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EP 428 : Why You’re Not a Million-Dollar Med Spa Owner – And How to Change That

What if the only thing standing between you and a million-dollar med spa… is you?

In this episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy, I’m breaking down the 6 mistakes that are holding med spa owners back from hitting seven figures—mistakes that are completely fixable once you know how to identify and correct them.

We’re covering everything from pricing strategies to membership models and—most importantly—the power of community and strategic partnerships that can multiply your growth.

What you’ll learn during this episode:

  • How to stabilize cash flow with a recurring revenue model
  • The danger of underpricing your services and how to price for profit
  • What your key metrics are actually telling you about your spa’s health
  • Which high-profit treatments to prioritize in your menu
  • How to think about funnels—no tech skills required!
  • Why relationships and partnerships are your biggest accelerators

Resources Mentioned in Episode #428: Why You’re Not a Million-Dollar Med Spa Owner – And How to Change That

  • Learn more at americanmedspa.org (AMSPA data source)
  • Access our Spa Capacity Calculator inside APA – become a member here!

Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe on YouTube

Keep the conversation going inside the Spa Marketing Made Easy Community by clicking here.

join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community

IG / @addoaesthetics

WEB / addoaesthetics.com

YOUTUBE / @addoaesthetics

LINKEDIN / @addoaesthetics

WANT MORE FROM ADDO AESTHETICS?

Take just 5 minutes and find out YOUR biggest area of opportunity by taking my FREE Spa Business Assessment here → scorecard.addoaesthetics.com/

Join the Growth Factor® Fundamentals, an association dedicated to empowering women and strengthening their community by helping aesthetic professionals build meaningful connections with one another and fostering support and guidance to create businesses that align with the lives they love → https://offer.addoaesthetics.com/growth-factor-fundamentals

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!

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.

What if I told you that the only thing standing between you and a million dollar Med Spa is you? That’s right. Most spa owners don’t hit seven figures not because the industry is declining. We’re actually seeing quite the opposite, with private equity just really flooding into our market. No, they’re not hitting seven figures because they’re making a few crucial mistakes, and today, on the spa marketing Made Easy podcast, we’re going to talk about exactly what those mistakes are and how you can fix them, starting right now. So let’s just first zoom out and take a look at the Medical Spa market, which, as of 2023 was a $15 billion market right here in the US, and that market is continually growing approximately 15 to 20% on an annual basis. 

Now, for those of you that love to do your own research, we grab these numbers from the amspa website. We’ll be sure to link up their website at the in the show notes of this episode, if you’re wanting to head over there and do some of your own research. Now also, according to am spa, the annual revenue per Med Spa was about 1.9 8 million in 2022 a single location. Med Spa sees roughly 283 patients per month, with an average spend of $536 per visit. 

So that adds up pretty quickly over a year. And the cool thing is, it’s common for even small med spas to gross well into the seven figures. So there was actually an industry survey that showed that most med spas generate over 1 million annually. So why if we’re seeing this average 1.98 and the majority of these med spas generating over 1 million Why are there so many that struggle to hit that consistently and profitably? We’re seeing the examples of these spas that are doing it, but there’s so many that are still struggling. Well, that’s what I want to address today. If that is you, if you are a med spa, and you’re like, gosh, I look around and every Med Spa I see is doing 1 million, $2 million in revenue, what am I not doing? 

Well, mistake number one is you don’t have a recurring revenue model, aka, memberships. All right, so the spas that scale fast and sustainably, they are not starting back at zero every single month, they have recurring revenue. They have predictable cash flow that helps them to take bigger risks, that helps the spa CEOs to sleep better at night when they know that that money is coming in predictably and consistently. Okay, so spas that use membership models see 65 to 70% of revenue coming from repeat clients, you guys, that is huge. 

That decreases your client acquisition cost, that helps you have that predictable cash flow. Depending on where you live in the country. There’s ebbs and flows. You know, there’s certain parts of the country where people leave in the winter to go somewhere warm, and also vice versa. There’s ebbs and flows in every kind of micro market, and when you have memberships, you’re able to really stabilize those ups and downs. So memberships can be around maintenance treatments, whether it’s a facial or a chemical peel or something along those lines, if you’re doing medically assisted weight loss hormones, there’s ways that you can do memberships around that. So lots of really great ways, but absolutely you want a recurring revenue model in your practice. All right. Mistake number two, you’re not pricing your services correctly. Are you pricing for profit, or are you just covering cost? And so often, as spa CEOs, we have this insecurity in us, and we’re worried about, you know, the 20 other med spas that are within 10 miles of us that you know, we’ve got to come. Heat, and so we just lower our prices and discount and do all of these things that really is such a downward spiral. When you’re pricing your services, you’ve got to make sure that you are really analyzing the client experience, that you are covering your cost and you’re also including profitability. 

When we teach this inside of our APA, we actually just did a master class on this around pricing your services for profit and experience, and the first thing that we do is start out by looking at the cost of treatment and profitability tracker. So we’re actually, at a granular level, breaking down what are the consumables? And I’m talking like, if you’re doing a dermaplane, you’re like dividing out and knowing that that single dermaplane blade is going to cost you 39 cents. So we are breaking this down in such a granular level, we’re adding in payroll cost. We’re really looking at where do I need my margins to be to ensure that I am profitable? 

Okay, so having a poor pricing strategy or not knowing how to effectively price your services will keep you from hitting the seven figure mark. All right. Mistake number three, you’re not tracking the key metrics. Okay, so let’s just talk about this in terms of membership, right? So you maybe heard mistake number one and were like, Oh my gosh, 65 to 75% of revenue comes from repeat clients. That’s such a huge thing. Long term. I want that predictability. I want to get off the emotional roller coaster. And so you go in, you start getting people signed up for your membership, but you’re not tracking churn rate. Okay? Huge mistake. 

Do you remember Pretty Woman, those of you my, my fellow children of the 80s. Big mistake. Big, huge. That’s what I think of here, not tracking key metrics. Okay, so when we’re looking at membership, when we’re looking at churn rate, we want to understand if we have a six month membership and then it goes month to month after that, what are we going to be doing to make sure that we consistently have touch points with our members, and specifically at points where they are dropping off? Okay, so churn rate is just one specifically connected to membership. You can look at retail to service. You can look at revenue per hour per room. You can look at client purchase percentage. You can track profitability. I mean, there’s all different types of things that you can be tracking, but these numbers are helping you to truly understand the health of your business. We don’t need any emotion brought into this. It’s purely data to help us understand what our business is trying to tell us, okay? Mistake number three, not tracking key metrics. 

All right, so let’s move into Mistake number four, you’re not leveraging your high profit treatments so this happens. And look, I’m an aesthetician. I get it. I haven’t been practicing for a while, but when I was practicing, there’s always the services that you love doing, right? And so I know your providers are like, ah, like, I loved Dermaplaning. I love the sound of it. I loved the like, scraping. I it was for me so detail oriented. I needed to get every single hair off of there. I wanted to Derma plane every single person that was on my table. But if I’m and Dermaplaning, I guess is maybe not the best example, because that does have a high profit, you can do it pretty quickly. But think about if you had somebody who really loved doing some of these specialty facials. And you know, all the love in the world for the specialty facials, there’s a lot of them out there. 

They’re an important piece of the puzzle. But I don’t want to lead with something where my consumable cost is going to be so high if I have a consumable cost around 40 bucks, and I can only charge 150 200 maybe $250 for this service, then that’s not going to help me grow as fast as possible. If I’m doing another service that has a very low consumable cost, high perceived value. Okay, so when we’re looking at like, what are we going to lead with? And we’ve got a great resource called the spa capacity calculator, where you basically plug in four different treatments, and up at the top it says. Hey, how many rooms do you have? How many hours are you open? How many weeks are you open? What’s the consumable cost of this? What’s the payroll cost of this? You plug in these numbers, and then it basically pumps out specifically how much profit you would make if the only thing that you did was that service. 

So if I said, Hey, the only thing I’m going to focus on is Dermaplaning, I’m going to lead with that. I’m going to become the specialty spa for that. Then it would pump out. Here’s how much profit you would make if, literally every appointment was DERM planning, and next to it, you could put specialty facial next to that. You could put micro needling next to that you could put like an energy based device, and it’s going to show you very clearly, pretty drastic differences in profit. Now I know in the real world, we’re never going to do just one service. We’re all using a multi modality approach for skin rejuvenation to help our patients reach their skincare goals, but if we lead with the high profit services that we know are going to make a difference for our patients, we can increase our profitability on such a huge scale. So if you’re not understanding that and leveraging that you are missing out. 

Okay, so let’s move into Mistake number five, failing to invest in marketing and sales funnels. Okay, if you build it, they will come. Is this another like 80s movie reference you guys know? Kevin Costner, Field of Dreams. Field of Dreams. That one liner like has influenced my life in such a big way. If you build it, they will come. 

We see this in Spa where someone’s like, if I buy this, you know, several $100,000 energy based device, all of a sudden I’m gonna be so profitable. No, no, ma’am, you are not you need to seed that and let your patients know how excited you are about it and what it does, and then you need to launch it, and then relaunch it and continue to talk about it, for it to actually yield an ROI for you. Okay, so we’ve got to make sure that we are focusing consistently on marketing new devices, marketing new services, marketing new providers, to make sure that we are attracting the right clients and patients for us. Now, how do we do that? 

Well, the next piece of the puzzle is sales funnels. So sales funnels, and I always you know this, this is feel like it takes people a minute to really understand sales funnels. And if I actually go back, my girlfriend Tara, one of my very best friends in the whole world. Love her love her family. We actually met at a networking group for female entrepreneurs. I had just moved to the DC area the first time that I moved here and didn’t know anybody in the world. Didn’t have anyone to put as my emergency contact. It was really like. I was like, Okay, I have got to put some effort into meeting some human beings that are actually like, within the same proximity to where I live. So I went to meetup.com I found some entrepreneurial groups. 

I was really uncomfortable doing that, but I went out there, I started meeting people. And after a couple of months, the main lady who was organizing these groups actually introduced me to Tara, because she had lived in Hawaii before, and she knew that I was from Maui, so there was this connection there. And you know, 10 years later, 11 years later, here we are happily ever after, and Tara has been someone who helped me to generate millions in my business. 

We grew our businesses together. We were pregnant at the same time, had our babies together. Really, really beautiful story of what can happen when you put yourself out there. Anyway, one of the things that she helped me with was when I was first starting to market. And keep in mind my background was always working in the spot in operations, and so I would be a provider, and they would see that I had talent in the business side of things, and they would pull me up, and I would go, like, from the front desk to the spa manager, or I would go from an esthetician to handling all the social and all the marketing, right, like, so you know what I mean, the the provider that gets pulled out and starts doing like, 10 different jobs, that was always me, and so I did the. Things. And a lot of the things I was doing, I didn’t realize that they had a name for them. And sales funnels was one of those. And so I asked, Taro, is here? I was doing all this research around marketing, and when I kept hearing everybody talking about funnels and funnels and funnels, and I was like, What are they talking about? Like, I just could not get it. It took me probably four to six months before I really had a grasp on like the landing page to the thank you page, to the email sequence, to the offer, all the pieces that go in there. She was the one that helped me with that tremendously. And sales funnels, they are a tactical piece of how you get new clients, new patients, into your practice, okay? And a sales funnel doesn’t have to be the landing page, the thank you page, all of that. A sales funnel can be something even as simple as saying, Hey, I’m a solo provider, and I actually have $0 to start out with marketing.

And so I’m gonna use Groupon. Everybody like, ooh and ah, because I said Groupon. But like, if you’re using Groupon as a client acquisition strategy, which a lot of people do in the beginning, when they don’t have marketing dollars. They are using that to get access of with a group of people that they’re able to market to and bring into their business. So yeah, you’re paying for it through Groupon fees, but you don’t have to put your cash out there. Now, a sales funnel would be running a Groupon campaign, getting them in and then upselling them into adding add ons, adding all of these different pieces to recoup the fees that you paid to Groupon. Now, let me be clear, you will not build a profitable spa doing Groupon alone. However, I have met spa owners more than one who have scaled into the seven figures using Groupon as an acquisition strategy. So they’re using them to get to initially get that client or patient into their practice, and then they’re converting them into clients or patients of their practice through the different stages of this funnel, through building trust. 

