re actually making progress in your business. Okay, so the takeaways from today’s episode: understand the problem, first gather the data and then find the tool that helps you to solve it the fastest. Okay, so whether that’s improving SEO with weekly blog posts, whether that’s tracking where your leads are actually coming from, or even creating a powerful lead magnet that speaks specifically to your ICA, all right, so what I want you to do this week for your action items, number one, we want you to track your lead sources. Okay, so just. Is make it simple.

Grab a notebook, create three columns, one that says Google, SEO, another one that says social, and another one that says word of mouth. If you have strategic partnerships, if you have a lot of walk-in traffic, add those columns as well. That’s totally fine, and then have that notebook at the front desk so that every single time that a client or patient walks in that they are new to your practice, write their name and ask them where they heard of you.

How did they hear about you? Okay, at the end of the month, I want you to review that data to see where most of your leads are coming from. Step two is to calculate your client acquisition cost, okay, and this is just if you’re ready, all right, but I want you to look at how many new leads came in, and then look at how much money you spent on SEO, how much money you spent on paid ads, how much money you spent on marketing in general. You’re going to take that dollar amount, that top dollar amount, you’re going to divide it by how many leads came in, and that’s going to tell you how much it costs you to get a new lead in your business, all right, and that should help you to understand, hey, I’m getting most of my leads from SEO, or I’m getting most of my leads from social. I’m getting most of my leads from referrals. And then you can be really clear on how and where you’re going to spend your marketing dollars. And then, number three, I do want you to audit your website for SEO opportunities.

Okay, so go to ChatGPT, or whatever preferred AI tool you’re using, and ask it to scan your website and say, How can I optimize this for SEO? All right, this is not obviously going to be as good as bringing in an SEO company, but if that’s not where you’re at right now, just take this step, okay, and it can give you some step-by-step instructions on how to better optimize your website. All right, so you’re going to want to make sure that you have keywords. You want to make sure that you have your proper, you know, headings and subheadings and all of that, your meta descriptions, etc. Okay, so you want to really focus on that, and then go ahead and choose the top 10 most common questions that your clients or patients ask, and create your first AI-assisted blog post using the process that Lucy described. Okay, so if you really want, like, bonus points, then think about a lead magnet as well.

That’s going to help build your email list that is a little more sophisticated of a strategy. We do have to put some if-then rules in there. We do have to build some funnels, but if you are there, this is a great way to attract new leads. All right, so you are an expert at what you do. You have the knowledge AI is just the tool that helps you communicate it faster and more consistently. All right, so take action this week, and I will see you next week when we go to part three of marketing month.

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ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Daniela Woerner is the founder and CEO of Addo Aesthetics, a leading community for aesthetic professionals, and the creator of the Growth Factor® Framework—a proven system that has helped 582 six- and seven-figure spa owners scale their businesses with strategy and systems.

With nearly two decades in the aesthetics industry, Daniela has trained alongside top physician-dispensed brands, consulted with leading dermatologists, and helped thousands of spa professionals streamline their operations and maximize profitability.

Her mission? To transform overworked aestheticians into Spa CEOs—building a business and life they love with the strategic systems needed for long-term financial growth.

As the host of the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast, Daniela brings expert insights, real-world strategies, and in-depth conversations to help spa owners elevate their marketing, optimize their operations, and create sustainable success. With over 400 published episodes, 1 million+ downloads, and a ranking in the top 1% of all podcasts worldwide, Spa Marketing Made Easy is the go-to resource for spa and aesthetic professionals looking to level up.

Tune in each week for actionable strategies, expert interviews, and inspiration to help you build a thriving, systemized, and scalable spa business!

EP 453: Marketing Month Part 1: The Foundation Documents Every Spa CEO Needs for AI Success

October 6, 2025
/
business, marketing

The Foundation That Transforms Generic Marketing Into Client-Converting Content

Welcome to Part 1 of our special Marketing Month series! After spending the past year knee-deep in testing AI tools and adapting our marketing systems, Daniela and Lucy are sharing the absolute foundation every spa CEO needs for marketing success in 2025.

This isn’t about chasing every new trend or hoping something sticks. This is about creating systematic, predictable marketing that works—whether you’re using AI tools or creating content manually.

The truth is, the spas that are winning aren’t the ones with the fanciest tools. They’re the ones with the clearest foundation. And that foundation starts with two critical documents that separate forgettable content from messaging that sounds exactly like you on your best day.

Why Foundation Documents Matter More Than Ever

In this rapidly changing marketing landscape, many spa owners are jumping straight to tactics without doing the foundational work. They’re trying to use AI tools or create content without really knowing who they are as a company or who they’re speaking to.

Here’s what we learned after a year of testing: AI tools are only as good as the information you give them. Generic inputs create generic outputs. But when you feed these tools detailed, authentic information about your company and your ideal clients, the results are transformational.

Document #1: Your Company Bio

Your Company Bio document isn’t a simple “About Us” page. This is a comprehensive document that breaks down:

Your core values and philosophies around skincare and spa services
Important milestones in your business journey
What sets your spa apart from competitors
Your beliefs about client care and service delivery
Your authentic voice and communication style

This document helps AI tools (and you) understand the background of the voice they’re trying to emulate. It ensures every piece of content sounds authentically you.

Document #2: Your Ideal Client Avatar (ICA)

Your ICA goes far beyond basic demographics. This isn’t “35-55 year old female with $100,000 discretionary income.” This is a several-page document that gets into:

The specific questions your ideal client asks
Their pain points and concerns about their skin
The language they use when describing their problems
Their stage in their own skin health journey
What motivates them to take action

Think about your favorite client on your books. Describe everything about them. What do you like about them? Why do you enjoy working with them? Start there and build out the complete picture.

Understanding Different ICAs vs. Different Life Stages

You may have multiple ICAs, or you may have the same ICA in different stages of her journey. For example, you might be targeting the same woman when she’s in her 30s pre-kids, when she has babies and toddlers, and when she’s going through menopause.

Understanding whether you’re targeting different personas or the same person at different life stages helps you create more targeted messaging that speaks directly to where your client is right now.

Why This Is CEO Work, Not Busy Work

Creating these foundation documents isn’t just marketing prep. It makes you a better entrepreneur and business owner. When you’re forced to get this granular about who you are and who you serve, everything becomes clearer:

Content creation becomes easier
Marketing messages become more targeted
Client attraction improves
Business decisions become more aligned

This foundational work is what separates spa owners who are “winging it” from spa CEOs who have systematic, predictable success.

Your Action Items This Week

Priority #1: Create Your Company Bio Document Block out 2-3 hours this week (yes, it takes that long to do it right). Document your core values, philosophies, key milestones, and authentic voice.

Priority #2: Define Your Ideal Client Avatar Choose your primary ICA and go deep. Think beyond demographics to pain points, language, and journey stage.

Priority #3: Test Your Foundation Use your new documents to create one piece of content this week. Notice how much clearer and more targeted your messaging becomes.

Next week in Part 2 of Marketing Month, we’re diving into the specific AI tools that are actually worth your time and money, and exactly how to use your foundation documents with these tools to create content that converts.

Remember, great spa businesses are built on systems, and your marketing system starts with knowing exactly who you are and who you serve.

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IG / @addoaesthetics

WEB / addoaesthetics.com

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ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Her mission? To transform overworked aestheticians into Spa CEOs—building a business and life they love with the strategic systems needed for long-term financial growth.

Tune in each week for actionable strategies, expert interviews, and inspiration to help you build a thriving, systemized, and scalable spa business!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Well, hello, my dear and welcome to part one of a very fun four part series that we are hosting right here on SPA Marketing Made Easy. We are calling it Marketing Month. And for the next four episodes, I am going to be joined by Lucy, our absolutely incredible Marketing Manager here at Addo Aesthetics. Now what we intended to do we sat down and we wanted to really have a conversation around the changes in the landscape over the past year, she and I have been really knee deep in testing how we’re going to use the different AI tools that are out there and available in our marketing, what works well, what doesn’t work well, how we’re using it, all of these things. And it ended up being really four kind of primary topics. So we decided to break that conversation up into four different sections, four different parts. And what I want to do for each part is give you some action items at the end of the episode so that you can actually listen to our conversation, kind of get the gist of what we’re talking about, and hearing our experience.

And then we’re going to do a section at the end where I’m going to give you your next steps, so that you can actually implement some of the things that you are learning here on this show. Okay, so today’s episode, we’re starting with the absolute foundation, I think that we learned, and feel very clear that without these two critical documents, your AI content is going to sound super generic, and it’s so incredible how so much of as you continue to grow and evolve and move to the next level in business, so much of it comes full circle, and It’s really about knowing who you are and who you serve, and when we’re working with any type of AI tool, whether you’re using ChatGPT or Claude or Sentra or Gosh, what are all the there’s Gemini. There’s so many different perplexity there’s so many different ones out there, but whatever one you’re using. And I’m assuming that most of you listening are just sticking with ChatGPT.

That’s what I hear inside of Growth Factor® Fundamentals and Growth Factor® elite, our members are really just kind of dipping their toe in how ChatGPT works itself. And that’s great, right? You want to get comfortable, I do suggest really mastering one before trying to learn all of these different ones, and being able to go deep and understand what is possible for you. But whatever tool you choose, you want to make sure that you have your company bio, which is who you are, and you want to have your ICA document, which is your ideal client avatar.

Okay, so your company bio is going to go over your beliefs, your philosophies, the different things. It’s it’s basically like your brand’s personality. What are your brand’s core values? Okay, so we actually inside of growth factor elite have a an entire week dedicated to these documents where we’re helping our members answer the questions and go through because it is such a critical foundational piece to be able to use AI effectively in your business. So I want you to go through. I want you to list out everything that makes your company, yours, your beliefs, your core values, all of that, your mission, your vision, all those things that seem like business 101, things, okay, and compile those in a document. And then I want you to create a separate document that your ICA, who you’re serving, who your ideal client is, and we talk about them a little bit more inside of the conversation with Lucy and myself, but you just want to have those two documents, and that’s going to be incredibly important when you’re going through and asking chat to create anything for you. Okay, so grab a pen, you know, or you know, you can listen to this episode again, but you may want to take some notes, and I’ll go ahead and play that interview now and then, be sure to listen to the action items at the end. All right, Lucy, welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am so excited to have you here again, and this is going to be kind of an interesting topic. It’s, it’s something, you know, we’ve talked about AI, we’ve, we’ve definitely talked about it a lot, but we want in when we’re chat. About the idea of doing kind of a marketing month and diving into these different aspects. There’s just so much that’s changing so fast. And I feel like when we learn something, it’s like two months later it’s already something new, already something new.

Well, I’m happy to be here, and I am excited to talk about this, because, like you said, it’s changing at a rapid pace. But I also think that ourselves, as we’ve looked internally at our own marketing, it has adapted so much within almost a 12- month span that we have so many findings that I think will be very valuable for other people that are navigating this landscape as well.

So one of the things that we learned right off the bat, so for those of you, if you’re new to our podcast, if you’re new to Addo Aesthetics, the past year has been quite the journey for us as we were moving through and looking at, how are we going to incorporate AI into our business, into the way that we are doing things, into the programs that we are teaching we and it’s, it’s such a an unknown area. You know, I feel like people that say that they’re AI experts, I’m like, how you know, how can you be an AI expert? Because we’re still learning what this is and what what you’re capable of doing with it. And it’s, you know, for so many that are these, like perfectionist and type a people, and they’re like, I’ve got to learn how to use it first before I’m like, well, you’re never going to know how to use it fully, because it’s constantly changing.

You got to test stuff out and see what you get. And we have been knee deep in the testing process for really, about a year of testing different AI tools that are coming out, how it works for us, with social how it works for us, with just content creation, in general, efficiencies in our business, all of those types of things. And, you know, I think one thing that we do know for sure, that we can state as true as right now, is that there are a couple of things that will separate this kind of generic content from content that’s like, that’s amazing, that sounds exactly like me and exactly like me on my best day. And that’s what we’re going for. And those two documents are your ICA and your company bio. So this really goes back to business 101, and we have to know who we’re selling to. We have to know who we are. We have to know who we’re selling to.

So when you were in college, what were they teaching you about your ICA and about your like when you’re going through your marketing classes and all of that? What kind of content are they teaching you back back in the day when you that feels like so long ago, I am only 32 so I will say I graduated in 2014 so it’s not like it’s forever ago, but how much has changed in 11 years? And I feel like at that time, it was very interesting, because that was, like, the rise of, okay, you need to be on social media, but like, what are you actually going to post on social media. It was basically like, you need to be active, but there was no real plan in place. And so that was, like a big issue that you basically just hit on with those two documents, is that when I was, excuse me, completing internships, it was like, you just need to get posts out there. You just need to get messaging out there, but you have to dial back and say, Okay, that’s important, but what are those messages that people are going to actually listen to and convert for your business?

So I definitely think that was a hot topic at the time, like everyone was just trying to get active. And we talk, we often talk about how, like, Instagram is a virtual storefront. And that was very, very true at that time. It was like, we just need content and we need it posted, and that there were classes that we were learning, like, okay, but we need to take a step back and figure out exactly what that messaging looks like, because just posting to post isn’t going to get you the return that you’re looking for.

It’s not going to get you the right people exactly. And so let me just explain the so the the company bio doc that we create for our elite members. Is it’s really breaking down all of the important information about who you are as a company, what your beliefs are, what your core values are, your philosophies around skin care, important milestones, your beliefs. There’s there. It’s a document that summarizes who you are as a company, right? And that’s going to be incredibly important for whatever AI tool you’re using to understand the background of the voice that they’re trying to emulate. And then when we look at your ICA, your ideal client avatar, that’s who are you targeting? Who is the person that you’re speaking to? So company bio is, who am I and what am I about? And ICA is, who is the person that I’m trying to attract into my business. Now you may have three different ICAs, and you may actually have the same ICA that’s in three different stages of her journey.

I use that example a lot when I’m talking with esthetic providers, because I may be your ICA, and you may be targeting me when I’m in my 30s, pre kids, you may be targeting me when I have babies and toddlers, and then you may be targeting me when I’m in menopause. I’m the same person. I’m in a different stage or different season of life. So it’s really important to understand with your ICA, am I targeting the same person at different stages in their journey, or am I targeting three different personas? So I may have an acne ICA, I may have someone who’s just anti aging, right? So we look at those two things and what is the language that I’m going to be speaking to for this person, and what is the language that I’m going to be speaking to for this person, and then creating content. But these AI tools, when you have those two documents, and I’m I’m not talking about like a 35 to 55 year old female with $100,000 of discretionary income. No, these documents are like, several pages long that get into the types of questions that your ICA ask. Think about it like the step one of creating this document is think about the favorite person you have on your books and describe everything about them, right? You want to start there to understand, what is it that you like about them? Why do you like them, right? But that document, those two documents, are like the foundational aspects of what you need to create incredible content, not just generic content that’s not going to move the needle.

Yeah, and back to that point, like we’ve talked about before, with being active, that’s obviously a part of the social media plan. I’m not saying that it’s not an important part. It is you need to be active and you need to be out there. And I think if we translate that into today’s landscape of social that has a lot to do with like trends that people start to follow, so they’ll use trending audio, or they’ll hop on a trend for a reel of some sort to show their charismatic side of their business. And that stuff is extremely important as well. But when it comes down to what’s going to actually book the client. That’s exactly the document you’re talking about, is where you’re crafting posts that are speaking to that person.

Because when we talk about just being active on national aesthetician day or something of that nature, and I don’t think a lot of people really follow those holidays anymore, it’s more about like trends, of like things in the treatment room of showing your personality those, those are going to get people to see your human side and to understand who you are as a business and your team, and that’s really important. But you also want to make sure that you’re letting them know what problems you’re going to solve for them,yes, speaking to their specific pain points, and to understand those pain points, you’ve got to have that document fleshed out. I feel like this makes us better entrepreneurs, better business owners, because we’re really having to do this foundational work that we could kind of get away with not having to do before you know you could know it and and even for us, like we, we’ve had an idea of who our person is, for sure, like that’s we’ve had that for years, and we’ve had an idea of who we are as a company.

But until AI really came in the picture, we didn’t have to get so granular and so documented about all of these days. Different aspects, and I feel like going into 2026, this is the most grounded and organized I have felt in my entire 11 years of entrepreneurship. And I don’t know if that is, I can’t say if that’s just time, but I don’t think it’s time, because this last year was a messy year, right? It was a wow. Everything’s changing. Everything is, you know, we’re redoing programs that have worked so incredibly well for us. We’re all of those types of things. But I feel like we dove in and did the work on such a deep level that the planning process around everything just feels so much more clear, and it all funnels back to those documents, really knowing who we are and who we want to serve.

Yeah, and I think another testament to that, obviously, length of business, 11 years is a very long time, but what your business has done really well is it has stuck to its foundations. And I think that’s why you came up with the word fundamentals for growth factor, because you knew what you want your core philosophies to be, the Add of philosophies, the Daniela isms, and from there, you’ve also included the people that you’re teaching in the feedback you’ve asked like, Okay, we are in a changing landscape. How can we take the philosophies that we’re teaching you and now transform them to actually be applicable to your business as it would stand in 2025 and I think that being open to that change is really the key there.

All right, I hope that you enjoyed the episode, and I hope you got some pearls of wisdom. Remember these two documents are critical to using AI in your business, it is going to make a world of difference. So here’s what I want you to do this week. And remember, this is not busy work. This is CEO work. This kind of short term pain, I’ll say, of taking the time to sit down and do this work will give you a long term gain in terms of productivity, efficiency and really dialing in and getting clear on your messaging for who it is that you’re trying to attract. So I want you to block out two to three hours this week. And you know, I know that that might sound like a lot, but I want you to really go deep with this. I want you to get clear and list all of this stuff out. Okay, your core values, your philosophies, your belief about skincare, the services that you offer, all of those types of things. You want to include in there, okay? And you want to write this in your authentic voice. You want the document to sound like you.

So that’s a really important piece as well. Then action item number two, I want you to define your ICA, okay, so this is going to cause you to really sit down and think like, gosh, I have all different types of people that I’m serving and and you may. But what I want you to do is think of anywhere between one to three ICAs that you can really define. And the best way to to do this is to think about somebody in your world, a client or patient of yours, that you feel so thrilled when they come in and just write about them. Who are they? How old are they? What do they do for work? What is the energy that they bring that you find so much value in? Okay? What’s the language that they use when they’re describing their skincare concerns? Really want to identify all of those pieces and then action item number three, test it out. Okay, now I want to be one thing I want to be really, really clear about, please, please, please, create a custom GPT prior to putting all of your company information into any type of AI tool. Okay, when you do that, if you do that, you are just putting all of your information out on the internet. And what we want to do is make sure that we are creating a custom GPT trained on our information that’s only pulling from the information that we give it, and not sourcing from the entire Internet. Okay? I think that’s just a big disaster waiting to happen. It’s got privacy concerns written all over it, so just save yourself the hassle. Make sure that you are creating a custom GPT first, and then you go through and put your information in there. So that you’re only getting information that you are feeding it, and not pulling from everywhere on the interwebs. Okay, so that’s what I want you to do this week. That’s going to be super, super important, and next week we’ll have part two of marketing month. So be sure to check in next week you.

EP 452: From Chaos to Clarity: How Spa CEOs Can Reflect, Reset, and Profit Big in Q4 2025

September 22, 2025
/
business, marketing

Time really has a way of moving fast—especially in the spa world. As Q3 draws to a close, it’s tempting to skip straight into holiday mode, open the doors wide, and hope for a profitable Q4 to make up for the slower summer months. But here’s what I’ve learned this year: nothing shifts unless you take the time to pause, reflect, and recalibrate.

I’ve felt it myself—after years of pushing, restructuring, reorganizing—I had to slow down to speed up, not just in business operations, but in my life. Slowing gave me clarity on what’s essential, what drain I could remove, and what I needed to nurture: my health, my team, and the beauty of building a business that not only scales—but sustains.

In today’s episode, I walk you through a Q3 reflection strategy designed for spa CEOs who want more than just a busy holiday season. You’ll understand how to examine which revenue streams carried you, where you were stretched, and what hidden opportunities you may have missed.

One metric I’ve been especially obsessed with this year is Client Acquisition Cost (CAC). I built a tracker in Growth Factor® Elite for this—it shows me exactly how much I spend to get new clients, from social, SEO, referrals, etc. Knowing this changed how I spend my marketing budget. If you don’t track this, now is the time to start.

We also talk about the upcoming promotions every spa should be planning ahead: “Shed the Dead” events, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday. But planning isn’t just about banking on holiday sales. It’s about building the systems behind those promotions: who is leading them, what creative assets you’ll need, how existing templates can serve year after year, and ensuring your team is aligned—not overworked.

So as you read this, ask yourself: What are you most proud of from Q3? What financial wins—even small ones—can you celebrate? Where did you overspend, or lose energy? What commitments do you need to let go of to protect your energy and show up as your best self in Q4?

Because the truth is: finishing this year strong doesn’t come from hustle alone. It comes from clarity, decisions made with intention, and systems that carry you forward. Do the work now so you aren’t scrambling in December—but dancing in December instead.

What you’ll learn during this episode:

How to do a powerful Q3 reflection: digging into revenue, memberships, promotions, and expenses
Why tracking Client Acquisition Cost (CAC) can be a game changer for your marketing ROI
How to plan Q4 offers (like “Shed the Dead,” Black Friday, Small Business Saturday) now so you aren’t scrambling later
The importance of building systems behind promotions—templates, funnels, roles
Questions to ask yourself to align the business with the life you want to live—managing energy, saying “no,” optimizing your schedule

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Subscribe to Our Newsletter

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IG / @addoaesthetics

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ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Her mission? To transform overworked aestheticians into Spa CEOs—building a business and life they love with the strategic systems needed for long-term financial growth.

Tune in each week for actionable strategies, expert interviews, and inspiration to help you build a thriving, systemized, and scalable spa business!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back to another episode of the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am Daniela, and I am so happy to have you here. Now, if this is your first time tuning in, we love to talk about all the things business as related to the aesthetics industry. I am a big believer in systems and a both and lifestyle, meaning that you can be a wildly successful spa owner and be a present and devoted mother. They are not mutually exclusive. So if you like that, you’re going to fit in great here.

Now. Can you believe that we are already wrapping up Q3 I feel like the older that I get, the faster that time goes. And every year, I’m sure in a year from now, I’m going to be saying the same thing, but gosh, this year is flying by. But what I’m noticing this year, which is a welcomed difference is that the energy right now is good last year, 2024 summer of 2024 was a really slow summer. It was one of the slowest summers to date, and that was kind of hard to come off of Q4.

Was still good last year, but it wasn’t this, like overwhelming busy that we are used to in Q4 in the esthetics industry, but I feel the energy is different this year we you know, right now, we’re working with a couple 100 accounts and spas all over the United States and Canada, and I talk to them every single week, multiple times a week, hear how they’re doing. What’s the updates, what’s the vibe, what’s the energy like, where they are at, and it’s definitely in a good direction. So I hope that that gives you hope. I hope that gives you excitement as we are moving into Busy, busy season.

And you know, I mean, it has been a weird couple of years. It’s been a weird five years, but there’s so much opportunity on the horizon for us in the aesthetics industry as leaders and as CEOs now, before we dive into the strategy around this episode, I want to share something a little personal with you. So if you guys have been listening for a while or following my journey for a while, you know that this past year for me, we went through a lot of structure changes. Went through just a lot of shifting in our business, and there’s been a lot for me, has been about slowing down to speed up. It was one of the most challenging years in my life in some aspects, but also one of the most incredible years of growth in my life. And it’s definitely going to be one of those years that I’m going to look back and I’m going to be like, Whoa. That was a huge turning point.

That was the place where big shifts happen. That was the start of my next level, my next big focus. And you know, for me, it was definitely a year that I focused on my health in a whole different way than I had before, on grounding my energy, for those of you that are into astrology, like I have seven signs in air, so it’s very important for me to focus on grounding and really just pausing and being intentional, looking at like making sure that what I am building in my business is actually aligned and sustainable for the season of life that I’m in. So I slowed down. I slowed down, I shifted things. And when you give yourself that gift, that gift of slowing down, of pausing, of being intentional, you actually create space for new ideas and for momentum. And I’m actually feeling that momentum now. I’m so I’m so excited, you know, I went through the hardest part, through the shifts and the change and the the messiness and so much, but we’re in such a good place now.

We’ve shifted our primary offer of growth factor into two different tiers. Our community is thriving, and I just feel so energized and excited for what’s ahead, and that’s a really great place to be in. Also going into kind of winter, which for me is always the hardest season. I love going into winter feeling so excited for what’s ahead. And the reason that I wanted to share that is because I know that for a lot of you, you’ve been in that place too. You’ve been juggling everything. You’ve been feeling pulled in so many different directions. Sometimes you forget why you started your spa in the first place. And I just want to remind you that building a business is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s okay to pause, it’s okay to recalibrate, and when you do when you give yourself that gift, the clarity, the energy on the other side, are exactly what you need to be able to move forward in a strong, intentional and focused way. Now I am not going to sit here and pretend like I had everything figured out there were a lot of messy moments, a lot of messy moments. God bless my team. They are so incredible. And, you know, I had to let team members go.

I had to let team members go that I cared deeply about, but I just kept trusting myself, and I was doing, you know, one step at a time, what I felt was right, and little by little, everything kept coming together. And when it all finally did come together, it was better than I could have ever imagined. And that just shows like your intuition. When you especially lean into that feminine energy and your intuition, you’re able to see like you’re able to know the right steps, even if you logically don’t have them all mapped out, you’re going to be guided because the answers are already inside of you.

I deeply believe that if you have a dream in your heart, if you have that vision, you have everything you need inside of you to be able to create it. You just have to trust yourself. And when you’re feeling guided, take that step, even if you don’t understand. So if you’re in a messy moment, trust yourself. Believe in yourself doing a Q3 reflection, which is what I want to go through today, is quite literally the best thing that you can do to really get understanding of what’s going on in your business and what it is that you’re actually building. Okay, so let’s talk about moving forward, and specifically, let’s talk about wrapping up Q3 and heading into the busiest, the most profitable time of year for most of you in the esthetics industry, which is Q4

Okay, so we’re gonna start with reflection, and specifically reflection around Q3 and Q3 is always it’s this interesting quarter, because for most, and I know I’ve got my waxers out there and different people, you know, seasonal locations where the summer is just slam packed, right? But for the majority of the esthetics industry, the summer is going to slow down a bit. Okay? You’ve got your clients or patients traveling, the kids are home from school. Routines are just out of sync, and so I say this is the perfect time to look at your financials and really dive into those things that we say that we never have enough time for, because we’re always putting out all these fires. Use this time anytime that you have a slowdown of any sort, use it to do the CEO work.

Look at your revenue and look at you know, What trends are you noticing? Check out your memberships. How are they performing? Are they giving you the predictable cash flow that you need? What is your churn rate? Are you know, what is the feedback that you’re getting on the membership? Did you run any successful promotions or events that you want to repeat or refine for coming years? This is where I want you to really think like a spa CEO, not a service provider. Okay, your financial foundation is everything. We are not running a charity. Here we are building a business. And so you’ve got to generate revenue. You’ve got to generate profit, more importantly. So that’s one of the reasons that I love membership so much. If you’re leaning into memberships, if you’re building that recurring revenue, just say you are ahead of the game.

Make sure that you are staying on that tracking that keeping your focus, your marketing, focus on those memberships, supporting your members, making sure that you’re building community, all of those things. Memberships give you that predictable cash flow. They give you stronger client retention. They give you the confidence to make bigger decisions, to take bigger risks, because you can feel stable that with reasonable certainty you know how much revenue is going to be coming in through your memberships for the next six months or so, right? Depending on the commitment that you have now, you might. Want to hire, you might want to invest in a new technology, you may want to pay yourself a higher amount more consistently. All of those things are easier when you have predictable cash flow. So when you’re going through and you’re looking at your financials, ask yourself, what revenue streams were the strongest for us, did we feel stretched anywhere, where what has the most opportunity or possibility as we’re heading into Q4 now for me, as I was going through this kind of transition of our business, of restructuring, of aligning our services to make sure that they’re actually relevant in the world of AI, and incorporating AI into our offerings in a huge way.

We’ve been going through we’ve been dissecting our business to understand what is a nice to have, what is a need to have. And this is a lot of work, because every couple of months, there’s some new AI tool that can do all these incredible things in your business, and we actually drastically cut our operational cost over the past year, and yet we 5x the productivity of our team. So we used to do a podcast every Monday, and we had a much larger team, and now we do a podcast every Monday, we do a blog. Every Tuesday, we do a spa Marketing School episode.

Every Thursday, we do the entire growth factor magazine every single month, this is like a 44 page magazine with lots of deep dive content. I mean, it is incredible, the amount of productivity that we are able to have with such a lean team, okay? And it’s all about using AI the right way. And trust me, there is a wrong way to use it. So as far as metrics for this year, the KPI that I have been really obsessed with more than other years is client acquisition cost. And so client acquisition cost is essentially, if you’re not familiar what that is is, how much does it cost you to get a new client? So typically, when we’re looking at new clients coming in, and that is something that you should be tracking every single day. We want to look at that every single month and see how many new clients or patients came in, and then where did they come from?

The three areas that most of the time, the big three for client acquisition is word of mouth, referrals, social media or SEO, those are the three places. Some people are going to have strategic partnerships. Some people are going to have walk ins. But the big three are SEO, social media and word of mouth. Well, I want to know if you’re investing in those things. So if you are getting most of your people from social media, and you’re spending, you know, $1,000 a month on ads or spending however much money on content creation, etc, then you’re going to take that dollar amount that you spend and divide it by the number of new patients that came in from that channel, and you’ll understand what it costs you to acquire that new patient. And we actually built a whole tracker inside of our growth factor elite program that is going to track all of this. For you, it’s really easy to use, but for me, that has the the question is, where should I be spending my time and when you know, like, I’m always going to say revenue, because everything else that you want to do in your business is going to be a heck of a lot easier if you have revenue coming in. And so the fastest way to understand how are we going to increase revenue is to understand, how are we getting new clients? And what is the least expensive way to get new clients? If you’re not tracking that information, you’re not going to know.

You can be as we’ve been going through this, I’ve seen people that are getting 50, 6070, people a month through SEO, and they’re paying zero attention to it. They’re not updating their Google business profile. They’re not focusing on reviews. They are not investing in SEO for their website. Huge opportunity. Huge opportunity. There friends, if you’re seeing you’re getting that many people through that channel. Let’s put a little bit of love in there. Let’s put a little bit of focus and attention. And that doesn’t always mean that you have to invest dollars, but let’s really focus on like, hey, if this is where most of our leads are coming from, instead of 70, could I get 100 if I just put a little extra effort? And instead, these people are often investing 1000s of dollars in social media and getting three people. In from social media. So we’ve got to have the information and really understand what is working for my business. Does that make sense? Why that’s important? So okay, so if you’re not tracking client acquisition cost, this is a great time to start doing that. And then I want you to go through and as part of the reflection, I want you to ask yourself some questions. So what accomplishments are you the most proud of?

Let’s you know, I know that it always seems like you’re like light years behind where you actually want to be, but we need to acknowledge the steps that we’ve taken, the growth that we have made. So look back. What are you most proud of? What are you most grateful for? Are there any specific ways that you saved financially this quarter that you want to take note of? Are there any situations that you could have handled better? Were there places that you overspent this quarter? What in your business can be automated. And how can you get your team to be proactive in helping you create more streamlined systems in your business? This is a big thing that I see. Is spa CEOs. They’ll come into our programs. They love the idea of building a systems based business, and they’re like, Okay, my goal for q1 is get my business systemized, get all my systems in place. And I’m like, okay, it doesn’t really work that way.

We can, you know, take a stab at and we can start to establish your system for creating systems, but it’s not all you. Your team has to be on board. It is a culture of your company to operate a systems based business.

So we want to make sure that your team is involved in that process. We also want to look at our financials. So what was your total revenue? What were your total expenses? What was your profit? How much did you pay yourself and the other metrics that you’re focusing on? Are they where you want them? Were there some that were higher, some that are lower. Really look at those. Take the time to look at those. And I like to just journal these things out. So it’s really helpful. If you ever are having a moment where you’re like, What am I even doing? Am I even making progress? You can go back to your Q, your quarterly review journals, in your annual review journals, and you can look at like, what was on your mind last quarter, what was your focus last quarter? What was your focus that year? Just keep a binder and just keep them all in there. It’s a really, really incredible activity to do for yourself to really see your growth.

Okay, so now let’s shift gears a minute, because Q4 is coming, and for most of us, this is our busy season. Not just busy like in the spa, but it’s also busy in life, right? We’ve got October. A lot of you are doing a shed the dead event. We’ve got Thanksgiving here in the US. I think Canadian Thanksgiving is in October. We’ve got Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever holidays you have over December. Lot of end of year school stuff. Kids are out for the holidays. There’s just a lot going on, okay, but I want to be really crystal clear is that the more that you plan now, the more you will profit later. We don’t want to throw together the amount of times that I’ve heard people like on four days before Black Friday. They’re like, I think I’m going to do a Black Friday promotion. Like, what?

Let’s, let’s plan this out a little bit more. Okay? Because if we’re going to put that energy and effort, we want to really make sure that we are making the most of it. So if you are thinking about hosting a shed the dead in October, like, towards the end of October, now’s the time to get those details finalized. Okay? If you are running a Black Friday or Small Business Saturday promotion, start mapping out your marketing emails, your social posts, the graphics. Get all of that done now. Don’t do it just right before, okay, so you do not want to get to the week of Thanksgiving. Be exhausted. Your team is stressed. You just want to be making your turkey. You know, whatever you make for Thanksgiving. I love turkey. I like brine. My turkey for like, three days before. I want to be focused on that, right, and not running some sort of promotion, trying to pull things together in a very reactive state that’s not going to be good for your business, that’s not just a overall good vibe for the for the company in general. Okay, so we want to be proactive. As spa CEOs, we want you to plan ahead. Your promotions are not just discounts. These are going to become true. Cash infusions for your business. Okay? They give you the breathing room and the margin to be able to finish the year strong. And remember, it’s not just about this promo itself, it’s the system behind the promo. Do you have the right sales funnels in place? Do you know which team members are going to be you’re going to be driving bookings to like, if you’re doing a shed the dead to get a specific provider busy, you know, who is that provider? Do we have assets that we have from a previous year? Do we need to revise those if we’re creating for them for the first time? Are we doing it in a way that it’s very easy to repurpose them for the next year? Okay, this is long term thinking, systems and planning are what makes the difference between a successful holiday season, a profitable holiday season, a joyful holiday season.

Okay, and I want all of those things for you, so as you’re looking into what you want to accomplish in Q4 ask yourself the following questions, are there any commitments that I need to back out of in order to make time for what is the most important? Raise your hand if you’re a people pleaser and you say yes to things even though you know you shouldn’t or you don’t have time. You don’t have the desire. You’re saying yes because you don’t want to let somebody down. What of those things do you need to back out of to make sure that you’re focusing on the things that are truly aligned for your desires and the benefit of your family? Are there certain days of the week that you already know are going to be strenuous, like, for example, there’s three days a week that my kids have after activities, between karate and gymnastics, and it just is a really long day.