All right, so important piece to remember there and Mistake number six, I want to spend a little bit more time on this one, so let me just recap these first five, because these first five are very tactical, okay, like input, output. It’s very much like here is the step by step way that you are doing something. So recurring revenue model, they don’t have a membership. Mistake number two, they’re not pricing things correctly. Mistake number three, they’re not tracking the key metrics. Mistake number four, they’re not leveraging their high profit treatments. Mistake number five, they’re failing to invest in marketing and sales funnels. Okay, those are all tactical mistakes. 

Mistake number six is failing to build your network and strategic partnerships. This is something that is the foundational secret sauce of any business owner. If you are zooming out, if you are looking at how did that spa get that door open to that partnership? I mean, look at me. How did I get a consulting job with the top physician dispensed brands without even trying, without even going for it. It was through relationships. It was through my network. Okay, so this is the foundational piece, and then we want to layer the tactical strategies on top of that, if you remember, I just told a story about my relationship with Tara. I built the relationship with Tara, then Tara taught me how to do ads. She was my go to person. She was there as a support. She was a part of my network that helped me build out these tactical pieces which are essential. 

You’ve got to know how to do these things, right? You’ve got to know about sales funnels, about ads, about pricing. But the real secret sauce comes in these relationships. And if you want to grow more than you know, 10% a year, 15% a year, the partnerships that you build with other companies will help you double and double and double. Okay? Now, Industry Research shows that strategic partnerships boost customer acquisition and awareness for wellness businesses referral marketing and word of mouth. That are very powerful in our industry. 74% 74% I’m going to link up the article that I pulled this from. 74% of consumers identify word of mouth as a key influence on purchasing decisions, which means having other local businesses that they have already established trust with when they recommend your spa that can directly drive bookings. 

And the same report is saying that formal referral programs have found that capitalize on this found that implementing these incentives can increase client acquisition by 15% so to go back to our metrics, one like, hey, if we’re looking at how fast, how much is one patient worth, what is the Lifetime Customer Value? Meaning, what is my average patient spend in my practice. If I could take the number of patients and increase that by 15% and add that dollar, you know, figure out what that dollar amount is, it’s huge. 

Okay, so I want you to know you can run a seven figure Med Spa. All right, you do these six things, you will get there, okay, start with the partnerships, start with your relationships, start with your network. Who can help you with the tactical? All right? Google Chat, all these things can teach you the tactical but having a person to talk to, having someone that can make you feel not alone, because let’s be real. As entrepreneurs, we are all we’re special. 

We are special people, and we can be on such a high high when we’re making money and doing great, and this is you want to open 15 businesses and franchise and all the things, and then, you know, two weeks later, you get a negative review. Somebody on your team walks out, and you’re just done. You just want to close your doors. You’re over it, right? So we, we also have whiplash in our emotions around the entrepreneurial journey. 

So having that community, I know my community, my you know, five people that I spend the most time with are a huge support in me to stay level headed, to shift my perspectives around different things, and they are a huge support in helping me build a multi million dollar business. I want that for you too. So start with building strategic partnerships and layer the tactical on top of that. Okay, thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you found this valuable and happy business building.

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EP 427 : 6 Myths Holding Back Spa CEOs … Bust Them for Explosive Growth

Are your beliefs about relationship marketing keeping your spa from the growth it deserves?

In this episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy, I’m diving deep into the six most common myths Spa CEOs tell themselves that prevent them from building powerful community and business partnerships. From not having time to not knowing where to start, we’re busting the lies and showing you a path to growth through authentic connection.

What you’ll learn during this episode:

  • Why relationship marketing is more than networking—it’s your growth foundation
  • How to build strategic partnerships that actually move the needle
  • Real-world examples of community collaboration that work
  • Action steps to implement relationship marketing—even if you’re introverted or short on time
  • How to track the ROI of relationship marketing strategies

Resources Mentioned in Episode #427: 6 Myths Holding Back Spa CEOs … Bust Them for Explosive Growth

  • Listen to EP 424: How to Use ChatGPT to Supercharge Your Lead Flow & Future-Proof Your Spa Business
  • Learn more about Successful Ads Club

Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe on YouTube

Keep the conversation going inside the Spa Marketing Made Easy Community by clicking here.

join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community

IG / @addoaesthetics

WEB / addoaesthetics.com

YOUTUBE / @addoaesthetics

LINKEDIN / @addoaesthetics

WANT MORE FROM ADDO AESTHETICS?

Take just 5 minutes and find out YOUR biggest area of opportunity by taking my FREE Spa Business Assessment here → scorecard.addoaesthetics.com/

Join the Growth Factor® Fundamentals, an association dedicated to empowering women and strengthening their community by helping aesthetic professionals build meaningful connections with one another and fostering support and guidance to create businesses that align with the lives they love → https://offer.addoaesthetics.com/growth-factor-fundamentals

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!

 

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. Have you ever thought I don’t have time for networking, or I’m just not the networking type? If so, you’re not alone now as a working mom with two kids who also has a husband with a demanding career, I get it, but these beliefs are stalling your spas growth today, on the spa marketing Made Easy podcast, we’re diving into the six most common myths spa CEOs tell themselves about relationship Marketing, and we’re uncovering the truth behind each one, plus I’m going to give you actionable strategies to turn these myths into opportunities. 

So you ready? Okay, let’s go ahead and start with a fundamental truth. Your spa doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s an integral part of a broader community ecosystem. Engaging with this community isn’t just a nice to have, it’s a cornerstone of sustainable success. So why is community so vital for small businesses? Well, there’s the economic impact. You know, small businesses, they are the lifeblood of local economies. They create jobs, they foster innovation, they contribute to the unique character of neighborhoods. In fact, small businesses donate 250% more than larger businesses to local nonprofits and community causes. That’s way more than the big companies. Okay? Mutual support. A thriving community supports its businesses. You’ve seen out there on Small Business Saturday, people coming and shopping. People want to support small business. 

They uplift their community. It’s this really symbiotic relationship that leads to shared prosperity and resilience. So what exactly is relationship marketing? Well, it’s a strategy that focuses on building long term relationships with your customers. Yes, of course, we want to emphasize retention. We want customer satisfaction and we want increased lifetime value. 

I’ve talked about that metric quite a bit. That is just good business, but we also believe that expanding your network, and really ultimately expanding your community, is going to create a stronger business foundation. Now I’m talking authentic relationships here, okay, not transactional relationships. I want real, authentic, meaningful. You genuinely care about this other human being in front of you. Relationships, okay? 

That builds community. Community creates opportunities. It creates referrals, and it even opens the door for strategic partnerships. Look, I love paid ads. I love building funnels. I love creating incredible spreadsheets. These are all tactical things, though, if I really zoom out, I owe the success of my business and where I’m at today to the relationships that I have built over the years. I want that for you too. So let me get into the benefits of relationship marketing, and I’m going to tell you this from like a customer perspective. 

First, you know why this matters to the customer, but then I’m also going to talk about why it matters from the business owners perspective. Okay, so from the customer perspective, when we focus on relationship marketing, we have increased customer loyalty, which right? We want that repeat business. It’s more expensive to get a new client than it is to retain an existing one, so we want to make sure that we are building those relationships with our customers. When we have those relationships, we do have an increased lifetime customer value. It means that if, if a patient or client comes in for a facial and you have a relationship with them, they’re more likely to trust you and then cross sell into something else. Maybe they’re going to do a micro needling service. Maybe they’re going to do their brows like their brows, micro bladed. They’re going to be able to cross promote more when they have a deeper relationship, when they feel connected, and again, have that. Trust that increases your lifetime customer value, and that is huge. Then community engagement when you have relationships, and let’s say you’re hosting an open house, we know like we love doing events. We love mini events. We love open house, style of events when you have relationships with your super loyal people, they’re going to be the ones that are showing up. They’re going to be the ones that are really promoting your services for you through social proof. 

This is a huge deal when it comes to events, right? So these are three reasons that relationships can be really beneficial to customers in your business, but let’s now look at the benefits of relationship marketing from a business owner’s perspective. You’re gonna hear me talk about strategic partnerships a lot, and this is so like, I don’t know if I’ve been able to fully like communicate how essential this is, but and how impactful this has been on my business. But strategic partnerships, these are relationships where you are collaborating with other local businesses that serve the same ideal client. Your businesses support one another. So I’m going to use successful ads club as a great strategic partnership. My girlfriend, Tara and I have known each other for 10 plus years. Our families, our friends, our families, vacation together. We met through an entrepreneurship group, a meetup group, here in the DC area. 

When she was living in DC, we became personal friends that evolved into a business relationship. We both had companies. She is She taught me everything I know about ads. She helped me grow my business with ads. Well, I don’t want to teach ads in my business. That is not something. It changes so much. There’s so much to stay up to date on. But it is a it is a need in spas, right? If you have a brick and mortar business, you’ve got to understand how to do paid advertising. It can be an incredible way, one way, you know, we talk about getting new leads, there’s there’s social, there’s SEO, and there’s the relationships, right, or word of mouth. So this is one really strong way that we’re getting new clients in the door. So it’s absolutely important. But she and I have a strategic partnership where my company highlights and recommends her company. 

Her company highlights and recommends my company. It goes back and forth, and she and I have such a level of trust, such a personal relationship, we can talk openly, we can talk clearly. We can we really understand the core values, the integrity of the other individual. That symbiotic relationship has benefited both of us, and that all started from taking a leap, putting yourself out there to meet people in the community, right? 

And this has now been 10 plus years that we have been friends, that we’ve been supporting one another’s businesses, think of the amount of revenue that has come in. And on top of that, if I zoom out even more, if I look at the other entrepreneurs that Tara has connected me to, or that I have connected Tara to, expanding that network and how much money those relationships have generated into our business, it’s huge, and it all starts with showing up. Okay, so strategic partnerships are so, so huge in your business. All right, so next up for benefits of relationship marketing from a business owner’s perspective, enhanced brand visibility through collaborative content. 

So if you are an and I love this one for local business, for spa, because so many spas get hit up with, Hey, can you donate a gift certificate to this charity or to that charity, or to this school function or to that school function, and yes, you can absolutely and in exchange, I’d love you to send out this email to your list, right, so you’re both giving. It’s not just one taking. I think the reason that so many spa owners just get so frustrated around October, when we seem to be getting all of those requests to donate, donate, donate, donate, donate. Well, we want to make sure that we’re seeing some result in that we want some exposure. So think about what it would be like to have a partnership with a charity that you. You are really passionate about that you believe in. We’ve got one gal who volunteers for a dog rescue, and she had an open house, she had a dog adoption center at her open house, where people could also so she was like, you know, supporting that charity. 

Think of a long term relationship that you could do where they’re regularly promoting your business and you’re regularly promoting their business. 

That’s going to be much more effective than a one time, one time email or one time donation to a gift search of a gift certificate that may not even be redeemed. Right? So we want to make sure that that relationship piece is there, so that that other organization or business will continue to support you, to highlight you on your social on their social media, to maybe have a featured section of trusted partners on their website to email out to their list. It’s these small, consistent actions that are going to make the big difference over time, and then contribution to the community well, being right, being a part, being a leader in your community, that is so huge. 

So you’re strengthening your community ties, you’re participating in local events and initiatives, you’re showing up as a contributing member, and your employees will often feel more engaged and proud to work for a business that positively impacts their community. So by by embracing relationship marketing strategies, you as a spa owner, you’re not only driving growth and visibility, but you’re also paying a pivotal role in enriching your local communities. Yet, even though there’s all these really incredible benefits. Many spa CEOs hesitate to embrace relationship marketing, and there’s six common reasons why. 

So six myths is what I’m calling these. So let’s go ahead and break down each one of those. So Myth number one, I don’t have time for networking and relationship building, I get it. I get it. Time is our most valuable resource, and when you are running a spa, it’s demanding, it’s overwhelming, it’s exhausting. But integrating relationship marketing doesn’t have to require a significant time investment. Relationship Marketing. Marketing can seamlessly be incorporated into your existing routines. So simple actions like engaging with clients during appointments, collaborating with with neighboring businesses, they can both be effective and time efficient. So you guys know, I love systems, right? So I’m going to give you a little system to help you do this in two hours a week, all right? So you can spend 30 minutes engaging on social media. You can spend 30 minutes reaching out to a potential partner, or potential partners, and maybe you have a list of potential partners that you want to be reaching out to. You can spend 30 minutes following up, and you can spend 30 minutes promoting another local business giving Okay, so these are ways that you can carve out. And if you haven’t listened to our podcast episode about how we’re using ChatGPT in our business. 

Go back listen to that episode, and we’ll link it up here and look at how you can use ChatGPT to free up two hours or more so that you can plug in these two hours to actually do the work. Okay, super important there. So Myth number two, let’s move on there. I’m not a natural networker, I’m not an extrovert, I’m an introvert. So not everyone feels comfortable in traditional networking settings, and that’s okay. I get overwhelmed in groups of large people, I do really well in small groups, all right, but if I’m in a big group, I am not the one that is going to just naturally walk up and do small talk or, you know, figure out a conversation starter. 

But the reality is authentic connections. You don’t have to have this big, gregarious, outgoing personality. You have to have genuine conversations about showing up. You have to have genuine conversations about what you care about. You have to have genuine conversations. About the impact that you’re wanting to make. So even if you’re like, it’s a hard No, I’m not going to a networking event. You can reach out. You can have a list of people that you want to reach out to via email or via LinkedIn, or whatever your kind of process is, and see if they’ll meet you for coffee, see if they’ll hop on a zoom call, right? So you can do that on a one, on one basis, and remove the part that is very stressful for you. All right. So your action item for this one start by reaching out to one local business owner that you admire or a business that you frequent. 

All right, a simple message expressing appreciation, a desire to connect, that can open doors to new possibilities, right? So I want to add a little caveat here, because you’re gonna get nos, you’re gonna get people that don’t respond, and that’s okay, right? Because you will also get yeses, and you will also get people who do respond and people who do want to collaborate. Don’t take any of the no’s personally. All right. I had one one rep. She was a skincare rep, and she said to me, one time, no just means not yet. And I thought, She’s good. And so look at it from that perspective. Make sure that you’re focusing on the impact that you’re wanting to make. 

Don’t take it personally. People have a lot of things going on in their life, and so we’ve got to make sure that we are just doing our thing, staying focused on what it is that we are trying to accomplish in our business. All right. Myth number three, I’ve tried networking before and it didn’t work. Probably every single one of you listening to this has been through that before. You maybe have been to a past experience at a net where you’re thinking of a past experience at a networking group that was not fun. You got a bunch of business cards. Nothing really panned out. Maybe you got a bunch of spammy LinkedIn messages. 

You know, I get it, but to build authentic relationships, and I want to just keep highlighting that authentic relationships, you have to connect with that person as a human being, you have to find things that you align on, things that you connect on, besides referring people back and forth. That’s transactional, okay, so that’s a really, really important piece. So when you are looking at what didn’t work, did you make sure that you were following up? Did you make sure that you were providing value to them and leading with how can I support you? How can I be of value? What can I do for you? Those are the things that people that are building authentic, genuine relationships are doing. 

They’re providing value. They’re giving, and that is when you’re seeing the result, okay, you’re gonna say no, and think about how you respond to people, right? Think about relationships that you have built with other whether it’s other business owners, whether it is other business owners in the community, whether it’s your clients or patients that are coming in, you are going to like the ones that lead with giving, with kindness, with respect. 

Those are the ones that are going to really pan out into great relationships. Myth number four, other businesses in my area don’t want to collaborate, right? There is, it’s natural to fear rejection. We were talking about, you know, worrying about people saying no, or maybe you feel like you’re the other, even if there’s other spas in the area that they’re not in a collaboration over competition, type of mindset, and that’s normal, but if you don’t ask the question is always no, okay? 

So the reality is, all business owners want to grow their business, right? We’re not going through this roller coaster of emotion and stress and trying to learn new skills and pivot different economies and train our staff and systemize just because we think it’s a fun hobby. No, we want to grow our business, we want to make money, we want to build the life we want to live. We want to make an impact in our communities. These are all really important things, so finding the right fit and presenting a way that your two companies can work together, presenting a way that you can provide value, it’s just the way that you are presenting the offer to get them to say, yes, okay, so if you don’t ask. The answer is always no. All right, myth number five, I don’t know where to start. I don’t know who to partner with. That is the kind of big thing. I’m not going to do relationship marketing because it’s too overwhelming. It’s going to take too much time. It’s daunting. 

Okay, so what I like to do is begin by identifying local businesses that cater to a similar clientele but are not direct competitors. So for us, think about hair stylist. Think about massage therapist, if you’re not offering massage in your practice, think about permanent makeup artist. Think about wellness clinics or weight loss clinics. We’re seeing a lot of those pop up. Think about chiropractors or dos. Think about boutique fitness studios. There’s a lot of places that we can look at that serve the same clientele as ours. I’m seeing a lot of head spas pop up, right? 

Can we partner with them? Can we build relationships with them. Go and frequent their business. See what it’s like to have a service with them. See what the overall experience is like. That’s a really important piece in referring business. You need to make sure that you have a personal story of doing business with that company, ask your existing clients, make a list of your top clients, and ask them the other local businesses that they love, that they frequent, and then go there and just start up conversations. Get to know the owner. Ask them if they want to have a coffee. Get to know them as a human being before presenting the relationship piece, the strategic partnership piece, the referral piece, right? It’s really, really easy to do, all right. 

Myth number six, so I can’t track ROI from relationship marketing. Yes, you can. Yes you can. The way that you do it is either by creating a specific offer for that practice, if you’re giving, like we’ve talked about this in the past, one of our very first episodes on this podcast, like hundreds of episodes ago, was on gift card marketing, and this is a strategy that I used years and years and years ago, where we would create these plastic gift cards, we would give them out in it would be either a $50 increment, $100 increment, $200 increment, and we could give them out as vouchers to car dealerships to insurance companies To hairstylists to real estate agents. We looked at all these different people that would serve an audience that maybe would be potential clients or patients of our practice. We would then make sure that the back of the gift card was numbered and we would have a spreadsheet that listed out gift cards, one through 50 went to real estate agent. A gift cards 51, through 100 went to this person, right or this business. And so when you’re getting those redeemed, you’re highlighting them, and you’re able to see who is actually referring people back. 

All right, so this can absolutely be tracked. Get into, you know, my love of spreadsheets here, which makes this whole process a heck of a lot easier, but it absolutely can be tracked. And what you’ll find is, let’s say that you have relationships and partnerships with maybe 10 companies. About two of them are going to be regularly and consistently referring people to you. The other eight, they may highlight you on social media. 

They may do a blog post about you. They may have, you know, your spa brochures in their front area, but they’re not actively, consistently referring people your way. And that’s okay. That’s okay. I personally, my approach with strategic partnerships is having a small amount of people that I can go deep with. But in order to figure out who those ones are, that you can go deep, that you can really find those kind of a level strategic partners, you’ve got to test out different people. You’ve got to test it’s as simple of that it is a long term game. 

All right, so let me just do a quick recap of some of the objections, what I’m calling myths that you may have told yourself as to why you’re not going to do relationship marketing. Maybe you’ve never tried it before. Maybe there’s other businesses in your area that won’t want to collaborate. Maybe you’re not a natural networker. Or maybe you don’t have time, maybe you don’t know who to partner with, and maybe you’re worried that you can’t track all of those things are untrue, all of those things, it is so worth the time and energy for you to put in to this relationship marketing piece by shifting your perspective, by implementing these actionable strategies, you can harness the power of community to drive your spas growth. Now I want to challenge you choose one myth, just one this week, that resonated with you, and do the action items. Remember that relationships aren’t just about expanding your network. It’s about enriching your business and your community. Okay, relationship marketing is an essential piece to your spas growth. I’m not discounting social and paid ads. I’m not discounting SEO. Those are important, but really, as I’m zooming out, relationship marketing is the foundational piece. This is the thing that, above all else, can help you grow. 

Alright? I hope that you found this episode insightful. Do me a favor and share it with a fellow spa CEO. Let’s collaborate. Let’s continue this conversation, and I’ll catch you on the next episode. 

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EP 426 : 10 Ways to Make Your Team Feel Valued (Even Without Giving a Raise)

When finances are tight and raises aren’t an option, how do you continue to keep your team motivated, engaged, and loyal?

In this episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy, I’m sharing 10 meaningful and effective ways to make your team feel truly valued—no bonus required. From gratitude rituals to flexible scheduling, and even profit sharing strategies that don’t increase fixed costs, these tips will help you strengthen your team culture, retain top talent, and create an environment your team wants to stay in.

What you’ll learn during this episode:

  • Low-cost, high-impact ways to show appreciation
  • How personal touches make a lasting difference
  • Creating professional growth opportunities that drive loyalty
  • Why time off and scheduling flexibility are game-changers
  • Strategies to foster gratitude, feedback, and team connection

Resources Mentioned in Episode #426: 10 Ways to Make Your Team Feel Valued

  • Book: The 5 Love Languages of the Workplace by Gary Chapman

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WANT MORE FROM ADDO AESTHETICS?

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Join the Growth Factor® Fundamentals, an association dedicated to empowering women and strengthening their community by helping aesthetic professionals build meaningful connections with one another and fostering support and guidance to create businesses that align with the lives they love → https://offer.addoaesthetics.com/growth-factor-fundamentals

ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST 

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Daniela Woerner is the founder of Growth Factor® Fundamentals, a leading spa association 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!

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. Listen, friends, there is going to come a time in your entrepreneurial journey that you are going to really want to give your team a raise, but the company, plain and simple, does not have the financial resources to support that. Maybe you’re in a sustain year rather than a growth year. Perhaps as a country, we’re going through an economic downturn or recession, or maybe your company is just going through a pivot. If you’re in business long enough, it’s not a question of if, but when.

So how do we as CEOs let our team know how much we value them and their contributions to the company when giving a raise just plain and simple is not possible? So that’s exactly what we’re gonna dive into today, right here on the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast, and I hope what I share in this episode carries with you into great economic times when you can give big raises, because when you create a workplace where your team feels seen, feels supported, and they’re inspired to give their best every single day, well it’s just a lot more pleasant to spend so much of your time at and ultimately, it’s going to result in less turnover for your staff, better quality we experience for your clients and patients. It’s just a win win overall.

All right, so what I have for you today is 10 powerful ways that you can make your team feel valued. Let’s start off with number one, which is recognize and celebrate achievements. So recognition is such a game changer. People want to know that their work matters. People want to know that you see when they go the extra mile. And yet, so many business owners forget to celebrate the wins big or small, so make it a habit to publicly recognize hard work. Give shout outs in the daily huddle, post employee spotlights to social media. Maybe start an employee of the month program. Do a handwritten thank you note. These things can all go a long way in making someone feel special and feel acknowledged when employees feel seen and appreciated, they are more engaged, productive and loyal to your business. All right.