So I want to make sure that I am, you know, I already know what’s going to be for dinner, and that I’ve have those kind of things prepped ahead of time, that I’m not adding something or doing a day that I’m back to back calls the whole day, and then just running and not even getting home until seven o’clock at night, after a long work day. So we really want to make sure that we’re mapping our days based on our energy, okay, based on making sure that we always have enough energy, that we’re enough balance. Have enough balance to be able to be present for our kids, for our family, to be present at work, with our clients and patients and our team, right? We’ve got to manage our energy on our schedule. It’s a really important thing. So look through what’s happening, make sure that you’re blocking off time appropriately, and then what are the things that you’ve been doing that you really don’t enjoy that just drain you, right? Look at those things and see what you’re able to get off of your plate so that you can have that energy to be really focused, to be really clear and lead your team as your best self. Okay, so let’s bring this all together. All right, I want to give you some action items so you know exactly what to do. So I want you to review your numbers. That’s a really important one. You might feel uncomfortable. You might not feel like you’re a numbers person. Just get in the habit, right? This is just for you. You don’t have to share these with anybody else. Just get in the habit of understanding what your business is telling you through the numbers, where the revenue come from, where how are your memberships performing, what promotions or events drove the most results. Okay. Numbers are giving you information. They are telling you a story about the health of your business, and you need to pay attention to that. Okay? Number two, plan your holiday Promotions Now, all right, if you’re doing a shed the dead in October, finalize it this week. If you’re running Black Friday or Small Business Saturday deals, map that out now. Okay, map out the full plan, the offer, the timeline, the email, the graphics. If you are in growth factor, fundamentals, we’ve got a ton of done for you. Graphic templates for the holiday season, for Black Friday, for small business, Saturday, we’ve got some for mini events. We’ve got a lot of graphics already done for you, so be sure to grab those if that’s going to be a time saver. And then, number three, build the system behind the strategy. Okay, don’t just run a promo. Build a repeatable system around it. Create the templates for the emails, the landing pages, the graphics,All of those things. Make sure that you’re not just putting this energy into a one off promotion. If you’re doing a shed the dead, you can do a shed the dead every October. Let’s template it and make this easier and easier for you every single time that you do it. Okay, so friends, Q4, is here.

It’s going to be a good year. It’s going to be a good quarter. It’s going to be a good quarter and a good year. All right, I am excited about what is to come. I’m excited. For you. I’m excited for this opportunity to finish the year strong. So remember that slowing down reflection, this is not wasted time. Okay, this is exactly the thing that’s going to allow you to speed up. If you ever heard you’ve gotta slow down to speed up, or sometimes your setbacks or your setups. All right, these are the things that are helping you reach your goals. All right, it’s what helps you step into your role as spa CEO to lead with confidence and not just create a profitable business that is a really important thing, but a profitable business that supports the life that you want to live. Okay, so take action on those to do’s those three action items. Block out some on time on your calendar. Get it done this week. I promise you’ll thank yourself when December rolls around and you’re not scrambling. But instead you’re like, Oh my gosh. I’m so glad I took that time to plan things out, and I see you celebrating an incredible year. Okay, so that is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for listening. I am so grateful for your presence and listening to this podcast episode. If you want to continue this conversation, please join us over in the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook group. It’s a great time over there. We’d love to have you if you’re not in there already, and here is to your success.

EP 451: Shed the Dead: How to Host a Mini Peel Event That Generates $5K–$25K in One Day

September 15, 2025
/
business, marketing

Peel season is here—and so is your chance to turn one focused day into a predictable revenue driver.

If big open houses leave you with an event hangover, you’ll love the mini-event model. A “Shed the Dead” peel party is compact, VIP by design, and built to generate real revenue, without draining your team or your calendar.

Why Mini Events Win (and Feel Good to Run)

Skip the chaos and go strategic. Mini peel events:

Protect your time and energy with small, curated groups
Create an elevated, VIP experience clients rave about
Generate predictable, trackable revenue in a single day
Strengthen client relationships that translate into long-term packages

Yes—this can be a $5K–$25K day (and much more with multiple providers). The magic is in the model.

What you’ll learn during this episode:

The Irresistible Ticket Offer: What makes it a no-brainer (and how to position it as a ticketed event, not a discounted treatment).
Pricing That Maximizes Revenue: The smart way to structure packages and retail so the event pays you twice, day-of and in the months that follow.
The 3-Week Promo Plan: A simple gain/logic/fear content rhythm that fills limited spots and fuels FOMO without spamming your feed.
Day-Of Flow & Roles: How to keep the experience exclusive, on-time, and sales-savvy—without feeling salesy.
Follow-Up That Converts: A low-pressure, high-service down-sell approach that turns “I need to think about it” into booked series and homecare wins.
Real-World Results: Revenue snapshots from spas using this strategy (including multi-provider teams hitting big numbers).

Pro tip from the episode: Thursday events tend to perform best. Try it and track your data.

Is This Right for Your Spa?

If you’re ready to replace overwhelm with a repeatable system – and you want an event that actually moves the needle – this is for you. Mini events are especially powerful for warm clients who are great candidates for a peel series and homecare.

Listen & Build Your Plan

🎧 Tune in now: Shed the Dead: How to Host a Mini Peel Event That Generates $5K–$25K in One Day

After you listen, tell us your takeaways and your event date—we love cheering you on.

Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on YouTube

Join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast Community

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Stay up-to-date with our email newsletter to receive important updates, news, and offers!

IG / @addoaesthetics

WEB / addoaesthetics.com

YOUTUBE / @addoaesthetics

LINKEDIN / @addoaesthetics

ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Her mission? To transform overworked aestheticians into Spa CEOs—building a business and life they love with the strategic systems needed for long-term financial growth.

Tune in each week for actionable strategies, expert interviews, and inspiration to help you build a thriving, systemized, and scalable spa business!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Hey friends, Daniela here and welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. Welcome to peel season. We are moving right along, getting that much closer to Q4 to our very busy season, which means it is the perfect time to host a peel event, a mini event, and if you like a good theme, a shed the dead. So I wanted to use this episode to get really into the details of a mini event, a mini peel event. And you know, we’ve taught events for years, event strategy inside of our Growth Factor® Program. So in the past 11 years, we’ve worked with over 1700 spas across the country, and 600 of those spas went through our growth factor program, where we teach events.

And so we’ve seen a lot of people host events. We’ve seen a lot of behind the scenes. And what I want to be crystal clear on is that there is a distinct strategy between a mini event and an open house type of event, and we tend to attract a lot of type A personalities. You know, hello, I see you. And a lot of times, the thing with the Type A is they’re like, Well, I’m going to just throw everything together. I’m going to mash everything together and just do everything possible to ensure that there’s a success. But it’s really important that you follow the every step of these strategies that we have created are there for a very specific reason.

It’s because we’ve seen through trial and error so many different spawners go through these strategies, we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. So if you are thinking of hosting a shed the dead, I want to go over the steps of a mini event and how you would actually host that. Okay, so a mini event is a day long event where the deliverable is actually received by the client or patient on that same day, and your goal is to sell packages.

Okay, so many events in general work better for your existing clients or patients. So a peel party is a perfect type of mini event, because peels are obviously received in a series for best results, and so we’re going to have them come in, and then we are going to sell them a package that’s going to bundle onto the top of their service that they receive that day. Okay, now what I like about many events versus the open house style of events, is that if you’ve ever hosted an open house style of event, you know what event hangover is? It is like planning a wedding. And if you’re like me, I hate saying this, because it’s it sounds not very nice, but I really don’t like large groups of people. I love people. I find so much good in people. I’m so inspired by people, but being in a large group of people, of people, gives me anxiety.

So I really prefer smaller groups. And if you are in a small group type of setting, you’re able to really engage, you’re able to really be present, and you’re still able to retain your energy. The deliverable is done that day. So for me, a successful mini event, you’re going to generate somewhere between 5000 to upwards of $25,000 in revenue in one day. When this is done properly, they take less planning, there’s less cost, and you can do them more frequently than you can do an open house style of event. Now it’s not to say that open house. Style of events are, you know, off the table.

I think they’re incredibly important for brand awareness. I think they’re incredibly important for attracting new patients and clients. And as you know, we typically lose about 20% of our patient base every single year. That’s, you know, again, for no reason specific to you. People move people’s financial situations change. People get pregnant. There’s a variety of reasons that your patients are going to drop off. And so if we are wanting to maintain, we’ve got to have at least 20% new patients coming in. If we’re wanting to grow, we’ve got to make a goal of 30% new patients coming in, right? So those open house style of events have a purpose.

They can be incredibly beneficial. But if you’re in a sustain year, if you’re just wanting to maintain, do a mini event and ask them to bring a. Friend, right? Do like a friends and family type of thing. There’s lots of ways that you can do it, if you are not in a season of life where you have the energy to put together an open house type of event. Okay, let me move right along here. All right, so the details of your event we always have to start. No matter what you’re doing, you have to start with the intention of what it is that you’re trying to do.

So are you trying to generate $10,000 are you wanting to introduce a new service? Are you wanting to get a new provider booked. So let’s say you’re doing a shed the dead, and I’m just going to use the environ cool peel as an example. We have a lot of accounts that use environ. We’re huge fans of environ. They’re one of our preferred partners, very value driven line, very results oriented, so I’m going to use them as our example. So if you’re doing a cool peel, the consumable cost of a cool peel is very low. So that’s a bonus, right there.

They are also something that is going it can be completed in a 30 minute time frame, that’s a big deal. Time equals money, and we see that so much in Spa. So what you’re going to do is come up with your offer first. So your offer could be, get your ticket to our shed, the dead event for only $99 and receive a complimentary environ, cool peel, valued at 149 Refreshments will be served, plus, for one day only, you are going to have access to some incredible deals on retail and services. So you want the offer to be an absolute no brainer, okay, so if the peel is regularly 149 and they’re getting it for $99 that is a huge savings.

Okay, it’s also really important that we are highlighting that the $99 is for the ticket price to the event, and that they’re receiving the peel complimentary. So this is not something that, if they know show they’re like, Oh, well, I have a $99 peel on my account. No, we need to make sure that it’s crystal clear that they are buying a ticket to the event. There’s a set number of tickets available. You also bonus pro tip. You want to have a separate cancelation policy for people that are booking their appointments in purchasing their tickets, because it’s going to be a lot harder to fill a spot last minute. If you typically have a 24 cancelation 24 hour cancelation policy, you’re going to want to make that maybe like a three to five day cancelation policy for a particular event.

Now you’re going to have less people, I find that peel events you’re going to have anywhere between 10 to 16 patients, usually something along those lines. So just make sure that you’re very clear in all of your communication. Now, for the packages that we’re going to be selling after if you did a package of three, you could offer those at 399, a package of six, at 699 then you can do maybe 15% off of retail in addition to that. Okay, so this is going to assume that a regular 30 minute peel is at a price of 149 and if you’re going to do a 60 minute or a 50 minute peel, if something’s like that, put that at 199 I’m typically looking at packages at approximately 15% off. Okay, so if you need to calculate that yourself, feel free. All right. So then, when we’re looking at the schedule, the event is ideal.

If you have two treatment rooms, I know that’s not always going to be the place there the the you know, possibility, but even if you’re closed during that time period and you’re kind of prepping people in your waiting area and then having somebody in the treatment room, but two treatment rooms is ideal, and we want one room where the patient can be prepped, waiting for their service, and the other room where they’re actually receiving the service.

So let’s say that your event is scheduled from 12 to six. You’ve got appointments every 30 minutes, and you’re going to have 12 spots to fill. If you’re a solo you’re going to have to give yourself a buffer between patients. You can also choose to host the event over two days. If you have a larger practice with multiple providers, you can have multiple rooms going at a time. Okay, so set it up with what makes sense for your practice. But I do not think it’s a good idea to have other treatment rooms going at the same time.

Okay, so you may say, like we if you’re open from nine to. Six, maybe you’ll see regular patients from nine to 11, take an hour break, and then see 12 to six if you are fully set on not canceling the entire day. But I do think that you’re more focused, you’re more rested, you’re more present when the sole thing that you’re focusing on that day is the shed the dead event.

All right, so when we’re looking at team roles, we want your providers to be prepping the patients and actually performing the services. We also want a provider to be consulting with patients after the services, about the packages and also about retail, the front desk is going to be checking patients out, and depending on the workflow of everything, they may book appointments or will set up a schedule where they will be reaching out to the patient The next day to book their appointments, which is probably better to be able to actually get their entire series booked.

And it gives another touch point for the down sell, which I will talk about at the end of this podcast. If you have any spa support, they are going to be assisting in room turnover. They’re going to be making sure that the bathroom has toilet paper. They’re going to be hanging up coats if it’s cold already where you are living. And then social media, so any type of behind the scenes content for marketing purposes, if you’ve heard anything about user generated content, UGC, a mini event, is a great place to collect some of that.

If you have a sign where patients can take selfies, or if they give you permission to take a photo while the service is being performed, you can offer them some sort of bonus if they post it on their account and tag you that is social media gold right now. That is something you know, carousel post and the user generated content are two things that are really increasing engagement, which means increasing sales and bookings for spa.

So we definitely want to incorporate that into our marketing. Now, if you’re a solo and you’re like, look, it is me, myself, and I doing all of the roles. How is this going to work for me? There’s a couple of ways. Okay, you can reach out to your top clients, or really like your raving fans inside of the business and ask them if they can come in and support you in exchange for a complimentary treatment. You can reach out to your friends and ask them, there’s so many different ways that you can have someone come in where they’re not going to be able to consult, right? But they can assist in room turnover.

They can make sure that the bathroom has toilet paper they can be doing social media content. So what are the things that you can have other people be doing? And if you do set up enough time in between the events, you can do this all yourself, but just make sure that you’re keenly aware of your energy and that you’re reserving as much of your energy as possible.

Okay, if you do hire people, or do trade in kind for people, make sure that you are very clear on the expectations you want to let them know what you expect them to be doing. They are not mind readers. So the more clear that you can be, the better. Okay, so I don’t know why I have no scientific backing for this, but events that happen on Thursdays always perform better. Okay, so test it out for yourself. Prove me wrong. But in 20 years in the industry, Thursday events are the best. So select a Thursday. If you have a Thursday available, do the time of the event. Make sure that you know you’re blocking off your calendar in advance. Make sure that you are blocking off that Friday as well for follow up, or just minimal patients that day. Otherwise you will be exhausted and then again, make sure that you are defining the roles and expectations for anyone that’s supporting you at that event. All right, so let’s talk about the marketing. How are we going to fill this up? We’ve got 12 spots available, okay, so we want to make sure that we are first. If we’re doing peels, we want to fill with the right seats, okay? We want to get the right people in there.

So we don’t just want to like hope that we sell 12 $99 tickets. We want to sell $99 tickets to people who are interested in chemical peels and who are great candidates to purchase packages. All right, so we’re going to be combing through. Our patient list and looking at people who have had peels before, looking at our top spenders who would benefit from a series of chemical peels. We only have 12 spots. This is exclusive. This is VIP. This is a way that they can save. So we want to make sure that we’re offering those spots strategically to people who would benefit from them. So we are going to four weeks prior, we’re going to call, we’re going to make our list of VIPs, and we are going to call them specifically and invite them in. Then once we’re done calling, then we’re going to start our social media strategy. We’re going to start our email sequences to make sure that we are getting those 12 spots filled. Okay, so do the outreach.

You may get those 12 spots filled within a week, and do not stop marketing. If that happens first, congratulations. But do not stop marketing. Keep posting about it on social and when people call the RSVP, then you are going to say, Oh, we are all sold out, but I’m going to put your name on the list, and I am going to give you a call if anything opens up. And also, I’m going to put you at the top of my list for the next time that we host one of these.

Because this sold out so quickly, it was incredible. And so we want to really build up that wait list. You can see why this is so important. We’re creating FOMO. We’re showing social proof that there’s demand for this type of event. Okay, all right, let’s move on to your social strategy. And this is like the strategy of threes. Okay, so we want to do three feed, post three stories, post three reels for three weeks leading up to the event.

They do not all have to be just super logical post. And when I say a logical post, it’s the who, what, when, where, why, how, right. What is it? How much does it cost? You know, like these very traditional promotional posts, you can create a reel that’s just somebody actually getting the peel, and in the caption you can talk about your event and say, you know, RSVP, call here to RSVP, or whatever the call to action is So really think about how you want that to how you want to break that up. And I would say maybe once a week you can do a logic post, but the other one should be talking about the benefit, you know, those, those of you that have been through our growth factor program, you know, we talk about gain logic fear in marketing. So gain is the Imagine yourself with clear skin, imagine yourself not having to wear makeup, and going out and feeling so beautiful. It’s the future oriented possibilities once you reach your certain goal.

Logic is the who, what, when, where, why, how and fear is. Don’t miss out. Don’t waste more time. Don’t be in the same place next year. It’s the negative. It’s the fear based. So we are going through, you know, creating a variety of these posts that are motivating based on gain, logic and fear. Okay, you want to do this for three weeks leading up to the event, and again, if you have before and afters, if you have, like, a educational post that talks about contraindications, who are appeals for, etc. So you’re really looking at your marketing content as how is this going to answer the questions that someone may have about pills?