Number two is offer personalized rewards. So everyone loves a reward, but the key is making it personal. Not everyone wants just a generic gift card. Some employees might love a free spa treatment. Others want an extra break, maybe a book, maybe a coffee from their local coffee shop. Ask your team what motivates them and tailor your rewards accordingly. So this shows that you truly value them as individuals, not just employees. So the way that we do this in our team, in our company, we have a Google form that our team fills out each year, and so it’ll say, you know their name, and then it asked a whole variety of questions, like, do you like coffee or tea? Do you like beer or wine? Do you like hard copy books or audio books. What is something that you’ve always wanted but would never buy for yourself if you had a $25 gift certificate, where would it be to a $50 gift certificate? Where would it be to $100 gift certificate? Where would it be to we’re asking this whole variety of questions, which allows me to personalize all sorts of gifts for them. If I want to get them something that’s just, you know, a $10 gift certificate to Starbucks for Hey, thanks for being so awesome. I can do that if I want to know, this was actually something that we did a couple of years ago. I was so on top of things. It does not happen every year, but I was in a year that I was on top of everything. I got all of my Christmas shopping done on Black Friday, and I had planned out. I had a spreadsheet based off of the team input spreadsheet of what I was getting for every single employee. I had a, you know, I have a set budget of how much I spend for Christmas gifts. And I got something, a physical gift, unique for each person, wrapped it and mailed it to their house so that it would be there on Christmas for them to put under the tree and open up. It was so fun. It was one of the things that brought me the most joy. And I know. Know that it meant a lot to everybody on the team to have that rather than just like a flat dollar amount gift card or cash bonus, right? Those are nice. Those are great. It’s not like we don’t want to do those, but when you have something that’s a personalized gift, it’s more meaningful, all right.

Number three, provide growth and learning opportunities. People stay where they grow. Right? If you want a team that’s invested in your business, invest in them first, offer training, offer mentorship, even send them to industry conferences. I was talking with a spa owner in she’s actually a nurse in at a VIP day that we had in Salt Lake City, and she invests in personal development for her staff. She has like a life coach that she invests in for them to help them grow as people. How incredible is that? So let’s just say that you have one of your estheticians who’s really interested in advanced skin care treatments, why not sponsor part of that training, or all of that training? Right? When employees see that you’re invested in their future, they are more likely to stay long term. I know that happened for me at one of the practices that I worked at, and you can always if you’re worried about investing so much in an employee and then having them just leave, if it’s a large investment, I’m talking like 1000s of dollars, then have them sign a contract that says that they will stay for one year or they will owe the cost of the training back. So you’re still investing in them, they’re still getting this, but that gives you a little bit of extra kind of protection that, yep, you’re taking the risk up front, but if something goes south, then you’re still protected. And you have a contract that says that they owe you x amount of money. Should they leave?

All right, number four, give them the gift of time off. Burnout is real. My friends, even in the spa space and the wellness industry, if your team is constantly working without breaks, their performance and attitude will suffer. So this is, this is one of the reasons that I am such a fan of the six hour shift. So nine to three, three to nine when we’re talking about split shifts, because when you’re working these really long shifts, there is no way, like I just, you know someone’s got to prove me wrong. But I just do not see how your 9am patient can get the same presence and energy and quality of care as a 6pm patient, if you’re doing a nine, you know, if you’re doing an all day shift, I am not possible to do that, you know, I would be so tired, I would be repeating myself. You know, it just I would not be able to give the same energy and quality of care to that patient. So how can we make sure that our providers and our staff is really practicing what we preach, right? Well, surprise them with a wellness day. Surprise them with a paid day off to rest and recharge. And if that’s not possible, allow for shorter shifts or extra breaks during busy seasons. A well rested team is a happy team and a productive one. All right. Now think about the way that you can do this. You could use this as a benefit for someone who is running a monthly retail contest or a membership contest, like Whoever sells the most retail Whoever sells the most memberships, whatever that thing is, they get a paid day off, if we think about how much one paid day is in a cash bonus versus The perceived benefit of having a three day weekend, it’s huge. Okay, all right.

Number five, offer flexible scheduling when possible. Guys, this one is so huge in my company.

Look, life happens. Kids get sick, cars break down, unexpected events come up when you offer some level of flexibility and scheduling, it builds trust, and it shows your team that you respect their time outside of work. Now, this can be consulting with them on the shifts that they’re going to cover. It can be working with them on having a weeks and B weeks, you know, if someone doesn’t always want to work this Saturday shift, or if someone needs every other Friday off, or something like that, create a schedule of a weeks and B weeks. It doesn’t have to be the same week or the same schedule every single week. Allow team members to swap shifts. Have a process around that of approval, but allow them to swap shifts. So think about. Different ways that you can offer flexibility in scheduling when possible, not to the detriment of your company, but what are the concessions that you can make that will make your team’s life easier? So I had mentioned that this was huge in my company. Well, we had a couple of years ago, we had this Addo baby boom. Everyone was pregnant at the same time. And for those of you who are moms, you know, especially when you have little ones in diapers, that’s a special season in life. It’s really hard to explain the craziness of it. I don’t know a better word of other you’re sleep deprived. There’s just all kinds of stuff going on that you’re like, I basically, you know, I don’t even know how I’m functioning here, right? Well, we are constantly preaching about building a business around a life you love, and we need to make that possible for our employees too, right? Like, and if you have a lot of moms and they want to be able to pick up their kids from school. Maybe that’s not going to happen every single weekday, but if you can allow that to happen once a week or twice a week, if you can figure out ways to come up with a schedule that makes them feel like they’re just not struggling for time all all over the time, it is going to be such a phenomenal benefit.

All right, number six, create a culture of gratitude. Now, a simple thank you can be incredibly powerful, but I’m not talking about a quick thanks as they walk out the door. I mean genuine, thoughtful appreciation. So it’s Sarah blakely’s husband. Sarah Blakely is the founder of Spanx. Her husband, Jesse. Forget his last name, Jesse, something, but he is a business coach. He’s got a great presence on Instagram. Anyway. Really cool guy. And I read a post from him one year that said he doesn’t do holiday cards. He actually writes thank you cards over Thanksgiving to people in his circle, like his inner circle, people letting them know what he loves about them, why he likes having them in in their life, in his life, and just does a really heartfelt card to let them know what he values about them as a human being. I did that for my team this year. That was something that I said I love, that I want to do that for my team. I want to do that for the people in my inner circle that I love and adore. I want to make sure that I’m saying that so there’s no question of how I feel about them, what I value about them. Okay, so when you start a culture of gratitude where employees express appreciation for each other, maybe it’s a gratitude board in the break room where team members can leave, you know, positive notes for each other. Maybe it’s a weekly team meeting, where you recognize someone that went above and beyond. All right, so really create that culture of gratitude. Now I want to share another story here, and I’ve got to give credit to Christy for this one. Christy is like my right hand lady. We’ve been through so much together, and our family is actually vacationed in Europe last summer. And when we were there, her son was like, Hey, Mom, we didn’t do the thankful game. And I was like, Okay, what is the thankful game? And we totally adopted it as a warner family tradition. We call it the thankful game as well. My son is the one who still starts it almost every single night. I love that, and we essentially have four questions. So the questions are, what are you thankful for? What are you thinking about? What’s something that you did awesome today? And who would you like to compliment? So we all go around the table, we answer the questions, but think about coming up with, even if you just came up with two questions, like, tell me something that you did awesome today, and tell me someone that you would like to compliment or highlight for something awesome they did. If you did that in the team, you can create this culture of really highlighting and acknowledging other team members and also building confidence for yourself. Okay, so figure out something that works, that can be almost like a ritual in your spa, that you’re setting the tone and acknowledging and Praising others,

all right, number seven host team lunches or coffee outings. So team bonding outside of work is just as important as when it happens in the spa. Okay? So plan a monthly team lunch, bring in coffees or pastries, organize a fun outing. I know I always like whenever I was working in a practice and a product rep would come in, I. Yeah, I was like, they better have bagels or some, some kind of food. It just was, like, it was part of the thing, and we just had, like, a different connection, right? So food, you know, breaking bread together, talking, sitting together. It is, it is just kind of an incredible thing to do now I look at my team as chosen family. These are the people that I spend the same amount of time with as my husband and my kids. There are no other people, not even like my mom or my brother, that I am spending as much time with as the people that I am working with on my team, my chosen family and my husband and my kids. So since we’re a virtual team, we have a signal group chat that is literally active on the daily and has absolutely nothing to do with work. We talk about all sorts of things. We also plan regular visits to connect in person. So I feel like we it’s we probably don’t go more than a quarter without seeing each other. Now they’re all getting together in April. I can’t make it in April because of my kids birthday, but they’re still I love that they’re organizing a get together trip that literally has nothing to do with work, just because they love one another as human beings. Now you don’t need to go on vacation with your team like I did with Christy. You don’t need to have a daily group chat if you feel like that is too much for you. Have your own boundaries, right of what makes sense. But consider doing a monthly Pau Hana. That’s what we call it in Hawaii. Pau Hana means done with work. So you know, after work, maybe you go out for appetizers or mocktails or cocktails or whatever makes sense for you. Maybe you have a monthly Saturday morning walk, figure out something that you guys can do as a team, where you get together and you literally don’t talk about work, you figure out, like, Who is this person as a human right? That’s really important. Okay?

Number eight, implement profit sharing or bonuses. All right? I know I said no raises, but profit sharing isn’t a raise. It is a way that you can reward based on performance of the spa. All right, so if a spa reaches a financial goal, consider giving some of that back to your team. This could be a quarterly bonus. This could be a percentage of retail sales. It can be a small gift for hitting a milestone. It helps your employees feel more invested in the overall success of the company. Okay, so I’ve done profit sharing in the past. I’ve also done bonuses based off of payroll percent. So our personal goal as a company is to keep our payroll at 40% so let’s say at the end of the year that our payroll comes in at 35% I will gladly take that extra 5% and divide it among my employees. So bonuses are based on performance of the spa and are not a long term fixed cost increase and payroll. So remember that. Okay, so if you hit the bonus, or if you hit the goal, then you give the bonus, but if you don’t hit the goal, then the bonus is not given. Okay,all right.

Number nine, moving on, encourage employee feedback and give them a voice. No one wants to feel like a number, right? I can’t tell you how many friends that I’ve had that have worked in big companies, and these, you know, companies that are getting bought and keep getting bought and keep getting bought, and they don’t feel like their voice matters. They feel just like a number. That is not something that we want to recreate in small business. In fact, that’s a lot of the reason why employees come to small businesses is because they want to be able to feel that they can make an impact. So how can you create this culture of feedback? Well, hold regular check ins, send out anonymous surveys, have team meetings where people can share feedback and, most importantly, act on it. If they suggest changes and see nothing happen, they’re going to stop speaking up. And that doesn’t mean that you have to implement everything that they suggest. If you are not going to implement something, thank them for their feedback. Or if it’s anonymous, bring it up at the team meeting and say, This was suggested. I’ve considered it, but here’s the reasons why we are not going to move forward with this. And so if you’re doing that like that’s really helping clarify communication, which will overall, again, boost morale, right? Clear is kind. Right? So creating a culture of feedback, it’s hard, guys, it’s hard. I’m not going to sit here and say that it’s easy, but it is essential. Feedback is different than criticism, okay? So we’re not just looking for complaints. We’re not looking for victim mentality that is not healthy in any way. We don’t want anything to do with that. What we’re trying to do is find blind spots in our business and in our leadership and resolve those issues. Okay? And who’s better positioned to provide feedback on that than our own employees? So when they feel like they have a voice, they are so much more bought in to the culture. Consider that all right.

And last but not least, we are going to celebrate personal milestones. Okay? So birthdays, work, anniversaries, weddings, babies, these are huge milestones in your team’s lives. A card, a small gift, even a team celebration can make them feel like part of a family, not just a workplace. So I was actually at our orthodontist the other day, which I finished my Invisalign journey. So happy about that. But I was at the orthodontist for a visit, and one of the ladies working at the front desk had this huge like, had to be like, 15 balloons that said it’s a girl. And so it was so clear that, that it was a gentleman, actually, who was working there, who had all the balloons, and he had just had a baby girl. And so everybody that walked in was like, congratulations. They were celebrating. You know, it was a really beautiful thing that, yes, he had this big milestone in his life, and he also gets to celebrate with his team and with all of the patients that were coming into the practice. It was a really beautiful thing. So you may now, like, when we’re looking at those things, I want to give you one piece of advice, right? Because you may have an employee that doesn’t want 15 balloons, that doesn’t want to be the center of attention, you know that’s important to acknowledge as well, because that will make them very uncomfortable. So I want you to check out the book Love Languages for the workplace. There. You may have heard of The Five Love Languages. This is by Gary Chapman. It’s a like a marriage book, a relationship book, but it’s such a great book, and he wrote a version for the workplace. So it’s really understanding the different love languages of the workplace, so that your team, how do they actually feel appreciated and valued? If you read that together as a team, you understand what everyone’s love languages are. You can actually personalize these different ways of celebrating or acknowledging your staff to your individual staff members. So you may be like, Yes, I’m adding all 10 of these. You may just pick one or two. I hope that whatever you do, it provides value. Okay? So there you have it, my friends, 10 powerful ways to make your team feel valued. Remember, appreciation isn’t just about money. Money is important. Got to pay the bills, right? But people want to belong to a team. They want to feel that they are respected and supported, and they’re excited to come to work. When you invest in your team, they invest in your business, and that is how you build long term success.

If you love today’s episode, do me a favor. Share it with another spa owner who needs to hear this. And if you’re looking for more strategies on team development, spa operations and, of course, spa marketing, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you haven’t done that already. Thank you for hanging out with me today, and I will see you on the next episode.

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EP 425: Scope of Practice, State Regulations, and Industry Advocacy with Susanne Schmaling

In this powerful episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy, we’re diving into one of the most crucial yet often overlooked topics in the spa and aesthetics industry—scope of practice and regulatory advocacy.

I’m joined by Susanne Schmaling, founder of the Esthetics Council, who brings over 30 years of experience and unwavering passion for fighting for aestheticians’ rights. We discuss everything from the legal and legislative process, to real-time updates in states like Illinois and Texas, to what YOU can do right now to protect your profession.

What you’ll learn during this episode:

  • How scope of practice varies dramatically from state to state
  • The dangers of memos being interpreted as law
  • Ways to challenge unfair regulations
  • The ripple effect of over-regulation on spa owners, providers, and clients
  • Action steps for staying informed and getting involved

Resources Mentioned in Episode #425: Scope of Practice, State Regulations, and Industry Advocacy with Susanne Schmaling

  • Visit the Esthetics Council website
  • Connect with the Esthetics Council on Facebook and Instagram

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Keep the conversation going inside the Spa Marketing Made Easy Community by clicking here.

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WEB / addoaesthetics.com

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LINKEDIN / @addoaesthetics

WANT MORE FROM ADDO AESTHETICS?

Take just 5 minutes and find out YOUR biggest area of opportunity by taking my FREE Spa Business Assessment here → scorecard.addoaesthetics.com/

Join the Growth Factor® Fundamentals, an association dedicated to empowering women and strengthening their community by helping aesthetic professionals build meaningful connections with one another and fostering support and guidance to create businesses that align with the lives they love → https://offer.addoaesthetics.com/growth-factor-fundamentals

ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST 

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Daniela Woerner is the founder of Growth Factor® Fundamentals, a leading spa association 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.

 

 

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.

Hey friends. Daniela here and welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. So this episode, this was one that we actually plan to air later in the month, but with everything that’s going on in the state of Texas around scope of practice, we really wanted to get this moved up to today to make sure that it was given the awareness that we’re getting the word out around some of these sweeping changes that are happening or attempting to happen in the various states. So I have a guest, Susanne Schmaling, and shout out to Misty. So Misty is one of our longtime clients. Hi, Misty. Love you girl, and she is somebody who I consider a friend. She shared an article that Susanne wrote in Skin Inc, and was like, hey, this lady would be a great guest on the podcast. I agreed. I read her article. She’s obviously very intelligent, very passionate about our industry, doing a lot of work to help protect scope of practice in a smart way, in a way that makes sense.

So we got her on the show, and she really is doing a lot to highlight this process of how scope of practice things are changed, so I’m going to do just a quick read of her bio, and then we’ll get right into that interview. My call to action to you is make sure that after this episode, you go to your board, your state board, and make sure that you’re getting notifications around legislation that is going through trying to be passed in your state. It’s extremely, extremely important. And if you don’t know what’s happening in Texas, listen to the episode. It’s a big deal. Okay, so Susanne Schmaling is a visionary leader in the Aesthetics industry with over three decades of experience as a practitioner, educator, author and advocate as founder of the Esthetics Council, she champions professional standards, skills, education and legislative representation for estheticians nationwide. Her expertise is in clinical skin care and curriculum development has shaped educational frameworks across the industry, empowering practitioners with science based approaches to skin health. Most recently, Schmeling founded peruvia skincare, an innovative AI beauty tech company with meaningful employment opportunities for licensed professionals. By merging cutting edge technology with professional expertise, she continues her lifelong mission of elevating the esthetics profession while addressing industry challenges. She may Ling’s unique blend of clinical experience, business acumen and policy awareness has established her as an influential voice guiding the future of skincare and professional esthetics.

She’s really an incredible woman. She’s got a lot to say and a lot of passion around our industry. I hope you enjoy this episode, and please, please, please make this one that you share with a friend in the esthetic space. This is a really, really important thing. This is the type of episode that you’re sharing in Facebook groups and with other esthetic providers as an industry, we need to unite. We need to support one another, and we need to make sure that effective scope of practice changes are being made that make sense for our industry. So please share this episode, enjoy the interview, and I can’t wait to hear your thoughts.

All right. Susanne, welcome to the Spa marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m really excited to have you here this conversation. You know, it all started, gosh, probably around six months ago, when someone sent me an article that you had written in Skin Inc Magazine, and they said, this lady sounds incredible, and you should have her as a guest on the podcast. And so I reached out. We started to get to know each other, and it’s just really impressive how involved you are in really fighting for our industry, fighting for estheticians, really doing such important work that doesn’t really get talked about very often, because I think it is something that, and I’ll speak for myself, and is that I just take for granted. You know, it’s we’re so focused, like in my in my world, I’m so focused on building businesses that I’m not thinking about the scope of practice stuff, which is. Is essential to to be able to build a business. So I did do an intro, but I, you know, tell people in your own words what it is that you are doing in the esthetic space with esthetics Council, what is your kind of mission and purpose here?

Well, my whole mission and purpose, after working in this industry for 30 years is to provide a almost generic organization that’s not focused on a certain revenue stream to advocate for estheticians. Through my experience in the different roles I’ve had, I’ve noticed that often discussion and nuanced and detailed discussion around regulation and informing and educating regulators has been completely missing, so I’ve really focused on trying to educate and build relationships with each board’s executive directors. Sometimes it’s, you know, helpful, sometimes it’s not, and then education I my focus and love has always been education. I’ve written several books and, you know, just redone curriculum with pivot point. So I’m really focused on making sure that education is standard in uniform across the US, so that when we do talk to regulators about what’s going on, it makes sense and we have legally defensible information, but we really need, I really need to get this industry organized, because there’s so many threats to us. So our that is our focus is really trying to educate regulators and help them make really smart decisions so we don’t lose our profession.

So let’s, talk about scope of practice. And this is something that, as I’m sure you know more than anybody else, it is a full time job to understand what you’re able to do in your state. And you know, I’ve been in the industry almost 20 years now, and the part of the reason that I became an entrepreneur in the first place was because I married my husband, who was active duty military, and we ended up moving 12 different times, living in different states.

And the scope of practice is different in every single state. And where I learned and where I grew up, I kind of grew up in Durham offices and plastics offices, and I didn’t know how to wax. I wasn’t really great at doing facials. I was doing energy based devices, Doctor on site. But still, that was kind of my model. And I’m like, if we end up in California, or if we end up in, you know, some state that has regulations that I know that I won’t be able to do legally, to do the services that I’ve been doing for years, then I’m out of a job. And so for me, it was a livelihood. It was either I’m going to go to school and become a nurse or I’m going to become an entrepreneur. And 11 years ago, I made that choice to become an entrepreneur. I’m glad that I did, but that’s also a luxury that not everybody has. You know, a lot of people really enjoy and have such a deep passion for solving problems in the skin, for connecting with their clients, for really helping build confidence, and when there’s already still much that goes into the kind of expertise of how to solve these problems, and then you layer on, oh, but I’m also running my own business and all of those, and then my own family and personal life and just being a human it gets really heavy to think Like, what can I do? What can I not do? And it, it’s, yeah, so that’s what you’re really focusing on, is, how do we make sure that we’re aware of scope of practice in the different states? How am I aware of what these regulations and changes are? I mean, I know, personally, I’ve worked with practice owners where the regulations changed and they had to close their business because they were a non physician, owned Med Spa, and the state changed, or they realized that they were operating illegally, even though they initially opened the business legally. When the scope changed, they had to then transition into an MSO and spend 3040, grand to make that transition, right? I mean, it’s a it’s not pennies. We’re talking about here.

 

No, it’s livelihoods. It’s our professional careers. It’s, you know, first of all, one of the things that I face all the time when I’m out there talking is how uneducated estheticians are, and we’re not qualified to do this. We’re not qualified to do that.

When I started in the 90s, there was no such thing as a med spa. I had doctors coming to me with the initial Laser Hair removals when I own my own day. Spa wanting to use a room to do this, and at the time, we knew there was a lot of problems with these lasers, and from there, we’ve been watching, I call it just the medicalization of beauty, and that’s a problem, not only for us in our career, but for our clients.

This is really turning into an issue where access is going to be limited as well. I mean, we know in some areas of the nation it’s impossible just even to get a decent doctor’s appointment in time. So we’re seeing some things happen that are, let’s be really frank here. It’s based on money. When I hear the safety argument that comes up, which is what you know, your your clients that had to shut down, more than likely, some things were passed on a medical side that were citing client safety. Well, the data around that has been tweaked a bit, and so there’s been some really good arguments. We’ve been able to go up and fight on some of these claims. But it’s it’s turning into a fight that not only are we going to be the losers, but our clients are as well, or patients. Well,well, let’s clarify that, because I do think that there are certain things that should be done by a medical professional, for example, injectables. I don’t think aestheticians have any business doing injectables, but there are, I think what you’re talking about, there’s certain like, I know in Maryland, they tried to take away the ultrasonic scrubber. Like, what does that do? You know? Like, why? What sense does that make? So, it’s, it’s what we’re talking about. Here are things you know, in in my understanding, and admittedly, I don’t have anywhere near the depth of understanding around regulation that you do, but my understanding is that as estheticians, we should be able to work in the epidermis, and so services that only affect the epidermis, We should be able to perform. And so like, no injections. You know, there are certain energy based devices that should be, have a medical professional that’s doing them.

There should be, you know, services like medically assisted weight loss. You need a medical professional. But we’re talking about some very basic, simple services that aestheticians, there’s not a reasonable argument of why we should not be able to do those services. Yeah, you’re correct. And even when we’re talking about energy based devices, it’s a really broad category, and there’s different levels and types of technology that should be identified that estheticians can use. So for example, when we’re talking about, let’s say, radio frequency, there’s certain levels of radio frequency that, yeah, probably should be under medical supervision.

But then there’s others that can be used in the esthetic space that should be acceptable, but when you see a statute that basically blocks all energy devices or anything considered class two, you’ve just killed several different categories. And so the misunderstandings around that is a big deal now when we’re talking about medicalization of beauty treatments, of course, when you’re talking about injectables and things like that, you need to have specific training. And I will even go as far as to say that there’s a lot of medical professionals that should not be doing it unless they’ve gone through specific training. So it’s more than just your this category. Don’t touch the skin or the face in this way. It’s what’s the training standard, and that, honestly, is one of the really tough areas, even in medical, that they can’t agree on. We’re getting better as technology evolves, but we’ve got to really find a way to speak a common language, not only in esthetics, but in medical esthetics, and find a way to get these regulators to fully understand what it is that we do.