How am I going to showcase the benefits for someone who’s been curious about pills, but even now, gosh, how many years later is has Sex in the City? I mean, it’s not even on anymore, and people still will say, I don’t want to look like Samantha from Sex and the City, right? That peel scene really caused a lot of a lot of impact for so many women, because that’s what they thought they were going to look like with a chemical peel. And as you know, that is so not the case, right? There’s so many different types of peels out there, some that you actually don’t even peel to be able to get the benefit. So we need to educate on those different aspects. Okay, so have a variety of different content, as I was saying before, carousel post right now, and I am recording this in September of 2025 and so if you’re listening to this later than that, there’s always a possibility that the algorithm changes. But this in September 2025 right now, carousel posts are actually getting more engagement than any other type of post on Instagram.

So it’s carousel post top. Yeah, then reels, and then just your static post, okay, so make sure that you are paying attention to what type of posts are getting engagement on your site and then on your profile, and then try creating some of that content just for a carousel post. You can use the same image and just put the caption on, you know, three to five different slides so that people are swiping through to read instead of reading the actual caption below. Okay with stories post. Also, you can post your reel into the stories, or you can post your other one into the stories, if you are having trouble coming up with content. But the reality is friends that content is no longer a excuse, because we have chatgpt, and if you’re using chatgpt correctly, you should be able to operate like you have a marketing team of 20. If you know how to ask the right questions, you can get so much content created in minutes. Okay, so ask chatgpt for some ideas on what you can post and make sure that you are, you know, we recommend creating a company bio document. We recommend creating an ICA document and feed that through. First say, here’s who we are as a company.

Here’s who our ICA is our ideal client avatar. We’re hosting a shed the dead peel event, and we want to attract this type of person. Help me to create social content that follows the gain logic, fear model to generate content for Instagram. Okay? So it’s, it’s asking the right types of prompts that will make such a huge difference. Okay, you also want to make sure that there’s a CTA in there. How are people going to RSVP, right? You want to, are they going to DM you? Are they going to call like, what is the process that is going to be a really important piece. Now if, for some reason, you are having trouble getting those 12 spots filled, make sure that you have printed signage in your spa.

Make sure that you’re talking to people every time that they come in, letting them know about it. If you have any type of strategic partners or relationships in your community when you’re out there, being the mayor of your town, getting involved, showing your face, make sure that you’re sharing this event with them. If there’s any type of Facebook groups that you can post in that’s like, please be in alignment with the rules, because nobody likes spam. But if there are posts that you’re able to post about these types of things, phenomenal, BNI, Chamber of Commerce, all of those types of things, get the word out. 12 spots is not that many spots to sell. Okay, so, but you do want to start with your clients. Those are going to be what we call your warmest leads that already know, like and trust you have already received chemical peels, they’re going to feel so excited to be a part of this. Okay? Now the day of the event, you want to invite them to come in 15 minutes prior to their treatment time. Okay, so this is going to you’re going to greet them, you’re going to offer them a refreshment.

You’re going to move them into the prep room. You’re going to make sure that their consents are signed. You’re going to answer any questions that they have about post care you want to make sure that products are visible in the room, because we’re definitely going to have post care products that they will be able to receive a 15% discount on then once they are moved from the prep room, you’re going to move them into the treatment room. They’ll receive their service, and then they’ll be moved if you have an area where there’s retail, maybe have a charcuterie board, some sparkling ciders or some champagne, whatever is in alignment with your brand. Have something there where there can be a person, and that may be you talking about home care, talking about packages, and if you’re staggering these appointments and giving enough time, it really can help them to feel like this is such an exclusive, fun event. All right, I do not recommend having walk ins come in during this time. The closure of the spa makes it feel more exclusive, and walk ins can really disrupt the flow, okay, so close the spa is something that I highly, highly recommend. All right, so let’s move on to the down sell. Because this is a space where so many practice owners are leaving 1000s of dollars on the table. I feel like I’ve talked about the down sell. A lot people feel like, okay, my event is over. I’m so happy we you know. We did X amount of dollars, but the magic happens in that week. Immediately. Post, okay, so what you want to do is make sure that you are reviewing the purchases of the patients or clients who came in, and so you want to go through and if Christy is my patient, I’ll be like, Christy, it was so great seeing you yesterday. Thank you so much for coming in for our shed the dead peel event. It was so much fun. And I hope that you know, it’s getting you into the holiday spirit. You know Halloween is kind of I always look at Peel season. It’s like back to school Halloween. It just gets busy. It just gets a busy time. And there’s always something new or fun to look forward to each month. So say, Hey, thank you so much for coming to our shed the dead event. It was kind of it was a fun start of, you know, getting us ready for the holidays, making sure you look and feel your best. I’d love to get those appointments booked out for you, because, as I said before, this is such a busy time of year, so I want to make sure that your self care is prioritized. And I was looking at your home care we I saw that you got these products, but when I looked back at your purchases for the past year, you actually have been purchasing this product as well. So I wanted to just, if you want to add that in, I’ll go ahead and extend the discount for you. But this is something that you’ve been purchasing consistently throughout the year. So going back, you’re looking at their sales. It’s kind of like, you know, when you go to Costco and they scan your membership card now they’re like, if you would have been an executive member, you would have saved $150 so far this year, and then you immediately, obviously upgrade to the executive membership, right? So we’re looking at like, how can we show them their benefits ahead of time? If they were to purchase, hey, you bought this product X amount of times, you’re going to get 15% off. So if you purchase now, you’re going to have a savings of X amount, right? So really highlighting it in that way for them can be really beneficial.

Then the patients who didn’t purchase because some people, they just need to think about it. My husband is like this. He can be like a hell yes on something, and he still is going to think about it. Okay, I’m more I just take action, right? That might be an entrepreneurial trait, but if I know that I want something, I’m going to take action on it. But we have people that are not like that, we need to honor that and not push them and because that can create some bad will in the relationship. And so when you’re calling them like the next day if they didn’t purchase, say, Hey, I I totally understand. You know, thank you so much for coming to our shed the dead event. It was so great to see you. I wanted to reach out and let you know that we are going to extend our specials for those who are at the event for one week, and I’m going to open up my schedule if you want to have a little more time to consult.

I know we never want anyone to feel rushed or pressured. And if you need a consultation or have any specific questions or wanted to just take a time to sleep on it, then we wanted to give you that option and let you know that we’re going to extend the specials for one week. So let me know how I can support you in making the decision that’s best for you. So we’re being supportive, right? We’re we’re really focusing honestly on customer service, which is something that I feel like has been kind of lost in the past couple of years. This has been a very challenging five years in our industry, and we really need to obviously maintain our boundaries now. There’s a difference between focusing on customer service and and not just like letting all of our boundaries fall right? So we want to go through and call all the people that were there offer whatever offers we need to do, and then I want to go back to that list of people who RSVPed if we sold out on the first day. So you may have said, You know what, I’m just going to add a second day, and that’s fine. But you could also call those people, and we’re not going to offer them the same offer. They they cannot get the same offer because we want to really honor the people who committed to show up and be present there. But you could do an offer specifically to the people who RSVP but were not able to go because we had sold out the spots. And maybe you offer them the packages, but not the discount on retail. So think about something, but this is an internal offer. This is not something that we’re like posting. It’s the after party, you know, on social media, and people are getting excited about that. No. So we are keeping this we’re training our people that if you want these offers, you are coming to this particular event, and this is a VIP type of event that we’re doing for, you know, specific you’ve got to take action to be able to get included with these deals. Okay, so let’s do a little bit of math here.

Okay, so if we do 12 clients at $99 that is going to be 1188 in revenue, if you have a 50% retail to service percentage. And so I’m taking 149 times 12 equals 1788 and divide or multiplying that by 50% that’s $894 now I’m taking the 50% on the 149 not on the 99 because I I want to honor that regular price there. So I’m looking at $894 in retail. Let’s say that I have a 50% conversion on packages. So six people purchase four, purchase the 399 to purchase the 699 and then in the down sell, I sell three additional packages of three for 1197 in revenue. So in one day, I generated $6,273 in revenue, which, if you’re solo, and you’re doing this with maybe a friend or two, that you offered a free service to you, that’s a decent that’s a great day, you know? And if you’re a even if you’re a practice that has a couple of providers, I’m not going to turn around a $6,000 day. That is lovely. And keep in mind, I have seen practices that are doing 25 to 30,000 on a mini event. Yes, they have multiple providers going, but it is possible.

So really, really exciting stuff without the event hangover. Okay, so the last step is to do a debrief. Okay, so we want to always look at what went well. What could we have done better? What do we want to improve upon next time a shed the dead is a really fun event, who which can be done every single year, right? So if you think about it, you’re creating the base content, you’re creating the emails, the social post, any type of resources that you need. You’re documenting the flow, looking at all of those things, it just gets easier and easier to redo because you’re just iterating on previous events. Right? So if you were to do six peel events, or six mini events per year, this would be $37,638 in revenue to your practice. If you’re a larger spa and you can handle more than 12 patients. You can obviously scale this further. So we had one provider in our growth factor program who did a mini event, appeal event. She did $46,186 at her event. Now she had multiple providers going, okay? So I don’t want it to sound like it was just her there. I believe she had four providers doing peels, okay, but just to say, like, almost $50,000 for a mini event, that is phenomenal.

Okay, so to wrap it up, choose the date, preferably a Thursday. Choose the offer, get your marketing, make sure that you are starting to market ASAP. Okay, we want to, if we’re doing shed the dead, where you’re likely going to do it close to Halloween, we want at least 30 days of prep. That means that it is right about time friends, right about time to really get serious about marketing this event. But remember, this is something that you can do every single year, something that you can iterate on, something that’s fun and exciting and gets people into kind of prepped for that holiday season. Okay, so it also brings community and awareness to your spa. You’re building relationships with your patients. So I highly encourage you to do this. Let me know how it goes. Send me a DM, tag me. I would love to see how your events are going, what your results are. You always can connect with me inside of the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook Group. We love to keep our conversation going on over there. But happy peel party, happy peel season. And I hope that you try this strategy with Shed the Dead

EP 449: What’s Your Exit Strategy? Planning a Profitable Spa Exit, Step by Step

September 1, 2025
/
business, marketing

Most spa owners obsess over growth milestones—six figures, then $1M—while the end game sits on the back burner. But a profitable exit doesn’t happen by accident. It’s something you design years in advance so you can step away on your terms, with options (and cash) instead of burnout. Exiting isn’t quitting; it’s creating freedom.

In this episode, Daniela breaks down how to make your spa sellable and valuable – no matter your size. You’ll learn how valuations really work, what buyers pay a premium for (recurring revenue, systems, clean books, leadership), and how to remove owner dependency so you’re selling a business – not a job.

This episode is a must-listen and is perfect for Spa CEOs from solo to multi-location.

What you’ll learn during this episode:

Exit paths by revenue: $2M+ PE/chains; $500K–$2M buyers; under-$500K local roll-ups.
Valuation basics: net profit + ad-backs/EBITDA, multiples, and key value levers.
Value levers: ~40% memberships, clean books, SOPs, leadership, diversified services.
2–5 year roadmap: Year 1 foundations; Year 2+ owner-independence, profitability, broker prep.
Exit readiness audit: owner dependency, financial clarity, systems, team depth, customer concentration, leases, compliance.

Resources Mentioned in Episode Resources Mentioned in Episode #449: What’s Your Exit Strategy? Planning a Profitable Spa Exit, Step by Step

Spa Marketing Made Easy EP 350 with Ben Hernandez on private equity insights
Spa Marketing Made Easy EP 422 with Susan Voss on spa acquisitions
Main Street Millionaire by Codie Sanchez (business acquisition strategies)

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ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Her mission? To transform overworked aestheticians into Spa CEOs—building a business and life they love with the strategic systems needed for long-term financial growth.

Tune in each week for actionable strategies, expert interviews, and inspiration to help you build a thriving, systemized, and scalable spa business!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am Daniela, and I am so happy that you are here today. All right, so I have a question for you. How are you planning to exit your business? Are you going to sell? Are you going to pass it down to one of your children? Are you going to just stop one day when you’re done and retired? Whenever I ask a spa owner this question, I just get like this, deer and headlights look, there is just a blank stare, because it’s not something that’s really on their radar, right? It’s something that is kind of an afterthought. When you start a business, you’re not thinking, how am I going to exit? You’re thinking about hitting your goals, hitting that million dollars, right? They’re so busy working in the business that the thought of like, how does this end? Just never crosses their mind. But my guess is that you started your spa to create freedom, both time freedom and financial freedom. And if you can’t step away from it, you’re just going to end up feeling more trapped and more overwhelmed, the exact opposite of what it is that we are trying to create.

Now you’ve probably heard about all of the private equity firms that are investing very heavily in our industry, and yes, they are, but they are typically investing in low seven figure companies. When I say low seven figures, I’m talking like two to 4 million on the low range up to the multi millions in revenue generation, if that’s you amazing, right? You’ve got some options to focus on, but there are so many incredible spa owners that don’t create that much revenue, that are not generating that much revenue, but they still have these very valuable businesses you have put your I want to say blood, sweat and tears, but I you’ve put so much of yourself into developing this business of doing the hardest part right start the from zero to 100,000 is the hardest part of a business. That’s where you have to do your proof of concept. But you’ve poured so much of yourself into getting this thing to work, getting this thing off the ground, and there’s so many that are not at a multi seven figure revenue, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not value there and that you won’t have an incredible exit.

So let me just give you an example. So if you have a spa that does 650 spa that does 650,000 in revenue, and that’s annual revenue, and then after your ad back so your ad backs are going to be considered like your owner’s distribution that you’re paying yourself. If you have specific like business travel that you’re putting on there, your CPA can help you figure out, like, what your add backs are, let’s say, after your add backs, you’re 120,000 net profit. That means that you could sell your company anywhere from 150,000 to 250,000 and perhaps even more, depending on how systemized it is and what your recurring revenue looks like. Now, I don’t know about you, but for me to walk away with a few $100,000 with a six figure bonus in my pocket as I’m transitioning into my next thing or stepping into retirement, I mean, that sounds pretty good, and that’s why today I want to cover exit strategies for every spa owner, regardless of size. So whether you’re doing 200,000 a year or 2 million a year, you’ve got to plan this appropriately.

Now, after nearly 20 years in this industry and working with over 1700 spas, I can tell you that the best time to plan is when you actually don’t need to, right? We want to. We want to get all of this planned out when we are not in a place where we’re having to be reactive about the decision. Okay, so do it when you don’t need to have that plan in place in advance. Now, there’s a few reasons why spa owners would avoid thinking about an exit. First, you might have emotional attachment, right? You pour so much of your heart and soul and your time and energy and your life savings into building this business. You might identify with this business as your baby, but it’s not your baby, right? You would never sell your child. The thought wouldn’t even cross your mind. But for the right price, I. Guarantee you would sell your business.

So we’ve got to disassociate the emotional attachment. And I don’t want to say like we we do pour so much of ourselves into our business, but it needs to be a healthy attachment, right? So that’s number one. So they’re never going to think about separating from the business, because they have poured so much of themselves into it. It’s a part of their identity. Second, they may not think about it because it doesn’t seem possible, right? You might be your spas top revenue generator, the thought of stepping away just doesn’t seem possible. You’re filling every single role. So what would someone even be buying if you weren’t there doing all of the work? And I’m going to get into that a little bit later in the episode. And third, you might identify with exiting as giving up. And I get that too. I am sure, like, you know, we all cause problems with our children. I’m sure that I’m creating some deep rooted beliefs in my children around quitting, because I say to them, at least on a weekly basis, Warners, don’t quit. And I’m like, Okay, how do I make sure that they understand this in a healthy way? That’s a whole different topic. But when it comes to quitting, here’s the deal, exiting your business so that you can focus your attention on something different, whether that’s your health, your family, or maybe even your next creation that’s not quitting, that’s just moving along in your path, not quitting. So if you want to sell though, this is going to be a three to five year process, so planning is going to be a big part of it. So like step number one, we have to get past the emotional attachment. Is it possible? Am I quitting? These are all things that we need to kind of find solution, find peace around so that we can start to plan. Because the cost of not planning is massive.

All right, you can leave hundreds of 1000s of dollars on the table if you wait to start planning this process until you’re just so burned out you just want to get rid of it and you’re just done. All right. You do not want to be forced into fire sales because of health issues or family emergencies or market changes that you potentially did not see coming. So when we’re looking at the timeline of this process, you’re going to need two to three years of preparation. So this whole process can be like a five year process.

Think of these two to three years in minimum as preparation to get your spot even ready before you’re talking to a broker. You’re not going to be deciding in January that you want to sell. And then, you know, by March, have like your top offer. If you want to get top valuation for what you’ve built, then you’ve got to have your systems in place, your team in place, your recurring revenue in place, and not having you as the owner, be reliant. Have the business reliant totally on you. In fact, you should have the business should not be reliant on any one person. That is going to be a big price decrease if you have that as an issue. Okay, so let’s talk about the different types of options that you have to exit depending on your revenue level. So if you are a high revenue spa, I’m talking 2 million and plus, then you’re going to be in private equity territory. Okay? So there’s a lot of different options, but what private equity is looking for is recurring revenue, aka memberships, potentially multiple locations or unique marketing positions. If you go back and listen to episode 350 we had Ben Hernandez of Skytale Group on, and he goes over everything. And Skytale Group is a private equity firm that has a med spa or a spa division in general. So they’re looking at spas, and he just openly and transparently shares what it is that they are looking for when they’re purchasing, when they’re acquiring a spa. You can also, if private equity is not your thing and you’re in that revenue range, you can also look at. At big chains that are wanting to purchase. Could you be absorbed, whether you have a unique location, whether you have like the right ICA, that’s the same as theirs. This can also be an option to sell to one of the larger chains, rather than private equity, if you are mid market, what I’m going to call between 500k in revenue to up to 2 million in revenue, then this is really a place for the individual buyer.