Now, if we have a regulatory board, and I’ve had a couple of states that have been like, we don’t want to regulate this at all, that’s a problem within the government within that state, and so estheticians on the ground absolutely have to get more involved with their own boards and helping to educate them, because there are, you know, we do have some we have some issues, obviously on the political front and regulatory front that we’re coming up against. But it’s just about really getting clear about what these modalities are and what the safety factor is, which also means that our vendors have to get involved. Every time we get something new released to the market that sounds really cool and is making more medical claims automatically, a board looks at that says, Nope, that’s medical, even though we know how the device works in the skin, may not be beyond that epidermal layer. Year. So there’s, you know, there’s marketing you’ve got to deal with, there’s regulatory and then also the education side.

So it’s complicated. Talk to me a little bit about the process, because we were talking before the show about how sometimes a board will release a memo versus the actual procedural process of getting something into law or making it a statute or whatever the proper terminology is. How are we looking at this public process versus memo to understand what is within our scope? So that’s where it starts to get really complicated.

The reality is the only, the only definition of what’s within a scope of practice needs to come from the AGs office in your state, which there’s always an attorney general or Deputy Attorney General that’s assigned to your board. So normally, when rules are put into place, there is a public process which means that you can speak up, you know, tell them about your own experience with the device or modality. Vendors should be showing up, providing their safety data. Everybody who’s a stakeholder around this issue should show up and help educate the board. Usually, this process takes about a year, so regulations do not change quickly, and there should be that full public process. What I’m starting to see, for example, bringing up Illinois, is you have boards that are regulatory agencies that are being asked by certain entities to give their opinion around modalities, and their opinion it just depends on the state that you’re in. Sometimes it’s called a memo, sometimes it’s other, you know, regulatory notice. But essentially what they do is they give their opinion about what’s within scope and what’s out of scope, where it gets really complicated.

And what I have to do is, I then have to go look at administrative law for the state and find out is that legal does the board have the authority to just release an opinion piece about what’s within scope? If it does, then what has to happen is an appeal, and you may even need to go to your governor to do so also, if that’s the case, sometimes that’s legislative. So separating the legislative from regulatory and regulatory is really where I spend a lot of my time. It’s really finding out. Is this a legal interpretation of what’s within scope? And if it is not, how do we challenge it? Most of it is done just out of not knowing or being influenced by other outside entities. So it’s important in those cases that we identify what the process is. So Illinois was not an open rules regulatory process. There was no announcement. There was no meetings around it. It was just updated and released. Can you share a little bit more about what happened in Illinois? Sure.

So December 2, they updated their prohibited list. And you can go to, I think it’s idpr, I have to look at it, but go to Illinois State and look at your board, and essentially, what they have, what they’ve put, is out of scope. Is pretty much everything that we’re doing, chemical peels, led anything that’s an energy device. They’ve also mixed in their neuromodulators and things like that that we know are under supervision, but the way it is written is so broad that it’s essentially shutting down estheticians right now. The kicker in this memo is they’ve also added the supervision side to it. So the way I am reading this, and it’s also not very well written, but how I’m interpreting this is, you no longer can even have an MSO. You’ve got to have direct supervision. So then you’ve got to go look at what are the direct supervision laws in that state. And it does. It takes a bit of time to go through and research and figure that out, and that’s where I spend a lot of my time. So right now, what we’re trying to do, Terry wojak and I are putting together a webinar for Illinois estheticians in order to go through step by step what our rights are and what we can do the other side of this, the difference between a regulatory action and something like this is enforcement. If you have an inspector walk through the door and they’re going to cite you on something, just like if you’ve gotten pulled over for a speeding ticket, they’ve got to be able to cite the law, the number, what it is, and write you a ticket. The gray area here is what are they citing on so in the case of Illinois, are they citing practice of medicine? If so, they need to list the statute that’s being enforced. Well, that statute and regulation comes under the medical board. So who is that inspector representing?

So there’s some real legal issues around it, but as an aesthetician, you’re. Working all day, you’re you’re trying to run your business, you’re busy, and somebody walks through your door and hands you a citation. You don’t have time to sit there and fight that. You just get scared and stop what you’re doing and take the ticket. That is the problem, the way things are being enforced and interpreted, especially for a group like us that is not organized, and we’re also we don’t have deep pockets like some of the other professions out there, medical for one, and so it can be a little bit difficult to find help, to go fight something, and I’ve been involved in a lot of that.

Can I ask what the proper process is? Do you not accept the ticket, or do you is there a, you know, if you get a speeding ticket, like, if you want to contest this, you can show up in court at this date. Is there a process? There is, yeah, basically the same process. So regulations between a speeding ticket to, you know, even getting cited in as a profession, it’s the same type of process. So you’ll be issued the ticket. For example, in California, I’ve been involved in a few of those, California will issue a letter, and then the board administrator will take a look at the case and decide whether or not to cite so even though you’re issued something, usually they’re issuing a ticket or a warning when they come through and inspect, and I’m talking California, you accept that, and then later you’re going to get a letter that confirms it, and then you’re also going to get an actual citation with a citation number and a cited regulation that you have broken.

So it’s a little bit different than a speeding ticket, where they hand you that right then and there. From there, you do absolutely have a right to contest it, and probably should. With esthetics council members, I’m usually involved in helping them fight those citations, unless it’s a disinfection citation, because usually there’s been something that you know has gone wrong or that you’ve overlooked. It’s got to be very egregious for me to get involved in that. But when it comes to practice of medicine, citation, which actually can turn into a misdemeanor and potentially a felony if it continues So, practice of medicine citations are a big deal and should never be ignored and should always be fought, unless you are doing something that’s obviously medicine, like doing injections without supervision or something.

So there were a couple of other states you had mentioned, Idaho and Texas, that had some pretty big changes, and very recently, Texas just had something pass through. Can you talk to us about those things? Yeah,let’s talk about Texas. First, Texas. This just got filed March 4. Unfortunately, this came from a very bad situation where we had a woman die from IV and IV done within a med spa that most definitely is a medical practice. It should not, in my opinion, be done outside of medical supervision. So we have a death from there. It’s morphed into regulating med spas as a whole. And the theory behind it is called HB 3749 and the theory behind it is safe. Med spas, most people can get behind that. We know we want our clients to be safe.

The problem is in the definition of what practice of medicine is what cosmetic procedures are considered practice, and medicine, it is so broad that the way it’s written, when regulations are then going to be put into place, things like led, low energy devices that we may be able to use, all of that will be out of scope of practice. And it the devil is in the details. When you look at these bills that are presented, you’ve got to understand what that definition is going to do to the modalities that are used. And that’s where I’m heavily involved. I’m involved in an estate like Alaska, where we’re going through a med, spa work group committee, and I’ve been able to break that out. We’ve got to get really clear so the terminology within this bill that has been submitted is not acceptable to our scope of practice. In theory, the bill may be able to keep some people safe, but it also requires on site supervision, so that, in turn, is going to affect a lot of your clients. To Daniela, where, you know, an MSO basically, would be illegal. They’re going to have to be on site at all times. So this is it defined. I mean, we have a lot of nurses in our world as well, and they’re hiring aestheticians because aestheticians are such an important piece of the puzzle, right? And what we’re teaching is like, Hey, if you’re an NP focus on the things that NPS can do if you’re send your estheticians to do the skincare, to do the facials, to do the chemical peels, right, all these things that they’re so good at. And estheticians are like, I don’t think I’m surprising anybody by saying that they are the absolute most educated. Around skincare, and they’re best at skincare sales, like nurses are just not. That’s not their thing, not their thing, right, right? I love my nurses. I love you, but your estheticians are way better at skincare. It’s what it is. And so it makes sense from a business standpoint, like, Hey, have everybody the right people in the right positions. But if you’re, say, You’re a CRNA in Texas and you have a team of estheticians, is that considered on site? Or do you have to, like, what does that even mean Exactly? And so that’s part of the problem with the way this bill is written.

And because the devil in you can look at a bill that’s written very vaguely, and in theory, you’re behind it. Okay, it sounds safe, but then the unintended consequences come in in the regulatory process. So this bill passes, and all of a sudden we’ve got medical boards saying, Oh, no, no, only a physician can supervise. No MPs, no advanced practice nurses in supervision that can be done not only in a legislative process, but in a regulatory process. And so the way this is written is just, it’s not fair to the industry as a whole, but it doesn’t seem beneficial for the physicians either. Like, I mean, that’s what I don’t get with most of these bills. If a physician really looked at the business model and how to make money in a med spa. They would not be supporting things like this. They, you know, they would be supporting very clear, detailed legislation that translates into actionable regulation. And that’s the big deal.

You know, a statute and a law only goes so far. It has to be enforced, and most of them that I see across the nation are not even enforceable. It just looks like a scope grab. And that’s really disheartening, especially when people are you know they need to make a living. This is we’re not doing this for free. We’re good at what we do. But when you look at a med spa, a good business model with a med spa is having well trained estheticians. We’re going to make our income, we’re going to pay for our salary. We’re going to make a lot of income for the owners of the Med Spa. And we should also be able to take part in the ownership of that Med Spa. So, you know, for example, the way California is set up, it’s really not beneficial to anybody but physicians. And that’s, that’s just truly, truly unfair. So we’ve highlighted a a very big kind of elephant in the room, right? The the state of our industry, the the things that are going on that are affecting us that we’re not necessarily aware of now that that is out in the open, and we have people saying, well, hey, how can I help? Everybody’s going to be able to have a different level of time commitment and ability, right? Like people have kids, people have lives, people have bills to pay.

And there’s, there’s a lot of things that, as much as you would desire to help. Maybe you just like don’t have the ability to read through and truly understand what a law is saying, you know, what are the things that we can do on all different levels to help unite our industry, to help really get meaningful scope of practice, because I think that there is like, there’s clearly things that estheticians can do incredibly well, there’s clearly things that nurses do incredibly well, there’s clearly things that physicians do incredibly well. And how can we define those so that we’re all working to support one another and lifting up the industry.

You know, it’s like, the more I believe, the more we all work together, and the more that we respect one another, the better that this whole industry is going to be. It’s so. So where do we go from here, right? So that’s, that’s one of the big issues, you know. And why I started the Esthetics Council is because I can read statute, you know. I know how to do that deep work. It’s time consuming. Did you ever want to study law? Because that just doesn’t sound like a fun okay, my husband, like, wants to go to law school for fun. I’m like, Really, what is fun about that, but he listens to like the Supreme Court, things on fast forward. I’m like, oh my god, we’d get along very well. Yes, I did. That was my path initially, and I got a little derailed with, you know, some family issues that happened. My stop gap was aesthetics, and I was doing makeup and doing aesthetics to get me through college and sit open today spa and the rest is history. So, yeah, I spend a lot of time there. I don’t know why I have this. I just have it. I guess it’s a gift. I don’t know if it’s a good way to go to sleep at night. Is read some statute, but the. Reason I did the Esthetics Council so that we would, I would have a way to be able to do that within, you know, reason, and be able to pull people in as far as the day to day. How do you help out? Well, the first thing that you’ve got to do, even if you have kids, you’re busy, and I understand exhaustion, you’ve got to watch your boards, and you’ve got to watch your state legislature, and we try to monitor as much as possible. I have some really great contacts with different, you know, government affairs organizations that will kind of give me a heads up.

But I need the estheticians in their states to be notifying me, hey, this bill came up. I don’t know what this means so, but I mean, even let’s zoom out, is there like an email list that we get on in our state? How do we even find right piece, like, let’s zoom out, zoom out. Go to your your state board should have a way for you to sign up for every single meeting. You should be able to get a notice that there’s going to be a meeting coming up every single time there is one. So it should be happening. Now, I know there’s been some issues. Let’s take we kind of mentioned Idaho. Idaho has not been good at informing the estheticians there. In fact, in 2017 there was a law that was passed that prohibited all class two devices. It just snuck right through the legislature. No one that I’ve talked to had any idea about it.

So you know, it’s it’s a mess up on our side of the industry as well, because you have other organizations that consider themselves, associations that are not monitoring this. And it’s difficult. It’s really difficult unless you spend several $1,000 a month just to monitor this stuff. So it’s really relying on we have a lot of great members, and I get notices from members all the time. Hey, this bill came up. What does this mean? Can you look at it? So things like that are really, really helpful. So bottom line, if you see something coming up you’re unsure about it, just message me or email me, and we can take

 

do you have to be licensed in that particular state? Like so, for example, I live in the DC area. We have DC, Maryland, Virginia. There’s a lot of people that might be licensed in DC, but not in Virginia or whatever. Are you still able to get notifications from the board from all three states, even if you’re not licensed in all three of those states.

Sure, I get notifications from Virginia every month. So I’ve signed up for almost every state that I can identify. How to sign up? I’ve done it. Okay? Yeah, you can get notification. It’s usually regulatory. It’s not legislative. So the legislative side is the really hard part, because a lot of things can pop up that you won’t even hear about unless your local news reports on it. So legislatively, is a big, tough monster that we have to use special software to really look at. Sometimes there’s a statisticians on the ground. They get word that, hey, you know, for example, Rhode Island, I’ve got some people to watch. In Rhode Island, we’ve got a bad bill going through right now. They notified me that was going on, but then when I went to the ledge serve, I could not find that because it wasn’t in a certain process. So the legislative side is a little more difficult, but one where, as an aesthetician, you just kind of have to keep your ears open. If you hear something, definitely let us know. But in your realm with your license, you’ve got to watch your your board. It’s a pain in the butt, I admit it. It’s not a fun job, but you have to stay on top of it. I hear a lot.

Oh, the scope changes really fast. Well, it doesn’t. Scope will take at least a year to change. The thing that happens quickly is when an interpretation may come from the board. And that’s the part that we may have to go, okay, that’s not really legal. We need to go fight that. That can happen, but that’s still, you’re going to get notice from the board meeting. They they have to put it in an agenda. And if you have a board that is very quiet and closed and they’re not giving out public information, that’s not legal number one, and we can also put in a public records request to get that information. Hopefully we don’t, you know, there’s a few states have dealt with that are kind of like that, but the whole goal is to be legal and open up that process. So you’ve you just gotta be aware, and you’ve gotta be careful what you’re putting out on social media as well. I know several boards that watch esthetician groups and some of the things that they talk about, and they will use some of these things to restrict modalities because they feel it’s medical in nature, and that’s a problem because you can’t control social media. But as a professional, I really love how the nurses do it, where it’s very ethical. As you have your guidelines, we really need to adopt things.

Like that as well, so that we’re not such a target because we’re so called unprofessional or doing things that are going to harm people. So it’s being aware, reaching out when you see something that may not be correct. And then the other thing that I like to bring up is educating yourself really, getting good at what your profession is, and being safe about it, and being very selective about where you get your education and information. Really do your due diligence. If it sounds like it’s too good to be true or it’s strictly manufacturer education, you’ve got to broaden that. I mean, we’re not just sales people for manufacturers, right? We have a profession. We understand skin science. We always need to be evolving and learning, but be smart about what you’re doing. If something seems like the results are too good to be true, or it looks like it’s going to cause some harm to your client, even though it may be hot in the market right now. Take a step back as a professional and really take a look at that. You know, plasma pens on the radar right now.

Plasma pen, we saw the whole issue with micro needling come up. FDA started getting involved with that. You’re going to see FDA getting involved with plasma pen. But yet, we’ve got hundreds, if not 1000s of estheticians that have bought this, and now the boards are going, Oh, wait, this is this is too deep. This is causing too many issues. Pulling that off the market. Micro needling is the one modality we should be able to do, and in a majority of the states I deal with, we cannot, because of how it was introduced to the market and how our vendors brought things in that were not FDA approved until that whole process was done. So it’s really about our industry, raising the level of professionalism, doing a little bit of self regulation, if you will, and staying involved, but being smart about it.

Well, thank you for I mean, there’s clearly so much passion and dedication in what you’re doing, and that really makes a difference. I know that’s something that probably goes unnoticed, and so just thank you for dedicating your time and energy into that. Can you tell us a little bit about where people can find you and follow you to get in touch with you. What is and we’ll include all of these links below the episode as well. But what’s the best place for people to connect with you?

Probably the best place would be our website, estheticscouncil.org, you know, obviously we have some social presence, but it’s we’re I’m not doing as much on social because it was throttled for a bit, because we talk about legislative stuff, so that it pulled back a little bit. But you can always message me there too. But estheticscouncil.org, would be your, your main contact point. Wonderful. Was there anything else that you wanted to share on this episode to make it complete? Any question I didn’t ask or anything like that, not really that I can think of other than I’d like to say, I know I sound like the doom and gloom all the time, and I’ve been talking about these issues for a long time. I want everybody to know that you don’t have to be overwhelmed, that if we all work together, we really can support each other, and we can have longevity in this profession. It’s just a matter of you getting involved, reaching out, and knowing that you’re not alone. You know we are in this together. We really are. Oh, that’s beautiful. I love that. All right, my friends, thank you so much for listening. Make sure that you do your part, go to your state board, find a way to get on their email list. Start there, right. Just take one step, one step, one step, and see what you can do to help unify our profession, to help ensure that we have proper scope of practice. All of those things, it will make a difference. So Susanne, thank you so much. I’m so appreciative of you, and we will catch you on the next episode.

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EP 424: How to Use ChatGPT to Supercharge Your Lead Flow & Future-Proof Your Spa Business

What if you could generate a steady stream of high-quality leads for your spa—without spending hours writing content or burning out on social media? Sounds too good to be true? Maybe. But the reality is, AI is changing the way businesses market, connect, and grow, and spa owners who embrace it now will be ahead of the curve.

In this Spa Marketing Made Easy episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on how we’re using ChatGPT to streamline content creation, optimize lead flow, and free up valuable time to focus on what truly matters—building real human-to-human connections. I’ll share the exact process we used to train ChatGPT to match our brand voice, plus the specific prompts you can start using today to improve your social media, ads, SEO, and referral marketing.

AI isn’t a magic bullet, but it can be a powerful tool to future-proof your spa business when used strategically. Tune in to learn how to work smarter, not harder—and don’t forget to grab our free guide with 26 ChatGPT prompts to start implementing these strategies today!

What you’ll learn during this episode:

  • How to train ChatGPT to match your brand voice
  • Specific prompts to improve your social media, ads, & SEO
  • Why AI is a tool, not a replacement—and how to use it wisely

Resources Mentioned in Episode #424: How to Use ChatGPT to Supercharge Your Lead Flow & Future-Proof Your Spa Business

Download our free guide with 26 ChatGPT prompts that help you save time, attract more clients, and streamline your marketing!

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WANT MORE FROM ADDO AESTHETICS?

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ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST 

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Daniela Woerner is the founder of Growth Factor® Fundamentals, a leading spa association 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!

 

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.

Let’s talk about the reality that spa owners are facing right now, if you feel like it’s getting harder and harder to attract new clients, if you’re struggling to find high quality staff, especially when fast food places are offering $22 an hour. You are not imagining things. It is harder, but it’s not impossible. Now we are in a time of massive transformation. The way that we market, the way that we connect, and even the way that we run our businesses, is shifting at such a rapid pace, and a huge part of the shift ai ai, is changing the game, not just in our business, but also in our daily lives. So today, right here on the spa marketing Made Easy podcast, I want to pull back the curtain and share exactly how we’re using chat GPT to streamline our content, optimize our lead flow, and give ourselves back the time to focus on the most important things, building real human to human connections. Now I’m also going to give you some specific chat GPT prompts for spa that you can plug in and start using today. All right, so first up chatgpt. This is by far the AI tool that we use the most. We have the paid version. So there is a free version and a paid version.

The paid version is $20 a month. It is so worth the $20 a month for the just incredible output that it has. So highly recommend getting the paid version. Now, when I started playing around with chat, we people will call it Training, and I didn’t really know what that meant, but essentially training it to understand your brand, your voice, your business. I was simply uploading transcripts from my podcast episodes. I was adding blog posts that we had written in the past. I uploaded our brand style guide. I uploaded the PDF of our book.

I asked chat GPT to scan my Instagram and my website to understand the tone, and I was also always prompting it to only use my content as a source. That’s really important, because one of the big kind of red flags that people are bringing up around chat is that it is essentially a giant search engine and can pull anything from the internet.

So if you are educating on something, you want to make sure that you’re using your own unique content. Okay, so the other piece that I want to add in there, when we’re talking about training our chat, when you have the paid version. So I have the $20 a month version. There’s a little sidebar that you can add that it’s you’re always using that same folder on the side. So mine is auto content creator. All right. You can have different sidebars over there. My husband actually has one that helps him come up with his morning workouts.

He trained it to make sure that it knows all of the equipment that we have in our gym, and he just plugs in a few things of how long he has, what areas he wants to work, and it just pumps out his settings for him. So side note, that’s a way that you can use it personally. But when we’re looking at how we’re using this for business, these are the types of things that I was doing, and I’m always making sure that I’m using that auto content creator right there. So once I trained chat, the more that I trained it, the more that I gave it feedback when it was giving me a good response or a bad response, the easier and the better that it got, and it also gave me that confidence that the the content that I was creating was uniquely mined.

So here’s what happened when we really started to use it strategically. Number one, our blog output skyrocketed, which meant better SEO and more organic leads, right? So we we’re going to get into this in a little bit here. But the way that spas are getting leads is typically social, which in our industry is 99% of the time going to be Instagram search. Search, SEO, Google, or referrals. And so if we want to look at those three different ways that we are getting leads in a way to really increase our search is through blog post, through consistently blogging. Okay, the other thing that we noticed, we were able to streamline our content creation. So whether that’s emails, blogs, social posts, they all start from one piece of content. So for example, if we write a blog, then maybe that blog, we’re also going to be able to create an email about a blog or the social post about the blog.

We’re actually even training chatGPT to generate our podcast, show notes, emails and blogs simply by scanning the transcript of each episode. It is unbelievable. Now it’s not perfect, but I would say the output is about 85 to 90% there, and it just keeps getting better and better. So when I do a podcast episode, this podcast episode, for example, I’m going to take this transcript, I’m going to upload it into chat, it’s going to give me a summary, it’s going to give me the kind of first draft of our email. It’s going to give me social post. And then I use my marketing manager, my copywriter, to refine it, to read through, to make sure that it makes sense.

But I know you know, reading through something and refining is a heck of a lot faster than starting from scratch and kind of staring at that blank page. So the time savings and the financial savings are huge, and that time savings is key, because that allows me to focus on additional lead flow channels. And what I’m going to get to by the end of this episode is the lead flow channel that I feel is most essential here in 2025 All right, so let’s get into how you’re going to use this in your spa. So as I mentioned before, lead flow comes from three primary sources. So we’re looking at social, and when I say social, that is Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, Pinterest, you know, whatever, YouTube, whatever you’re using for social. And we have both organic and paid ads. Now for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to be referring to Instagram, because I know most of you out there, that is your primary platform.

The other place that we’re getting lead flow from is Google. So this is your search. This is your website optimization. People naturally finding you when they’re looking for facials near me, or Botox near me, or micro needling near me, whatever they’re searching for with your city name, if you’re coming up on that first page, they’re going to be able to find you, see your reviews, head to your website, and hopefully make a appointment. The third way is referrals. And when we think of referrals, we’re typically thinking of word of mouth from our existing patient base or client base, referring their friends. Well, I want to take this a step further. I want to be able to really control this word of mouth, because again, if you don’t have those existing patients in the first place, which we’re typically getting from Instagram or Google. How are we going to have them refer so we’ve got to have a way to get more people in on the regular I also put strategic partnerships into this referral category, which is huge. So we’ll again more on that a little bit later in this episode.

Now, having a diversified approach of lead flow, when I’m talking about lead flow, is super, super important. We don’t want to put all of our eggs in one basket. So we want leads coming in from all three so let’s just start off with Instagram. Okay, we’re gonna look at paid ads organic when it comes to social. Instagram is a key player in Spa marketing, especially when it comes to paid ads. And paid ads were life changing for me.