There’s this whole market, this whole world of people who are looking to buy businesses rather than start them on their own. And I tell you, they’re just they’re a lot smarter than me, because they’re skipping the hard part. As I said before, like going from zero to 100,000 proof of concept is the hardest part. When you go in and you buy something that’s already cash flowing, it’s already established, you’re fine tuning. Think about it like when you’re writing a piece of content, if you have a blank page, it’s a lot harder to write a meaningful piece of work than it is to take something that’s already been written and to revise it into something extraordinary. So there’s a whole market of people out there that are purchasing businesses, and what they’re wanting to do is take them, take their skill set, even if they’re not in Spa, but take their skill set to refine the systems, to refine the marketing strategies, etc, and grow the businesses.

We also did a podcast episode with Susan Wos. It’s episode 422, and we actually did that episode as a potential episode for purchasing spas as a growth strategy, which I’m going to talk about here in a minute as well. But there’s a lot of individuals out there right now that are interested in purchasing businesses. If you guys are following Codie Sanchez at all. She is the author of the book Main Street Millionaire. She teaches individuals how to purchase businesses. She calls them boring businesses. But our spas fall into that boring business. She’s teaching all kinds of people how to purchase businesses, and talks about it in that in her book. So there’s a lot of people out there looking to purchase from that way. Susan, who you’ll you’ll meet in Episode 422, if you go back and listen to that one she is talking about.

She has a company that brokers sales of spas of all sizes. So she’s very familiar with our industry, and she’s a great person to connect with if you’re in the 500 to 2 million range she she works with spas of all sizes, but to to that’s kind of if I were in that range of Spa, I would be looking to sell to someone else that wants to maintain and grow the spa as Their primary source of revenue. And then we have lifestyle businesses, or we have, what I look at these, if you’re under 500k then I would be looking to sell to another spot in your area. This is especially true if you’re a solo aesthetician. And again, this is something that is going to, you know, a sale is not just like, let me have my money and peace out, but if you’re a solo you don’t want to hire a team, you don’t want to build a storefront. You’re doing something that you love, but you would want to be in the room and you think that in maybe two or three years, you’re going to be moving to something different. You’re going to be moving on sell to a local business owner. They can give you a cash payout.

They can also, there’s something called seller financing, where you know they’re giving you a lump sum of cash and then paying you with interest on the remainder of the of the purchase. What they’re buying from you is your client list, and they will likely ask you to stay on for a year to be able to help facilitate the transition in and kind of the merging of your business into their business, but it’s a great benefit for a solo aesthetician who’s built a great practice, but perhaps just doesn’t want to grow the business further. They want to you want to see your patients, right? You want to see your clients. Clients you want to do the work rather than operate the entire business. And it’s a win for the spa owner, because, number one, they’re getting a dedicated employee that already has relationships that’s already going to be full so they’re immediately growing their Brit their business at a lower risk. So great strategies there as well. Okay, and there’s different, you know, Susan, if you listen to that episode and check her out, there’s different approaches, different types of sales, whether it’s an asset sale, you know, however you’re you’re structuring it, but they can help you with that, to come up with the value of your business and and moving through that sale process. So no matter what your size, you have the opportunity to sell. Okay, so that’s a really, really important thing to remember. Now I want to talk about what is going to make your business have the highest amount of value to a buyer. Okay? So it when we look at what the business is going to sell for, we’re looking at it in terms of multiples, okay? And what that means is we’re going to look at your net profit. So that’s everything. You have, your top line revenue, and after you take out all of your expenses, then you have your net profit. Okay? Then you’re going to do something called add backs, which are going to be, like your owner’s salary. There’s a variety of different things.

Again, your CPA can help you get more granular on this and understand what your true net profit would be after add back. Sometimes this is called EBIAT as well, which is Earnings Before Interest and After Taxes. I’m not sure the exact acronym, but it’s, it’s a fancy acronym for all the things that we are going to add back. I think it’s interest, amateurization and taxes. So again, your CPA is going to help you figure out what that number is, and then your multiple is going to be on net profit. So it can be a multiple of one of two, of three, sometimes even of 10, depending on the size and how turnkey the business is, okay, but you’re going to have to have a an extremely turnkey business to get a multiple that high. So what we’re looking at of things that add value to your business, recurring revenue, so memberships, subscription services, buyers are going to pay for Predictable Revenue.

You are lowering their risk. Okay, that’s a really important thing. So I would aim for 40% of recurring revenue. If you’re going to sell 40% or higher, that’s going to be a big risk reduction, and something that is going to be a value multiplier when you’re going to sell. The next thing that we want to look at is owner, independent operations, meaning, can your spa run without you? If you were to step away for a month, would everything still be profitable? Would everything still work just fine? If not, you’re selling a job. You are not selling a business, you’re selling a job. And so we need to get your spa as working as independently as possible, without you. And a lot of times this is where your spa manager comes in. Okay, so that leads me kind of to my next thing is a strong management team. So buyers want to see some level of depth in leadership. So a spa manager, a lead aesthetician, a front desk supervisor that’s all hand all capable of handling the day to day operations. Okay? So you don’t want to have a front desk that you just automatically say is your spa manager, because they’re helping you with a handful of administrative tasks.

Your front desk is your front desk spa manager is someone who can handle all the operations of the business, okay? And allow you to truly be owner, to truly be CEO, working on the business, all right, we also want to have diversified service offerings so. So if you, let’s say you are just a weight loss clinic, and the only service that you offer is weight loss, well, we saw, in the past year, there’s been a lot of significant changes with weight loss. And so you know, a lot of these practices that were focused, whether it was natural weight loss or using GLP ones, they’re diversifying. They’re diversifying because there’s a lot of there’s a lot going on with the weight loss in the past couple of years. Okay, so we want to have multiple revenue streams, whether that’s from facials, energy based devices, retail membership, add ons, whatever it is, we want to have some level of diversification. A lot of the weight loss we’re seeing HRT combined with it, that works very well, right? So we want to look at like, how can we diversify and not just have all of our eggs in one basket? And then, of course, clean financial documentation, this is so vitally important. So at least three years of clean books, documented systems, clear profit margins. Buyers want to know exactly what they are getting. Okay? So you want to make sure that you are documenting really everything, every system, every process that you’re charting, is up to date. So if it’s in your head, it needs to be on paper in your systems.

Now we love using Monday.com, and Google Drive. This is we, if you’ve ever been in one of our growth factor programs. So we have growth factor fundamentals, and we also have growth factor elite, both of them, we are very heavy on systems. We we have. We talk about systems, whether it’s in your sales, whether it’s in your social, whether it’s in your team, every single aspect of your business. We’re talking about how to systemize. Okay, so it’s a really, really important thing in year one, also of prepping. So when we’re when we’re, well, let me, let me zoom back here for a minute. Okay, so you first remember we talked about those three things, the emotional aspect, the belief, if it’s possible, the feeling of giving up. You’ve got to get all those things cleared up first, then for preparation to sell, you take year one and you say, alright, I’m documenting every single piece.

I’m going to make sure that I am building my management team, and I’m also going to clean up my financials and establish my recurring revenue. These are your main things, documenting everything just starts from day one and continues to go. Building your management team can take time. You may need to develop the leaders, you may need to increase revenue to be able to support a management team these, you know, these can be kind of mixed, so establishing the recurring revenue, maybe once you get X amount of members, then you’re going to bring in a spa manager. That doesn’t mean that you can’t act as the spa manager and be documenting those processes to ensure that you are going to be well on your way when you bring somebody in cleaning up your financials. Get a good book. Bookkeeper start there. We recommend kickstart accounting, but interview your bookkeeper.

Make sure that you have a good relationship with them. Make sure that they are providing you your reports on a monthly basis. Make sure that you’re checking in with them. They should be guiding you on how to prepare for tax season, on how to save money with taxes, right? These are really important aspects of the relationship that you should be having with your bookkeeper and CPA. So that’s year one, really looking at the structure that might take you more than a year, and if it does, that’s okay, just get those things in place, your documentation, your management team, your financials cleaned up, and recurring revenue in place. Okay, get those things done, and then you focus on the next year, the next phase of this process, on removing yourself from the daily operations. Okay, you should be in a place where you’re working on the. Business not in it. You are looking out, creating long term strategies, developing your brand presence and brand identity within the community, getting out there and being the mayor of your town.

You should also be pouring into your management team. The managers should be handling problems, running daily operations, and then you should be checking in with them to help develop them, build their confidence. You should also be focusing on profitability. So do we need a price increase? Are there certain services that we should be focusing on? Are all the softwares that we’re using still serving us, or the product line still serving us, right? We want to regularly review these things to ensure that we are maximizing profitability. And then once you feel that you have that dialed in, you’re happy with your profit percentage, then we’re going to get ready for market preparation. This is when we’re going to reach out to a broker or an advisor, okay? Let them tell you what they feel the value of your business is okay, and they’re going to help you prepare marketing materials are going to help you create financial summaries, Operation overviews, all of these things that are going to tell your story to a potential buyer and really showcase the value of the company of what they’re buying.

You want to make sure that you’re optimizing timing, market conditions, seasonal factors and kind of your personal readiness, going back to those emotional aspects that we were talking about in the beginning. Because if you go through this process and you’re like, All right, we’ve got recurring revenue. We have a strong leadership team. I’ve removed myself from the business. Do I actually, really want to sell? Because right now I I’m enjoying this I’m getting paid a great salary. The business is running on its own. Do I want to sell so and that happens, we work with people who are saying, okay, like, let’s, let’s go through this process. I need to sell. I’m going to prepare. I’m going to do all this stuff and wait now, this is actually enjoyable. I’m not stressed out. I’m not overworking myself, I’m not violating my own personal boundaries, and I’m making a great salary. Is this something that I actually want to do? So you’ve got to make sure that you’re regularly checking in with yourself, and maybe you don’t. Maybe you say, You know what, I think I’m going to pass this down to my kids, or I’m okay with the risk that I might get pulled back in if something happens right, if I know, like during covid, a lot of a lot of owners that were acting as owners, not operators, got pulled back into operations. That’s a risk that you take, and that’s it’s okay, but you’ve got to kind of revisit and understand what it is that you want to do. What is the important thing for you? All right, so when we are moving in. Let’s say that you decide to sell price and terms are going to be the two things that you’re looking at when I talk about terms, there’s something called seller financing that is incredibly popular. Seller financing, essentially is when you say, Okay, I’m I’m willing to do seller financing on the business.

The current owner of the business needs to also have trust in the buyer to that they know what they’re doing, that they are going to be able to run the business and grow the business, because essentially what seller financing is, is the current owner becomes the bank. So they’ll say, hey, I’ll I’ll give you X amount down, and then I’ll pay you X amount per month with 6% interest or 7% interest for five years or for 10 years, and they are paying that out of the profits of the business. And so it becomes beneficial for them, because they’re not using their cash, they’re using the cash from the business. So it’s like an investment for them. But there’s risk. There’s always risk, right? There’s risk that the business might go under. There’s risk that a variety of different things, right? Where, if they do traditional financing, like an SBA loan or a cash purchase that goes directly into your bank account, okay? Okay, and there’s also tax benefits. So that’s another thing. When you’re looking at terms, you want to have your CPA run through and say, Well, what? What’s the financial impact? What’s the tax impact, if I were to receive this large lump sum, versus doing seller financing and receiving X amount over the period of 10 years. What does that look like? These are all really important aspects that you want to have an understanding for. This is why we don’t want to do this reactive sale. We really want to have an understanding of what these things look like.

So you going into it if you run those scenarios with your CPA, you may already have an understanding of that without having to go through it with the potential buyers. Okay? So really, really important to understand different types of terms and what you’re willing to accept. Okay, so here’s what I want you to do right now, I want you to rate your current exit readiness on a scale of one to 10. Okay, some of the things that you want to look at, you know, we talked about owner dependency, we talked about financials, we talked about not having documented systems. Those are things that you know, yes, we want to get those things in place, other things that you may want to dive into to understand the sellability, or the sellability of your business.

That’s word, a high customer concentration. So if you have, like, your top 10 clients are spending huge amounts of revenue, and so they’re really like, there’s a concentration of of this group of of clients or patients that are bringing in the majority of the revenue, that’s going to be a red flag, right? We want diversification lease issues. So we want to make sure that we want to look at short term leases. We want to look at personal guarantees. We want to look at your landlord. We also want to look at any kind of regulatory issues, so licensing compliance or legal disputes. These are all things that you want to be aware of. So look at all of those things, and then rate yourself on a scale from one to 10 of where you’re at. And you can kind of put these into different categories. Is systems, my biggest obstacle, our financials, my biggest obstacle, our team. Is that my biggest obstacle? Am I the owner? Dependency? Is that the biggest obstacle? So look at these, and then just focus on one at a time, right? This is a marathon, not a sprint. Focus on correcting one or getting better, little by little, one at a time, to get yourself to the place where you are able to sell, okay, set a 90 day goal for yourself, document what you’re doing.

We my team when we kind of started getting into when we started getting really serious about systems, this was about 2018 we just picked one thing every day. We are part of your routines, part of the things that you need to do on a daily basis. Every single person needs to document one thing that they’re doing every day and create an SOP about it now with chatgpt and softwares like loom, it’s so incredibly easy to do this, you just have to create the habit of documenting what it is that you’re doing this is removing the dependency on any One person, because if, let’s say that your front desk is you have SOPs for every single thing that needs to be done, you could hire somebody to come in, and even if they’re not as fast or efficient, there’s an SOP that they can follow for how to book An appointment, for understanding what your policies are, your cancelation policy, your return policy, your no show policy, right? Like all of these things, if you have that all documented, it’s infinitely easier to hire and train somebody than just losing all of that knowledge with one person. Okay, then put on your calendar now, when you’re doing your quarterly reviews, and if you’re not doing quarterly reviews, put those on your calendar for, especially for 2026 we want to do an annual review in January of 2025 and then we want to do quarterly reviews of, are we hitting our goals? And. You’re including in there part of your goals are things that you want to accomplish on your exit strategy. So let’s say that getting your financials in order is the biggest thing, and maybe under those financials, step number one is hiring a bookkeeper. So then the task is to interview bookkeepers and get that in place. Start documenting, start organizing, start understanding the numbers and under and having an idea of where you need to clean up. Okay, so that’s your action item that you’re doing for q2 if you’re focusing on systems, then put into place that, hey, we’re going to start documenting every single person, one a day is going to be documenting a system. Little by little, we’re going to be building up, like by the end of the year. Imagine all the systems that we’re going to have in place, right? So really, really important that you just take small actions, small, consistent action every single day to help you get closer to your goal.

Okay, all right, so focus on that. If you have questions around this, please come hang out with us in the Spa Marketing Made Easy Facebook Group. Post your questions in there.

We do a video series every single week. It’s called Spa Marketing School, where we are giving you business tips to help you get more profit in your business. We try and make these videos 15 minutes or less. So we’ve got those once a week. We have over 12,000 spa owners inside of that group. So it’s a great place to connect with one another, to ask questions, to learn from one another. So post a question, tag me in there. If you have anything that you want to learn about when it comes to exiting your business, let me know. That’s where I want to keep the conversation with you, where I can continue to help and support you and have a two way conversation together. I love saying a rising tide floats all boats, so let’s focus on that. All right, my friends, be sure to check out the resources in this episode, we’ll link up those two podcast episodes that I mentioned and a couple of the softwares that I mentioned as well. And here is to your success.

EP 448: System to Freedom: 7 Spa Systems Every CEO Needs for Growth & Clarity

August 25, 2025
/
business, marketing

Build Systems, Not Stress: The 7 Core Frameworks Every Spa CEO Needs

If your spa feels like a treadmill—always busy yet never growing—you’re in the right place. This episode is a masterclass in building freedom through systems, not software or burnout.

1. Client Journey
Every touchpoint—online to 10th visit—should feel guided, seamless, and thoughtful. Structure appointment confirmations, paperwork, follow-ups, and treatment documentation to build trust and avoid human error.

2. Consultation Process
Create a repeatable, tailored experience using minute-by-minute flows to ensure every consultation is thorough and consistent, no matter who’s performing it.

3. Retail System Integration
Review product recommendation flow charts, reorder systems, and follow-up protocols to make retail feel like care—not sales—and to align it with the client journey.

4. Metrics & KPIs
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Track revenue, retail, rebooking, marketing performance, and client acquisition cost with dashboards and weekly review systems.

5. Hiring, Onboarding & Development
Use tools like monday.com to standardize hiring steps, onboarding training, and staff development. When you can delegate these processes, you step fully into your CEO role.

6. Marketing & Promotions
Map yearly promotional opportunities (like peel season, holiday promos, or Black Friday) and delegate ownership of tasks so you’re proactive—not scrambling.

7. Financial Management System
Block 30 minutes weekly to review budgets, payroll, profit margins, and revenue flows. Tools like YNAB make cash flow feel manageable and strategic.

Bonus: Annual Planning System
Effective systems evolve. Start building your annual planning processes now—so you can vacation, exercise, or simply lead with vision, not reaction.

Systems aren’t a one-and-done checklist—they’re a way of running everything. Start small, build consistent steps, and watch your spa transform.

Resources Mentioned in Episode #448: System to Freedom: 7 Spa Systems Every CEO Needs for Growth & Clarity

Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman

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ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Her mission? To transform overworked aestheticians into Spa CEOs—building a business and life they love with the strategic systems needed for long-term financial growth.

Tune in each week for actionable strategies, expert interviews, and inspiration to help you build a thriving, systemized, and scalable spa business!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome back to the Spa Marketing Made Easy podcast, I am your host, Daniela, and today’s episode is covering one of my absolute favorite topics, and that is systems. So why is that my favorite topic? Well, because systems are what create true freedom. It’s not a fancy software, although we may have software incorporated into our systems. It’s not the latest Tiktok trend, and it’s not working yourself into burnout. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Systems are what allow you to grow. It’s what allows you to step out of the treatment room, it’s what allows you to finally become the spa CEO that your business needs. Systems are what allows you to build a business around the life that you want to live. So today, I’m going to walk you through seven areas of your spa that you can and should systemize if you want less chaos and more clarity. Okay, so let’s get into all of these.

So the first area of your business that we can look at systemizing is your client journey. All right, so this is where it all begins from the time that someone finds you, either online, whether that’s through chatGPT, whether that’s through SEO and search, whether that’s through social, however they are finding you from their first appointment to their 10th visit. We want that entire journey to feel guided. We want them to feel understood. We want them to feel taken care of. So in order to systemize this process, we need to have a clear path like, how do we confirm appointments? What happens when a new client books a service? Are we confirming their appointment? Are we sending them paperwork ahead of time? Are we acknowledging that they’re new when they come in? How are we following up with them? How are our treatment plans documented the entire journey from start to finish should be documented. Okay, so this is going to create consistency in their care. It’s going to build trust, and it’s going to build long term loyalty.

Now, one of my favorite books on the client journey is called Never Lose a Customer Again. It’s by Joey Coleman, and he has an entire framework in side the book that talks about the different stages that a customer goes through in their first 100 days of doing business with you. And he talks about, you know, even further after that. But how are we from the time that they even see who we are and we be, they become aware of our brand, to doing business with us, to the follow up. What does that look like? Now? We’re human, right? We are entrepreneurs. We’ve got a lot of things going on, and it’s very easy and very normal to forget a task, to forget something, even if it’s completely unintentional, which is why we create systems in the first place. They are documented processes around every single aspect of your business to make sure that those steps don’t fall through the cracks, and to also make sure that they’re repeatable no matter who is going through and completing that process.

Okay? So the second part of your business that can be systemized, that can be made very clear, so that we are doing it the same across the board, is your consultation process. Okay? We want every single consultation to feel thorough, customized and clear, but also repeatable, okay, so from the questions that you ask to the treatment recommendation process to how the product recommendations are documented, how you’re showing them to the patient. You know, are we setting them on the counter? Do we have a consultation room? Everything, including the follow up protocol for consultations, this needs to be documented and systemized, very similar to how you would create a protocol for a service.

So minutes one to three, we’re doing this. Minutes three to six, we’re doing this. We want that for the consultation process as well, and that way, when we have a patient that refers somebody else to us, they’re getting that same exact service. And side note here, this is also why it’s incredibly important to have protocols, not only with our consultation system, but with our services. Because if you have one aesthetician who’s not following the timing protocols and is maybe spending going 15 minutes over, spending more time on the massage than she should, and a patient refers, you know another, a friend of theirs, and they go with another aesthetician, and her service was 15 minutes shorter. Or that same patient goes with another aesthetician, just because we’re focusing on being patients of the practice, and then her service is different, she’s going to feel like someone didn’t fully do their job, or didn’t put the same level of effort, like it was shorter, when In fact, it was just one provider who wasn’t following the protocols, so you can see how that can cause so much conflict across the board.

So it’s really important to have these experiences that our patients go through, whether it’s a service or in this case, we’re talking about the consultation, we want it to be systemized across the board, okay, all right.

The third area that should be systemized is your retail system. This is really big, and we actually just did a podcast episode, actually, I think it was last week around your retail like, how and when to pay commission. Part of that episode, we were talking about your product flow chart. So how are we creating consistent recommendations of what and when we’re talking in your entire retail system? How are reorders and follow ups tracked. How is your commission structure based? Is it based on your retail to service ratio? So we want to have everything around retail systemized. So if you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, be sure to check that out. It really goes into the retail commission structure on a much deeper level, that can really help you to systemize this entire process, which actually ties in to the client journey, right?

Because we want to understand how and when are we following up well that aligns with retail sales as well, okay, but to learn how to do your go to product flow chart, which is an incredibly useful tool to help you standardize and systemize your retail recommendations. It’s huge, okay? Number four, the fourth area to systemize in your business is your metrics, okay, you cannot track. You cannot grow what you don’t track. Okay, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. So we’ve got to have a system in place where we are looking at the different KPIs in our best in our business. So if we’re systemizing this, do we have our front desk filling out a KPI tracker, or maybe our spa manager? Are you meeting with your spa manager on a weekly basis and reviewing the KPIs and saying, What is this telling us? Remember that your metrics, your numbers, are the language of your business. It’s what your business is telling you about what’s going on, and so what is the system that you have around this? Now for us with numbers, I actually meet with Lucy, who’s my marketing manager. I have a different process for some of the CEO KPIs that I’m looking at, but for marketing, which I think every single one of you is going to it’s going to be very important for you want to know, like, what are the marketing KPIs that we’re looking at? Is it engagement on our social media accounts? Is it the number of email inquiries or phone calls that we get? What are the specific things, and how can we look at that to understand if the actions that we’re taking with social or with our ads or with our SEO are actually getting us an ROI.

If we’re not looking at the numbers, we’re not going to be able to understand that. So we need to make sure that we have a system around our weekly reporting on revenue, on retail, on rebooking. We want to have monthly performance reviews on team members, kind of where are they at? We want to have. The KPIs for our service providers and our front desks, you perhaps want to have dashboards or spreadsheets that can make your data visible. One of the things that we have inside of our growth factor elite program is a client acquisition cost tracker.

And so when we’re looking at how you’re acquiring new clients, whether that’s social, whether that is SEO, whether that’s word of mouth referral, whether that’s strategic partnerships, whether that’s walk in traffic, we want to understand how much money have we invested in that particular venue? And it might be zero and it might be $1,000 a month, but we want to understand what is it costing us to get a new client?

So when we’re looking at, hey, we’re spending $1,000 a month on SEO, but we’re actually getting 20 new clients from social and we’re spending $500 on SEO, or, excuse me, $500 on social, that data by having a system that we’re looking at that that data is helping us to make decisions that, hey, we actually have more clients coming from social, and so we want to invest more money, because it’s going to be much more profitable from that venue from then the other. And it might be vice versa. You may be getting a ton more from SEO, and maybe you’re investing all your money in social, and we want to switch that. Okay, so this is how and why. Having a system around your metrics and tracking is so vitally important, it’s going to help you shift from guessing into leading with clarity. Okay, so number five, the fifth area of your business that you want to systemize is your hiring, onboarding and development process your team. What are they going through.

So we want to have standardization around our job descriptions. We want to have the hiring and interview flow so where we what is the process, from the time that we decide to hire to the time that we do the job posting, how we’re selecting candidates now here at Addo Aesthetics, we have a very clear hiring, onboarding and development process. We use monday.com which is our project management software, to break down into steps, the hiring system, the onboarding system and the development system, okay? And that’s something that makes it repeatable. It makes it easy to follow. It’s got all the appropriate things linked up inside of there. This is how you create an actual system, okay, so if I’m gonna go higher, then I can pull up my hiring template board, I can duplicate it, and I can put the date in there, and I can go through each of the steps I’m following that system so that if I want to go on vacation, let’s say that it’s summer and I have my spa manager going through The hiring process, because I am on a two week vacation at the beach with my kids, then my spa manager is going through and following the exact same process that I would be following.

That’s the freedom there. Okay, that is something that it is absolutely priceless to be able to have your business working and generating revenue when you are not there, okay, when that is happening, and you can step into that role of Spa CEO, the whole the whole game changes. The whole world changes. You’re able to focus on things that were just you weren’t able to have the capacity to focus on them because you were so in the business. Okay, it’s so vitally important to take your time and go through these different areas. Now I’m gonna, I’m gonna take a pause here and just say your systems are never done. Okay, I’m going through.

I’m giving you seven areas to look at to get started. But know that running a systems based business is a lifestyle. This is a lifestyle. This is a choice that you are making, similar to saying I am choosing a healthy lifestyle where I care about my diet and exercise and my you know, I’m exercising four times a week. You can’t just stop. Of exercising it. I mean, you can, but you’re not going to be able to maintain the same benefits as if you were to stay exercising. Okay, same thing with systems. And one of the things that when I’m talking to spa owners about what’s your 90 day goal? What are we focusing on right now? What’s our top priority? Well, in the next 90 days, I wanna have all my systems created. Okay, well, we can go through and maybe we can pick two or three of these seven that we’re going to get the framework on, but we’re still going to need to revise. We’re going to need to refine. We’re going to need to evolve as our business evolves and grows and changes. Okay, you know, we’ve been really focusing on systems, I would say, since 2017 2018 something like that. And every year we’ve got to update something. If we change a software, we have to update it. If we change an offering, we need to update it. There’s so many different things that you just have to say, this is a lifestyle, this is a philosophy or approach in the way that we operate our business. Okay? So to go back to hiring and onboarding and development, one of the biggest challenges when someone comes to our company is team. They can’t find any good people. They can’t find people that want to work, or they find people that want to get paid, you know, $100 an hour to be a part time aesthetician there. I mean, there’s these things that you hear that’s just like, okay, like, how do we resolve this?

Well, we set extremely clear expectations and communication, okay, so from our job descriptions, those are going to be detailed our hiring process, communicating, what we expect in the role, what are the metrics that we are measuring success and and this is where you know, when we get into leadership as a skill, we talk quite a bit about how it’s normal that to go through 234, sometimes even five hires before you find the right person for that.

Every time you’re going through that process, you’re refining your hiring system, your onboarding system, your development system, you’re saying, Oh, this needs to be added in that needs to be added in. This is where I should be following up. This is where I should be checking in. Okay, it’s, I know it’s hard, but this is what’s going to get you to a place where you know exactly what a great fit looks like. You know exactly how to attract and retain your people that align with your core values. If you don’t have a system around hiring, onboarding and development, it’s going to be a huge struggle and an ongoing struggle, okay?

So area number six that you can systemize is your marketing and promotion okay? So we want to understand your monthly promotion calendar. We want to understand your sales funnels. We want to understand who owns what task. We want to understand your social media so marketing doesn’t have to feel like you’re just like flying by the seat of your pants. This is something especially with AI that we can be so clear and so granular and so dialed in around the messaging that we want to create. Now we know that October is peel season, right? There’s a lot of maybe every October you’re doing a shed the dead and a peel party.

We should know the marketing leading up to that. We maybe you know that every Black Friday you do a particular promotion, or you do a Small Business Saturday, there’s pieces of behavior, of information that we’re doing every year. Maybe you do a Christmas in July. We want to map those things out, okay? And this is also, you know, I’m going to give you a bonus section number eight, which is around planning. I’ll tell you after number seven, but planning and having a system around how you do your annual plan is huge. This is how you are able to go on the vacations that you want, that you have time to exercise, that you just have so much clarity in you. Building a business around the life that you want to live. And we’re actually going to get into this later in September. We’re doing next level growth, which is our annual event. We’ve done it every year for several years, where we walk through the entire process of planning your year out and how I do it, how I’ve done it for years, how I’ve refined it.

This is my annual planning system that I have used from doing the calendar audit to, you know, getting clear on what my goals or desires to understanding the season of life that I’m in. And, you know, what, what are my kids requiring of me at this point. So I’m, I’m going through all of that that’s going to help me with my marketing system. When I know that, right? I’m going to know what I’m doing a year in advance, instead of it being October. And I’m like, Oh, wait, should we do a Black Friday promo? It’s already done. You already know it, right? It’s going to save you so much time. So it’s really an important process to have your marketing and promotion system done in advance, and with AI and with chatgpt and so many of these other incredible tools out there, it’s making it easier than ever, easier than ever, and faster than ever. So there’s literally no excuse at this point. Okay, so part number seven, your financial management system. This is a big one, and we often avoid it, right? We avoid because the numbers are scary. We don’t feel like a numbers person. There’s so many heavy emotions that are attached to money and worth, and so we regularly avoid the finances. I have worked with seven figure spa owners who literally have not looked at their finances. It’ll be October, and they have no idea what they what their revenue or expenses are for the year. And I’m like, Okay, we have some work to do, because there’s obviously some blocks that we need to work through, around financial management, around what money means to you, and your money mindset, and all of those things.

But we want to systemize how we are setting and creating revenue goals. We want to systemize our process for budgeting, for payroll, for you know, in budgeting, I’m talking about how much are we spending on our marketing budget? How much are we do? Are we allocating towards for inventory? Are we tracking our profit margin? Do we have goals around our profit percentage, and then what about pay structures and raises based on performance? That kind of goes with the hiring, onboarding and development, but like, do we have a structure around how we’re going to do raises based off of that. Okay, so there’s a lot that goes into it. I actually do my financial I call it my financial system. Every Monday I have 30 minutes of time blocked off. I go through YNAB.

You need a budget. It’s a budgeting software that is very inexpensive. It’s about 100 bucks a year, and it just gives you so much clarity on cash flow. I absolutely love it. And so every Monday I’m going through I’m categorizing those. I’m looking at our revenue that’s come in. I’m looking at our funnels. I’m looking, I’m assigning categories within YNAB, you know, making sure that they’re tagged appropriately, and just getting comfortable with the numbers and seeing where we’re at. Because if you again, if you’re not measuring it, you can’t manage it all right, when your numbers are organized, you sleep better at night and you make smarter CEO decisions. You know what to focus on when. Okay, so let me just do a recap. Here.

We talked about the client journey. Definitely grab Joey Coleman’s book, great book, never lose a customer again. We talked about your consultation process, that one’s big, right? Because once we’re if we’re spending our marketing dollars and and all of that, to get people into a consultation, we want to make sure that we have that dialed in our retail sales. We want a clear message across the board our metrics and tracking. This is just overall the health of our business, our hiring, onboarding and development. How are we ensuring that we have a healthy and productive team, our marketing and promotions and financial management, and then the bonus one, your annual plan? Planning.

How are you kind of putting all these together and setting the goals that you have for yourself in a clear, easy to understand plan? Okay, the important thing to remember is that you don’t have to complete all of these systems in one day. You can just start and say, You know what, every day I’m going to film one SOP, and eventually I’m going to have enough SOPs on a particular topic that I can put them into a system,and I would just pick one area. Is it the client journey? Is it the consultation? Is it your marketing and promotions stay in that category and really look through, how do I create SOPs and compile them together into a process that creates a system for my business, because without systems, you’re stuck in the weeds.

Okay? You’ll end up resenting your business. You’ll end up getting burnt out. But with systems, with systems, you lead, you get time back, you get breathing room, and that gets you more creative, and that helps you grow your business, which helps you have the ability to pay your team more and impact your team, your community on a greater level. And that’s the goal, right, freedom, flexibility and financial growth. Now, I know I threw a lot at you on this episode, and I know systems are a topic that can kind of make your mind spin a little bit, so if you have questions, please go in the SpaMarketing Made Easy Facebook group, just tag me. We’ve got our team in there. I’m in there. If you have any further questions that you want to talk about from this episode, just let me know. Post them in there, and we are there to support you. Okay, thank you so much for listening, so so much for listening, and I can’t wait to catch you on our next episode.

A photograph used on a podcast featured-image

EP 444: AI Is Coming for Your Spa (In the Best Way): How to Use ChatGPT to Attract Ideal Clients

July 28, 2025
/
business, marketing

AI isn’t just the future – it’s your new business advantage.

In this episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy, Daniela breaks down how spa owners can use ChatGPT to go beyond generic marketing – and start creating messaging that attracts their dream clients.

Using real prompts and case study examples, she’ll walk you through how to define your ICA with clarity, build emotionally driven content, and set up ChatGPT to become your strategic partner in growth.

What you’ll learn:

Real stats showing AI’s growing role in small business success
Why old-school ICA templates no longer cut it – and what to do instead
How to build a personality-rich client avatar with ChatGPT
The prompts to use for Instagram captions, website copy, and service descriptions
Why ideal client clarity reduces refund rates and attracts better-fit clients

Tune in to make your marketing smarter, more soulful – and way less time-consuming.

Resources Mentioned in Episode #444: AI Is Coming for Your Spa (In the Best Way): How to Use ChatGPT to Attract Ideal Clients

Download the freebie – 26 ChatGPT Prompts for Spa
McKinsey Report

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ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Her mission? To transform overworked aestheticians into Spa CEOs—building a business and life they love with the strategic systems needed for long-term financial growth.

Tune in each week for actionable strategies, expert interviews, and inspiration to help you build a thriving, systemized, and scalable spa business!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to Spa Marketing Made Easy. Whether you are a long time listener or it’s your first time joining us, I am so happy that you are here. So we have been doing this show for seven years now. I can’t even believe that there’s so much content. We’ve got over 400 you know, plus episodes. If you search through the archives, it’s, you know, a treasure trove of content.

But in the past year, well, really, I mean, really accelerated in the past six months, things have been changing so much with AI that I feel like we are just reinventing how we do business every two months. So as a business owner, it’s a lot to feel like you’ve got to learn one more thing. And when I’m on coaching calls with our clients, I’ll have people, you know, occasionally I’ll still have people say, What’s chatgpt, but most people are just starting to get curious about how others are actually incorporating it into their business.

Maybe they’ve asked it to create some social captions, maybe they’ve used it to create some images, but they haven’t really dipped their toe into it to have an understanding of how drastically this can and will shift the way that we do business.

So listen to this. I was putting together some content for our growth factor elite students. So we are running the beta program right now. So we actually we’ve run growth factor growth factor framework for several years now. We have a huge amount of success. If you want to see any of our stories, just go to the success stories page on our website, and you can read, you know, tons of case studies of people that have gone through.

So this is a really successful program, and we closed it down in 2024 at the end of 2024 and one of the big reasons that we needed to close it down was because we had to make an enormous amount of updates, because that program was designed for the old way of doing business, and now with ai, ai is being infused into the way that we’re doing social media, the way that we are marketing, how we’re doing HR, how we’re onboarding our employees.

I mean, there’s so many pieces that is being incorporated into even the way we lead as CEOs, even the way that we’re structuring our companies, the roles that we’re hiring for. It’s completely different. So we made the decision to close down growth factor in that iteration. Pour, you know, dive into the trenches to learn about AI and how to best utilize it like specific to the spa industry. And we put together what I believe is some really, really great content. We’re going through the beta version right now, and we’re going to relaunch, you know, after we make our updates and get the feedback from the beta group.

But I was putting together a training and for one of our kickoff calls, and it was talking about AI, so I was reading through this report that McKinsey put out, and McKinsey is one of the big three consulting firms. They work with the they’ve worked with 90 of the 100 the top Fortune 100 companies. So, like, they’re a big deal, and they put out this report, and I’ll make sure that I link it up below this episode, so you can read it yourself, if you’d like to.

But they put out a report that says, By 2026, 40 to 45% of small businesses will be incorporating AI into that small business. So what does that mean? Well, those businesses that are incorporating AI are going to experience a 20 to 30% reduction in administrative work, so they’re going to save a lot of time. Okay, those same businesses are also going to receive a 25% reduction in payroll, especially in support and marketing.

Okay, so that is going to be money, so we’re saving time and we’re saving money, and small businesses using AI are growing revenue 2.5 times faster than non adapters. Okay, this is huge. I want you to let that sink in. Okay, the 40 to 45% of small businesses that will be using AI by 2026 will grow revenue 2.5 times faster than those. Who are not okay. Unbelievable, guys. This is like, you’ve got the crystal ball here to see what is going to happen, right? You? You know in advance, like this is a big deal.

So AI has been on my radar for quite some time. I have been testing and trying different software. Some of them are awful. Some of them are great. You know that I’m like, Why is this not easy? Like some of these content creator ones? I’m like, Okay, I personally have just decided to go deep with chat GPT. And yes, I’ve tried a lot of different tools, but I feel like I’ve gotten the best result going deep with chat GPT. So just kind of like a side note there.

Okay, so I have been really trying to incorporate and train and create custom chats and and look at all of these different ways that we can incorporate it into our business. And today, the topic of this episode, I want to talk to you, how about how to use chat GPT specifically to dial in your ideal client avatar, to really hone in on your messaging and attract more of your ideal client to get more bookings.

Okay, so when you’re learning about AI, when you’re incorporating this into your business, it’s part tutorial and it’s part mindset, okay, so it’s like, there’s a lot going on there, right? We’ve got to just have the the openness to be able to even conceptualize how quickly things are moving, like side note, cyber cabs are just like they are just being tested in Austin, Texas, so they’re model Y Teslas that are autonomous vehicles.

So they’re not, they have no driver. They’re driving, you know, self driving cars, and they’re being tested right now in Austin. And I was listening to a podcast The Diary of a CEO, Stephen Bartlett. Love that podcast, by the way, and there was a woman on there who is an investor, and she was talking about, in the next 10 years, cyber cabs are going to be all across the country, and it’s going to be a very normal thing to have cars driving without people.

And we’re already seeing it. My cousin works for a company that does semi trucks, like trucking that drives without people. So this is something that just seems so far off. I mean, it seems like totally Back to the Future, but it’s coming, and it’s coming fast, and we’re gonna get there before we realize it and be like, Wow, we are living in such an incredible and exciting time, and it’s also scary, right? Because change can be scary, but really, it doesn’t have to be, okay, it doesn’t have to be it’s just we as humans don’t like uncertainty and unpredictability, all right.

So know that going into AI in general and learning about it, you’ve got to learn the skill, because the tool is only as good as the person using the tool, right? Okay, so when I’m talking with our coaching clients, with our growth factor elite or growth factor fundamentals, whatever group I’m talking with, I’ll say Who’s your ideal client.

And it’s not just like, well, I want someone that shows up on time and pays on time and respects my boundaries and buys the products that I recommend and leaves me five star reviews. Okay, yes, we all want that. Everybody wants that. But the important piece is that we’ve got to get so clear on who our person is, like on a granular level.

And I actually, I have a 30 page document that might be a little type A excessive, but like, I really wanted to, like, hone in on who this person is, okay, and I use chat to help me create it. And one of the things that I did was really think of this one person in my mind. So I have, I have a client that I’ve worked with for several years now. I adore her as a human I adore her as a client.

She’s funny. She’s total action taker. She’s got a million dollar spa. She’s got kids about the same age as my kids. And so when I was going through this process, I was thinking. About her. And I was thinking about the exact words that she has said to me, the exact questions that she brings up on calls.

I was thinking about all of these things, and I was inputting that into chat of like, my ideal client thinks this, my ideal client asks this to really train it. Now, how many spas out there will have an ideal client that’s 35 to 55 year old woman with a discretionary income of 100,000 or more? Okay, that’s how we used to do it, right?

And that’s just not good enough anymore. Okay, so it’s a good start. It’s a good start, but we’ve got to evolve and go deeper. Okay, so when you know your ideal client inside and out, how she talks, what she’s struggling with, what she really wants, not just in a business sense, but in her life, you can speak directly to her heart and to her soul, and that is what is going to move people to book.

Okay, so the exciting part is, you don’t have to create a 30 page document yourself. You don’t even need to pay to create a 30 page document. Like, let’s just stick with one that gets really, really granular, and I’m going to walk you through how to use ChatGPT to do this.

Now, if you we have a resource that we created, a free resource, and we’re constantly adding to it that has all of these prompts for spa owners to use in their business. And so if you want that document, make sure that you comment chat and you know, below this video over on Instagram, we’ll pin it up up in the top. So go to our Instagram, like our page, please. That would be so lovely. And then just comment chat and you can get that resource. We’ll DM it directly to you.

Okay, all right, so let’s walk through how to really define your ideal client with chatgpt. So the first prompt is going to be, help me define my ideal client avatar I offer, and you’re going to insert the services that you offer. And my clients are mostly this age range. They live in this location type, and they struggle with these particular skin issues. I want to work with clients who value, you know, and insert the things that you value.

Now, think about that one person and write the responses that she would answer. Okay, this is going to give you your starting point. All right. Chat. GBT is going to help you describe her lifestyle, her values, her goals and detail. Okay, chat. GPT is going to find your blind spots.

Now we want to take it a step further. Okay, so what are some of the common emotional pain points and desires for this type of client? What might she be thinking before she books a treatment? Is she going to be feeling guilty that she’s taking time away from her kids, or that she’s spending money on herself. We want to really identify what these things are, okay? And these side note, these types of emotions. This is gold for your social media, okay?

This is going to really connect with your person and be like she is so inside of my head, okay, you’re gonna use this for your website. You’re gonna use this for email subject lines as well. All right, then, once you know your ideal client’s fears, dreams, objections, you can use prompts like write a compelling service description for my anti aging facial that speaks directly to a woman in her 40s who feels like her skin is aging faster than she is.

Create five Instagram captions that connect with busy working moms who want results from their treatment but feel guilty about self care, right? So those are the types of things. Now here’s like a pro tip with chatgpt before I’m starting any message, I always say you are an expert copywriter for my million dollar spa. I would like you to write five social media captions that invoke curiosity or have hooks, or, you know, whatever the the piece is that you’re going for around this topic.

Do you understand, is that clear? Do you have any questions to ask me before moving forward? So I’m always asking those particular things, and I also I have a document that’s just a Google Doc, and it’s chatgpt, and I have my bio, I have my website, I have our ideal client, and so oftentimes I will just copy and paste. We are writing Instagram captions for so instead of like in here, we put, you know, busy working moms.

Because I would say, here’s the profile of my ideal client avatar. This is who we’re writing for, and I’m just copying and pasting right? So it makes it a lot easier. Okay? Now remember that you are not for everyone, and that’s okay. And when you’re a people pleaser and like, hello, I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman that hasn’t dealt with people pleasing at some point in her life.

Okay, we can move past it. We can we can deal with it, but there’s a part of us that still has those people pleasing tendencies, and so it’s going to be hard when people don’t align with your message, or you put yourself out there and you get some nasty comments, or people unsubscribe, or whatever it may be, it’s okay, bless and release. You are creating space for your person, she is out there.

Okay, so remember that you are building a premium, boutique brand, and nobody can compete with you, because you are the only you on this planet. Okay, we are now competing with relationships. We are competing we’re creating relationships with our clients, that is the thing, the community, right? It’s such an important thing to remember.

So AI can help you find your voice, but you need to be the driver of this incredible tool. You’re the strategist, you’re the heart. You are the brand. Okay? So let chatgpt be your partner. Let them be your assistant, but ultimately you are still the boss.

All right, okay, so let’s go what is the next step into booking? All right, so when you dial in your ICA, your ideal client avatar, you clarify your messaging. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to stop getting price shoppers, and you’re going to attract your ideal client. You’re going to fill your clients. Fill your books with clients who rebook.

You’re going to fill your client, fill your books with clients who leave you five star reviews, who refer their friends for you, and that is how you grow sustainably. You know, a good example, when I started this podcast seven years ago, which we brought up at the beginning of this episode, one of the things that we noticed in our business, more than anything, was that our refund rate went way down, way down, and I deeply believe that it was because I was putting myself out here, and it was allowing the listener to understand if I am the right coach or consultant for them.

So when they understand who I am, what I’m about, what my teaching style is, which is, I don’t want people with a victim mentality, okay? I want action takers. That’s really important to me. Action takers. I love systems, I love spreadsheets, I love numbers. I love data, right? I also sometimes can give a little bit of tough love.

I have a reputation of making people cry in a good way, in a good way, but it’s, it’s one of those things that, like, my job is to get you results, and so you’re not hiring me to be your friend. You’re hiring me to help you get results. Okay, so when we’re going through the process, I’m going to push you.

And some people don’t like that, and that’s okay. That is okay. And you need to take that attitude for yourself, that this is your philosophy, this is the brand that you’re creating, and this is the type of client that you’re going to attract. The brand that does everything is the brand that does nothing.

Okay, so here’s what I want you to do. I want you to take action. Go to our Instagram, find that post. We’re going to pin it up there in the top. Go to our profile, follow us if you haven’t already, and then comment chat below that reel, and we will send you our list of prompts for chat GBT, that you can put in and build your ideal client avatar yourself, with your voice, with your brand, training your own chatgpt, this is going to be life changing.

I want you to be one of those 40 to 45% of small businesses that are incorporating AI, that are getting their time back, that are saving on payroll and that are growing two times. 2.5 times faster than non adapters. Okay, I want that for you all right.

So thank you guys so much for listening. Thank you for going on this AI journey with me. Please share this episode with a friend, and I will catch you on the next one.

EP 439: Marketing Budgeting Deep Dive: How Much Should Your Spa Really Spend?

June 23, 2025
/
business, marketing

Ready to stop guessing about your marketing budget?

I’m joined by ad strategist Tara, and together we unpack the exact percentages spa owners should allocate to marketing – based on three key business phases:

Maintenance Mode — stay level
Growth Mode — scale strategically
Hyper Growth Mode — invest heavily during big promotional windows

You’ll understand how to craft a budget that reflects your goals, season, and client behavior—and how to split that marketing budget across ads and analog efforts like mailers or in-person events.

What you’ll learn during this episode:

The budgeting breakdown: 5%, 10–15%, and 15–20% of revenue
Why sticking to percentages helps spot if you’re over– or under-spending
How your budgeting changes depending on the time of year
Why ad dollars should be evenly split between digital and “analog” channels
The secret to tracking true lead source quality (not just total new clients)

Resources Mentioned in Episode #439: Marketing Budgeting Deep Dive: How Much Should Your Spa Really Spend?

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ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Her mission? To transform overworked aestheticians into Spa CEOs—building a business and life they love with the strategic systems needed for long-term financial growth.

Tune in each week for actionable strategies, expert interviews, and inspiration to help you build a thriving, systemized, and scalable spa business!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, Daniela, here and you are listening to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. We have been producing this show since 2018 and we have hundreds of episodes that are filled with inspiration, education, marketing, strategies and more, all just for esthetic professionals right now in this season, my focus is creating content specifically for spa CEOs who desire to build a profitable, systemized spa that generates a minimum personal income of 100k per year without sacrificing your family time or burning out. If that is you, you are in the right place, my dear, I am so happy that you are here now on today’s episode, we are diving into a marketing budget. Deep Dive with my dear friend and APA partner, Miss Tara Zirker.

Now Tara has been and will continue to be our go to referral partner for all things ads. In fact, I used to pay agencies lots and lots of money, I’m talking like three to $4,000 a month to manage our ads. And that was really until I gained the confidence in myself with Tara support and her program, successful ads club, that I could actually bring ads in house that move you guys saved me about $30,000 a year. Can you believe that? $30,000 a year? And when I think about how much that adds up over the years, we’re talking about six figures of savings, plus, right by doing them in house, we were able to shift and change our ads as we saw fit. Nobody knows our brand like we do and that like, our results started going up higher as well. Was it fun? No, I will be super honest about that. I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. Okay, I did not enjoy the process. But was it worth it 100% you guys, it was worth it a million times. It was a short term pain for a long term gain.

So one of those things that I have absolutely zero regrets on, and if you’re interested in learning how you can either start doing ads yourself, if you have not really kind of dipped your toe in that pool, or if you’re like me and you’re like, gosh, I’m spending so much money on ads, and I just want to figure out how to bring this in house and save myself that much money. Then I want you to click the link below this episode to get registered for a free training that Tara and I are hosting together on July 14. Okay, that was just a little side note, but let’s get back to the purpose of today’s episode, and that is to dive into ADS budgets to really get clear on how much should you be spending on marketing. So we’re breaking it down to marketing in general, and then how much of that should be ads, how much should that be traditional marketing, all of those fun things that we get to play around with and do as spa CEOs.

So I hope you enjoy this episode, and I hope to see you in July at the training that Tara and I are hosting. All right, let’s go ahead and play that interview. All right. Tara, welcome back to the spa. Marketing Made Easy podcast. I don’t know how many times you’ve been on, but I love that you’re here again. And I think that you know talking about marketing, talking about ads, is always something that is evolving and changing and growing as the market and the economy shifts the way that we’re doing things. And so today I wanted to specifically dive into budgeting, because budgeting is such. How much are we supposed to be spending?

How do we you know, I feel like when people pick their ad budgets, they’re just kind of, that sounds like a good number, but, like, I do you see that? I mean, I used to do that all the time, absolutely. And then it was like, Okay, no, if I want to be really strategic and I want to really get into the numbers, I want to look at the percentages that I’m spending specifically on marketing. And it doesn’t have to be all on ads or all on SEO or all on events or referral programs, but we definitely want to take that total marketing budget and then allocate what is working and what is making the most sense right now, 100% and I think the more that you can think of your business and look at your business, your business through the lens of percentages, because how many of us, myself included, that’s how I used to do budgeting, too. It’s just like, I don’t know, maybe this amount, like just kind of guessing your way through that is not your most effective way. So we really step into more of that. Uh, stronger sort of business, the more sophisticated, yeah, more sophisticated business for as we kind of grow and evolve, and when we started, um, really getting into our numbers and really diving into, like, Profit First, and in Profit First, you do everything in percentages, right? It that was, this is probably five or six years ago that I was like, oh, we need,like, a percentage for our marketing budget too.

So let’s, let’s talk about kind of the different stages a business might be in, or a different goals that a business might have, and how we’re looking at like, what, how do we know what a healthy budget should be for those different businesses? I love it, okay, so when I’m thinking about budgeting, I always want to think of my business. You’re thinking of it in kind of three stages of growth, and really, your business is probably going through all three stages of these growth markers every single year. So there’s maintenance, there’s growth, and there’s hyper growth. And so should I just take us through Daniela, kind of each one? And okay, so if you’re in maintenance mode and just kind of think to yourself as you’re listening to us today, like, which, which place

Am I in right now, you’re probably just kind of maintaining your current numbers, you’re covering attrition, essentially. If you know, you lose an average of seven clients a month, you’re just covering those seven clients, and you’re just kind of maintaining your capacity. And there’s certainly times of the year where you might be in that stage. I mean, maybe if you’re a solo Estee, you might just be, you know, maybe summers are a little not only are they slower, just in the spa world in general, but you might also have kids out of school, and maybe you’re just trying to maintain certain, you know, client percentage.

What we see in Spa on average is that you’re going to lose about 20% or patient base or client base every year. And so just plan that you want to add 20% new clients to whatever that active number is, and it’s really important to not get attached to that, because people, people move. People get pregnant, people, people’s financial situations change. People find other locations that are a better fit for them. And all of it is okay. It’s just, you know, if you plan for that average of 20% that’s your maintenance mode that we’re wanting to spend our marketing dollars to recoup to stay at that level. So good.

The next stage would be growth. So this is where you’re looking to grow your revenue and and everybody always says they want growth, but when you really look at it, you know, there may be times of the year where you’re not planning for as much growth, right? So this is like you’re really looking to grow your revenue month over month. And then we go into hyper growth. And this is, it sounds exciting, but listen to what hyper growth is. Hyper growth is when you are this is your cheapest time of the year to acquire clients. So we’re thinking this might be a Black Friday for some of you. Maybe right? You know, as fall starts like these are just periods of time where it’s really easy to acquire clients. I’m also thinking of beginning of the years, another beautiful time for this stage. But there’s a but you are willing to sacrifice perhaps a tiny bit of your profitability in order to have this hyper growth stage where you’re getting a ton of clients and you know, that’s going to pay off long term, right? So you don’t want to be in a hyper growth for longer than two to three months.

You know, your bookkeepers CPAs would get very angry with a suggestion of staying in hyper growth for longer than that. So, and the reason why, and you’re going to hear, when I go through, back through this kind of timeline, or these, these markers again, you’re going to hear the percentages, and it’s going to make sense, why Hyper Growth you’re sacrificing just a little bit of something else in order to get into that stage. So when we’re in maintenance mode, we want to spend, and I would just ask yourself, like, am I overspending or under spending? So this should be pretty easy to calculate, and you’re just basically going to think of your total revenue, and I’m going to give you the percentages of how much you should be or could be, allocating towards your marketing budget at each of these stages.

Okay, so if you’re in maintenance mode, about 5% of your revenue should get you to that point where you’re pretty easily replacing the clients that you’re losing. So we’re just maintaining, if you are in growth mode, you want to be popping that budget up to 10 to 15% of revenue. And that should be fairly comfortable. It shouldn’t be, you know, affecting too many other things. And then when we go into hyper growth, that’s where you’re willing to bump up even a little bit further to 15 to 20% of your revenue. And again, you’re only doing that. You’re doing that intelligently.

You’re only doing that during the periods of time of the year where you just know it is a. Less expensive to acquire customers, acquire clients, than it might be during other periods of time. Like people are just in the mode of finding, you know, their their their spa services for the year, and that’s when you want to capitalize on that hyper growth period. So when you think through that, it should be pretty easy to start thinking to yourself, Am I underspending or overspending? And I will tell you that overspending is rarely the problem. Daniela, would love to hear your thoughts, but for the most part, when I see folks, and we go through kind of their PNL, they’re dramatically underspending.

Typically,I see that a lot in Spa. And I think that, you know, when someone’s first starting out, typically, we see them starting out as a solo provider, and, you know, they’re doing the work in the room. They’re trying to operate and grow the business and or if they’re hiring somebody, they’re either overpaying them or, you know, so there’s they feel like there’s no money at the end of the month. And so to think about investing, you know, 1000s of dollars into marketing, they’re looking at it as an expense rather than an investment. And so that’s why it’s incredibly important to be comfortable with your numbers and really track like okay, if I am doing let’s just say that I have a $250,000 business. I love getting my calculator out here.

Yes, 250,000 so if I break that down, divide by 12, I know that’s not how it all typically works out, but on average, I’m doing about 21,000 a month. If I multiply that times 5% that’s $1,041 a month that I would be spending on marketing. So we may say that we want to spend $500 on ads, and then use the other $500 for your other marketing activities. Well, if you spend $500 on ads and then you’re getting clients coming in, what we have to look at is, what is the client going to spend over the course of their relationship with you as a business. It’s not just recouping that $500 and then saying, Okay, well, they did a facial and then they bought some retail product. It’s what are they going to spend with you over the course of the year? And that’s why it’s, I mean, this is might take us down a different rabbit hole, but I think it’s so incredibly important to know who you are and who you serve before you really dive into ADS, because targeting the wrong person can really lower your retention rate, and then you can feel like, well, ads don’t work. Well, no, it’s that you’re just throwing ads out there to anyone under this, anyone out there, we have to speak our ideal clients language that we’re connecting with them on a deep personal level, that we understand their needs and desires. And so if you have that piece dialed in and know who you are, and know who you serve and what problems you’re solving for that individual, then you’re attracting the right person that’s gonna get you an ROI way more than you know the $500 that you spent on the ads.

I mean, that’s so powerful. And I think there’s even layers of wisdom there. Just in general, so many, so many people, so many business owners of all types, and you know, definitely in the spa world, have targeted the wrong customer, especially when you’re starting out, you’re figuring all that out. You just don’t realize the long tail on that. Because guess what? Those are going to be, who they’re going to bring in their friends, they’re gonna it’s just like it create.

You really want to attract that right avatar. And I think one mistake that people make in our world with ads is they think that you have to do these massive discounts, you have to do attract kind of the lowest paying client, right? And that is not true. We see luxury brands, very premium brands in our world that are targeting very effectively with ads. And really, I think it comes down to, and this is just usually, you know, some self reflection. Now, there’s so many wonderful chatgpt prompts you can go through. It’s really identifying what your unique selling proposition is. What is that unique result that you get for your clients? And once you figure that out, oh, everything becomes so much easier, and definitely your ads.

So how are we going to you know, you talked about being in these different seasons of. Of maintaining or growth or hyper growth. Is this something that we’re looking at when we’re doing our annual plan for the year that, hey, from January, we’re going to have a hyper growth, and October, we’re going to have a hyper growth, or November, depending on if we’re doing an event or Black Friday, and then are we just maybe looking at quarters how we’re mapping? Okay, yes, yes, absolutely.

I mean, I would say generally, we know that there’s a summer sort of slow down. So you don’t want to be usually in any sort of hyper growth situation at that period, because it’s actually gonna cost you more. May it cost you a little bit more. You might be able to maintain kind of a good average, but you don’t want to spend more during that time. And then, yes, I would just kind of look at and your data should tell you, like, When are your promotions the most effective? You know, typically, we’re thinking that kind of, that fall season, early part of the year is wonderful, perhaps an anniversary period. Those are typically periods where it’s like, and hyper growth doesn’t need to be a full three or four months. It can be one month where it’s like, we’re going to increase our ads budget this month, knowing it’s our anniversary month, or whatever it is. And we typically just get a lot of client activity, new client activity, and so we want to capitalize increase the budget a little bit during that period. No, we might see a little bit less profitability, percentage wise, during that month. But that’s okay, because back to what you said earlier, that lifetime value more than makes up for it.

Okay, so we’re mapping this out in terms of timeline of when we’re going to do it. We’re mapping it out. Are we then adjusting our budget based on what actually comes in? Because I know we like to do projections when possible, but sometimes it’s over and sometimes it’s under. So are we just kind of carrying over the budget to the next month and seeing Yeah, and adjusting it in that absolutely okay.

And something, for people that are nervous about this, maybe you don’t have as much data to kind of inform sometimes I’ll say, well, then go with last month. You know that revenue that’s already, that already came in the door, base your base your budget on last month. So if last month, I don’t know, let’s say we did had a $20,000 month, then let’s take, you know, maybe we’re in growth mode. Maybe you want to take 2000 of that. And I think something that we want to pull out here as well, and you mentioned it earlier, is that’s not all going to ads. I know I’m an ADS person, but you don’t want that all to go to ads. An ideal split would be 5050 50% you’re kind of organic, but not organic, but you’re more like analog activities. Maybe you’re sending a mailer. Maybe you are going to be present at a couple of community events, like those things are very, very good. And then 50% goes towards those digital, you know, opportunities, your Facebook ads, your Google ads, things like that. So you want to diversify that marketing budget, but that would be a very, very good way to do it. So if you’re nervous and you don’t really have enough, like, year over year data, then just go based off of last month, or maybe it was, you know, May of last year. If it’s May this year, May of last year, you know. So there’s ways to kind of look at that, so you’re not just, you know, throwing a Hail Mary out there and hoping for the best.

So that’s a great bit of advice for someone who maybe is not budgeting at all. And you know, like, that’s how we get started. So if that’s you like, just take this next step and say, Okay, I’m going to start to start treating my business like a business. I’m going to step in if I want to be a seven figure spa owner, I need to start acting like that now. And that is the way, like seven figure spa owners are creating budgets.

They are out there marketing. They’re testing things that are working for their businesses. The other piece of advice that I want to touch on here, when we get around budgeting and kind of the how we’re looking at how it’s working, I like to keep track of where your leads are coming from. So if your leads, if you have you know, X amount of new clients or patients from Google or SEO, X amount of new patients from ads, and then X amount of new patients for from referrals. You want to also really look at the quality of that lead. And so if, let’s say that you have 50 new people that came in from search, and you have 30 new people that came in from ads, what you want to do, and this would, really, I would love to see this over, like, a quarter basis. Really look. And over like a three month time span, take everybody that came in from SEO and check their retention rate and check what they spent in your business.

Do the same thing for ads and do the same thing for referral. You may have less from ads, but they may be more qualified leads, and so that’s going to help you understand, how do I diversify that budget more if I’m getting better quality leads, then I want to make sure that I am taking my percentage budget and really putting it into the lead source. And this might change. It may change quarter to quarter. So you may have one quarter where ads is outperforming Google and and vice versa. And so it’s really important for you as the CEO, getting into the numbers, looking at these types of things and paying attention to these types of things, because that will make your dollar go so much further and help your business to be more profitable. The one thing that I can tell you for sure about marketing is that it always changes.

It’s the basic concepts are there, but there’s always going to be things that are shifting and changing in how we are getting the attention of our ideal client, 100% yes, that’s so good. And I feel like you don’t need to be a trend chaser, necessarily, but to understand and just keep a pulse on where the market kind of is, what I want to say about that is like, Don’t chase like micro trends, like what you know, what’s popular on trending right now on social media probably isn’t as important as which platforms your client is on, and trace kind of paying attention to or keeping a pulse on those, like bigger trends, right, the macro trends of where people are at, how they’re interacting. I mean, we see things like, I know you talk about this often, but just the the importance of things like Google reviews and how much the client, the customer behavior has changed over the years to where used to be a little bit more. Like somebody would see your ad, they go and kind of do the thing you wanted them to do. But now they see your ad, and there’s several layers that they go through. They go and they Google you, they read your review. So you just have to understand those macro kind of where thing, where your entire online presence, entire online presence, and how people are going from point A to point Z, which is ultimately booking with you so good.

So I know this is a little bit shorter of an episode than we typically do, but I want to keep this really focused on budgeting. And if you’re listening to this and you do have some gaps in your schedule, or you do have some time that you can focus on strategy of your business. This is what I want you to focus on. I want you to look at the numbers. I want you to look at your budget. I want you to see where your leads are coming from, and I want you to create a clear plan so that you know here’s how much I can spend and here’s where those marketing dollars are going, and be sure that you have time allocated to track the leads that are coming in and understand and that can be done through a simple tagging system in your CRM. You want to make sure at the front desk that they’re asking, you know, where did you hear about us? We want to make sure that we’re collecting all of that data that will make you a very sophisticated business owner. That will make you a spa CEO in your business, to really help you build it into a company. It’s so, so important. Tara, anything else that you want to add?

Oh, this was great. I always love being with your community. Daniela, and you know, I would just say, like, just as you start to get really comfortable with these numbers, you’re going to start to feel that you really are able to pull the levers and control the revenue and really your destiny. And so understanding how you’re allocating what you’re investing in and how that’s coming back to you, and not being afraid of it, will start to elevate your skill set as your as a spa CEO, and you’ll be able to control the flow, you know, you will be able to kind of determine, not with exactness, but pretty close, how many new customers you need, how much it’s going to cost you to get those customers and and then from there, things start really moving in really cool ways.

Love it all right. Well, as always, if you want to keep this conversation going, please head on over to the spa. Marketing Made Easy. Facebook group. We’ve got all the information on our free trainings and tons of videos and resources to help. You build your business, we will catch you on the next episode.

Daniela Woerner posing for a photograph used on a podcast featured-image

EP 433: Why LinkedIn Matters for Spa CEOs: Build Strategic Partnerships That Scale

May 12, 2025
/
business, marketing

If you’re still thinking LinkedIn is just for resumes and job hunting, think again.

In this quick, actionable episode, I’m walking you through exactly why every spa CEO should be on LinkedIn—and how to start using it today to build strategic local partnerships, increase your visibility, and position yourself as a true business leader in your area.

Whether you’re just getting started or you already have a profile collecting dust, this is your invitation to start using LinkedIn with purpose and power. It’s not about likes. It’s about leveraged relationships that grow your business with ease.

What you’ll learn during this episode:

Why LinkedIn should be your go-to platform for building business relationships
How to filter by location, industry, and company size to find ideal partners
Key demographic stats that prove LinkedIn users are your people
Why your personal profile is more important than your spa’s business page
How this one platform can fuel referral pipelines and cross-promotions

Resources Mentioned in Episode #433: Why LinkedIn Matters for Spa CEOs: Build Strategic Partnerships That Scale

Connect with Daniela on LinkedIn

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ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Daniela Woerner is the founder and CEO of Addo Aesthetics, a leading community for aesthetic professionals, and the creator of the Growth Factor® Framework – a proven system that has helped 582 six- and seven-figure spa owners scale their businesses with strategy and systems.

Her mission? To transform overworked aestheticians into Spa CEOs—building a business and life they love with the strategic systems needed for long-term financial growth.

Tune in each week for actionable strategies, expert interviews, and inspiration to help you build a thriving, systemized, and scalable spa business!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to Spa Marketing Made Easy, a podcast for spa owners who want to step up their leadership and business skills and step into the role as spa CEO. I’m your host. Daniela Woerner, CEO of Addo Aesthetics and Founder of the Growth Factor® Framework Program, where we teach, coach and guide spa owners in scaling their spas to the next level of growth and unlocking freedom in their life and their business. I’m so glad you’re here now. Let’s dive into the show.

Welcome to Spa Marketing Made Easy, the show where spa CEOs get the tools and strategies to scale with ease. I’m Daniela, and today we are diving into a platform that is often overlooked but absolutely critical when it comes to building real business partnerships, strategic partnerships. These relationships are the type of relationships that will help you scale with ease. I’m talking about LinkedIn, not Instagram, not Facebook, LinkedIn. And if you’re thinking, Wait, isn’t LinkedIn for Job Hunters, just hang on. I’m going to change the way that you look at it. So let’s go ahead and start here. When it comes to growing your spa partnerships are absolutely gold. We want to be able to collaborate with other local businesses. So when I say local businesses, I’m talking about wellness centers, fitness studios, nutritionist luxury real estate agents, bridal shops, event planners, permanent makeup studios. I mean, there’s so many lists of business types that also serve the same clientele as we do in our spa, and so we want to be able to find them locally and start to build connections and relationships with them. LinkedIn, hands down, is the best platform for that. So what’s really cool about LinkedIn is their search tools, so you can easily filter by location, by industry, even by company size. So that means it’s super easy to find other business owners in your local area who you actually want to know and collaborate with.

You might be wondering, well, why wouldn’t I just use Instagram? Let me give you some stats. Okay, so first, LinkedIn has over 1 billion members worldwide, and the majority, more than 50% are professionals between the ages of 25 to 34 so over half of LinkedIn users are from high income households. That is the type of professional network that you want to tap into, right? We’re looking for partnerships. We’re looking for businesses that are standing on their own two feet and that are working well, that we can create a relationship that’s mutually beneficial. We don’t want to have a relationship where it’s just one side is the giver and the other side is the taker. Okay, so real, strategic partnerships that work incredibly well. Both sides are providing value to one another.

Okay, so if we compare LinkedIn to Instagram, sure, Instagram has over 2 billion users, but it’s definitely younger. It’s more casual. We’ve got 76% of US adults, age 18 to 29 are active on Instagram, and so if we’re thinking that, hey, we in the spa space, we are targeting a more mature, a more sophisticated most of us, right. We all serve different age demographics. But if we have such a high percentage of 18 to 29 year olds on Instagram, is that where your clientele is okay, maybe for some of you, but not for everybody. And when we’re looking at building strategic partnerships, I can tell you from myself, like I like to look at my own behavior, yes, we absolutely have an Instagram account for Addo esthetics. Am I on there? No, my team handles that. Where am I? I’m on LinkedIn. If you send me a message on LinkedIn, it will be me that responds to it. If you send me a message on Instagram, it will be my team that responds to it.

Okay, so that is normal for so many business owners that I have spoken with. So if you want to get straight to the CEO, the founder in your local area of these businesses, LinkedIn is the place to do it. Okay? So here’s another key difference on LinkedIn, about 70% of users engage with content shared by companies, and the posts that are featuring CEOs get three times more engagement. So that means when you show up and share your insights as a spa CEO, you’re not just posting into the void. People are ready to listen, connect and collaborate, and I want to just highlight something. I said, you know, on LinkedIn, 70% of users engage with content shared by companies. We want to lead with your personal brand first. So your personal profile is what you want to be building on LinkedIn. People want to connect with people. It’s great to have your company up there to be able to tag it and kind of do the slow build, but really focus on people to people connections and relationships on LinkedIn. Okay, so people are ready to listen.

So if you are serious about growing your spa, not just client by client, but through building strategic partnerships with other businesses. LinkedIn is not optional. It is essential, all right, so you’ve got to leverage these networking features to help you build a local community. You can create cross promotions, you can create referral pipelines. You can get in front of other people’s audiences, and you can position yourself as a leader in your local market. So if you haven’t yet, what I want you to do right now, unless you’re driving, unless you’re doing your workout. I don’t know when everybody listens, but I know we get a lot of commuters and doing your makeup or doing your workout. If you are able, as soon as you’re able, I want you to go to LinkedIn. I want you to refresh your profile. I want you to update your profile. I want you to create a profile, if you have not done that yet, and I want you to start playing around with the possibility doing some searches, finding other business owners in your local area that you can connect with and build relationships with. Okay, this is so incredibly powerful as an overall strategy. This is a foundational strategy. And when I talk about the difference between a foundational strategy and a tactical strategy.

The tactical strategies sit on top of that foundational strategy, ads, SEO, those are tactical those the strategies can shift and change, but relationship marketing is foundational. This is something that for years and years and years, you have heard, and you will continue to hear about the power of your network, the power of relationships that create opportunity and success. It’s how you get in the right room. Okay, so start using LinkedIn like the CEO that you are.

I want you to do this for yourself. Okay, so if you found today’s episode helpful, don’t forget to subscribe. Leave a review and share it with another spa CEO who is ready to elevate their business. Find me on LinkedIn. Send me a connection request. I would love to connect with you over there, and I will catch you on the next episode.