They helped me build my email list. They helped me grow this podcast, helped me generate millions in revenue. But here’s the thing, I would never rely only on ads as my only lead source, and for me, it was a big wake up call when there was the iOS 14 update. And you know, it adds like the cost increase, they just weren’t working the same. This the iOS 14 updates was when Apple allowed its users to opt in or opt out of tracking. That was a very big thing for the marketing world. Okay, so imagine if. If you’re running ads, you’re getting, you know, maybe you’re getting 20 new patients or clients every single month, and then all of a sudden, your Facebook account gets hacked or it gets disabled, which we’re seeing a lot right now, because there were some pretty big updates to metas advertising policies and so sometimes accounts are getting shut down or disabled incorrectly. Well, if that is the only way that you are getting leads into your practice, that could mean hundreds or even hundreds of 1000s of dollars for you in lost revenue. So I was actually just having a conversation with someone who’s in this exact situation. Her Ad Account got shut down again, not uncommon, you know, she could have been doing everything right, and there was just some sort of glitch that got her shut down, and now she’s having to spend time and energy, you know, getting that reinstated. But she was trying to figure out how to get new leads through Google or some other way.

So again, while we use ads, we believe in ADS. We recommend that you use ads. It is not something that we want to steer clear of. It’s an absolutely essential, important part of your advertising strategy. We want you to use AI to help support that, to help streamline that. Okay, so we’ve got a chat GPT prompt for you here. So write three variations of an Instagram ad for my spa that promotes, and I’m put in brackets what it is that you’re wanting to promote. So signature facial membership, NEW CLIENT OFFER. Now, one of the tricks with your prompts is, when there’s those brackets, the more information, the better. So you can you can let chat know this is a signature facial here’s what’s included, here’s who it’s for, and then we add after the brackets, the tone should be warm, inviting and focused on relaxation. Include a strong call to action to book an appointment. So we are going to continue to refine and refine and refine our post, but that can be the starting point. Okay. Now here’s another one, and this is from our good friends over at successful ads club. This is the place to learn all things ads, and it has to do with metas, new ads policies.

So the prompt starts off with, I need you to analyze my website for potential compliance risks with metas, new advertising restrictions for 2025 please evaluate the following. And I’m not going to read this whole thing, because it’s pretty long. There’s section one, content. Section two, user data practices. Section three, event tracking, section four, messaging and targeting. And then each of those has its own instructions, and then there’s a report at the end. So we are going to, we actually have a freebie for you guys with 26 chatGPT prompts for spa. You can download it at the bottom of this episode. It’s gonna have all that there. So if you are like scrambling to try and write some of these down, Fear not. We have these for you. But let’s you know, for the sake of time and your listening pleasure, I’m not going to read out the entire chatGPT prompt for that one, all right, so let’s move on to Google, all right. And SEO, website optimization, something that happened for me that I noticed that was probably one of the first things that made me feel old was that my neighbor across the street, who is like 13 or 14, said that only old people use Google.

Every all the young people are using Bing. And I was like, what? Who uses Bing? But, you know, times are changing, and I don’t think that that’s a call to action to shift over to Bing, but I think that it is a possibility that Google is not always going to be the end all be all. Maybe it is. I’m still sticking with Google. I believe in Google. Google has been great for me, but I want to keep my mind open to other search engines if things shift. Okay, so for now, Google is still the huge lead driver, and so what we want to do is make sure that we are showing up in the map section. We want to make sure that we are on page one of results. And now, if you’ve noticed, there’s even these AI generated answers right up there at the top.

So there’s a summary, and then there’s an AI generation. So how do we show up up there? Well, for us, we’ve worked with HLM to optimize our website for SEO. We are also paying for SEO, but AI has been a game changer in our strategy, and this goes back to those blog posts. So the more that you’re regularly updating your website with relevant content, the more that that gets posted to Google, the more that your website is getting updated, the more that Google says, Hey, this is an active website. This is, you know, somewhere where I’m going to continue to go back. So SEO takes a little while. It’s not something that happens overnight, and we’ve been working on this for a little while now, and actually just last week, or is actually about two weeks ago, we had eight new leads reach out via our website in one week. These are people who are not on our email list and had found us through search. So that is incredible.

That for me, says, Okay, our blogging is working. The updated website that was optimized for for SEO is working. People are starting to find us through search. We are already ranking on the front page. We’re actually number one nationally for a couple of our search terms, which is really exciting. That’s taken a lot of work, but we’re now starting to see the results. We’re starting to get the benefit of all of that work that we put in. So now I have lead flow coming through ads, and I have lead flow coming through search that makes me feel good again. I am someone who likes a stable, secure business. All right, so I’ve got another chatgpt prompt for you. So generate 1000 word blog post optimized for SEO on include whatever you want. You can say best skincare treatments for aging skin. And then you can include the skincare treatments that you offer at your spa. You can make it educational, engaging and formatted for easy reading. Include relevant keywords for search visibility, such as and what you want to do is include your city name, all of that, so that you’re coming up in search for that. Okay, so again, posting blogs consistently tells Google that your website is active, valuable and deserves to be on page one.

So the more visibility that you have, the more potential leads. Now we like to post weekly, and if you’re like, Well, how am I going to come up with 52 topic ideas? Well, start by coming up with the 10 questions that you get asked most in Spa and ask chat to come up with a list of blog topics around those 10 questions. All right, you can start there. So we’re freeing up time. We’re freeing up money by using chat to help with our marketing and our content. So what do you do with that time and money? How do you benefit the most out of it. Well, my thought is that you need to get out in your community. I always tell our students, be the mayor of your town. And I don’t mean like, actually run for office. I want you to be out there getting involved, especially because right now, trust is low, skepticism is high, and consumers crave real human connection. Think about how you’re engaging with other businesses. So that means more than ever. Right now, in 2025 you have got to be attending chamber meetings. You’ve got to go to networking events, these networking groups like BNI, you’ve got to go to there’s all different types, right? Ask chat for the networking groups in your area, showing up at Charity functions, building relationships with local business owners who serve the same audience, positioning yourself as the go to esthetic expert in your area.

And the reason for this is because no algorithm change with social can change or take away the power of human to human relationships, all right. Relationships open doors. Relationships create new opportunities. Relationships generate referrals. Relationships are the start of strategic partnerships. Relationships are the the reason that strategic partnerships thrive, and these relationships can bring in 10s of 1000s of dollars in new business. All right, so try this chat, GPT prompt, write an introduction email that I can send to a local business. Yoga studio, hair salon or wellness center, to explore a partnership. The goal is to offer value, introduce my spa services and start a collaborative conversation. Now, when you’re building authentic relationships and not transactional relationships, right? We don’t want to be like I think LinkedIn kind of got this reputation of all those like random, spammy posts that just felt very transactional.

For a relationship to be fruitful, you have to show up from a place of service, from a place of giving, to learn about other businesses, to frequent other businesses, you’ve got to give, give and give and give and have no expectation to receive. All right, you want to build a personal relationship and also a professional relationship. They overlap. Guys, they overlap. So it’s really, really important to have a strategy around how am I going to show up? How am I going to provide value? What can I do to help others grow? And then it naturally happens that others help you as well. Okay, so friends. AI is here. It is not going anywhere. The spas that adapt, that embrace new strategies and stay ahead of the curve, you’re gonna thrive. This is gonna be amazing for you. This is gonna be a record breaking year. But at the end of the day, AI is a tool, just like any other piece of software, it is how you use it that will make or break your business, and if you’re not break if you’re not using it, there’s a lot of other spas that are going to be light years ahead of you. All right. So here’s my challenge for you.

Start using chatGPT to streamline your marketing. Try the prompts that I shared today and look at how much time you save. Now, remember, we’ve got the link that you can download those 26 prompts below this episode. Download those. Use them, test them, refine them. Train your chat yourself. Don’t rely solely on social media, SEO for your leads. All right, we’ve got to really take control of our referral relationships. We’ve got to really start to build local community, right? That is the strongest way. When I asked someone, what’s their what’s the best way that they’ve built their business? How do they do it? They’re always going to say, word of mouth, right? Word of mouth, word of mouth, word of mouth. So why don’t we take that and expand upon it in a deeper way? Well, I mean, the reason is, everybody’s tired, everybody’s busy, everyone’s overwhelmed, right? So the thought of going to a chamber event or putting yourself out there when you’re you know, I know for me, I don’t like to be in a room with a lot of people I I just don’t, and it can be uncomfortable, it can be scary, it can cause anxiety. But you’ve got to figure out how to connect. What are the ways that you can connect, that you can build relationships. If you don’t like being in big rooms, there’s ways that you can do it where you can find connections and just go for a one on one coffee, right? Like there is a possibility for every single business owner to do it in a way that works for you. All right, you’ve got to get out in your community.

Now, again, I know copying and pasting is a heck of a lot easier than transcribing from this episode many of you are listening, or you’re driving or you’re working out, so again, we created that free download for you that has 26 chatGPT prompts that you can use in your business to help with lead flow, to help with marketing, to really streamline those other two areas of social, of ads, of SEO, so that you can get out there and get in your community. Okay, now we’ve got the link right below this episode, or you can go to our Instagram at auto esthetics, we’re gonna have a pinned post right up there at the top where you can just comment chat, and we will DM you with the link to get that freebie. Thank you guys for listening. I will see you next week with more strategies to help you build a profitable spa.

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EP 423: Developing and Launching Your Spa’s Signature Products with Anthony Standifer of The mSEED Group

At Addo Aesthetics, we’re firm believers that it’s never too late to take action on a dream and that you wouldn’t have that dream if you couldn’t make it a reality.

So, if you’re an aesthetic professional who has ever dreamed of crafting a brand of signature products, this episode with Anthony Standifer of mSEED Group is a must-listen!

With over 25 years of experience working within the beauty and personal care industries on both the corporate and entrepreneurial side, Anthony brings a unique blend of skills and insights that help beauty founders build and scale profitable brands in today’s competitive landscape. 

And as one of the Founding Partners and Chief Marketing Officer of mSEED group, a manufacturing company that provides product formulation, contract manufacturing, and brand development to smaller-scale beauty brand founders, Anthony works to translate the tried-and-tested tactics of multinational corporations into the start-up space so you can be successful before your product ever hits shelves. 

What you’ll learn during this episode:

  • How to get your signature products off the ground as a self-funded product creator 
  • The mSEED Group’s mission and how they work with aesthetic professionals to bring their product dreams into a reality by lowering the cost of entry to crafting your brand 
  • The importance of packaging and how to analyze elements of packaging when you’re just starting with crafting your signature product line 
  • What to expect when working with a group like mSEED, and how to set yourself up for a successful launch before you even get your inventory

Resources Mentioned in Episode #423: Developing and Launching Your Spa’s Signature Products with Anthony Standifer of The mSEED group

  • Learn more about mSEED Group on their website 
  • Follow mSEED group on Instagram
  • Connect with Anthony on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn 
  • Listen to our past episode mentioned with Jamie Kern Lima – Episode 211: Going from Underestimated to Unstoppable 

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https://offer.addoaesthetics.com/growth-factor-fundamentals

ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST 

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Daniela Woerner is the founder of Growth Factor® Fundamentals, a leading spa association 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!

 

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. Well, hello, my dears, so happy to be here with you today on the spa marketing Made Easy podcast. We have a great episode. I am joined by Anthony Standifer, who is the co founder of mSEED, which is a manufacturer whose work spans product formulation, contract manufacturing and brand development. So what does that mean? This is not simply finding a private label company and slapping your label on it. It’s actually going to the next level, where you have the ability to customize and even own your own formulation. So really, really cool expansion possibility, new vertical for those of you that are really into E Comm, those of you that are potentially interested in creating something to go direct to consumer, Anthony really opened up, shared so generously with his decades of experience in the industry. I learned a ton. I hope you enjoyed this episode. It was a really fun one to record. Anthony, welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am so excited to have you here. I think this is going to be such an eye opening conversation for so many of our listeners to really get them thinking outside of the box of what is possible for them with the skill set that they have. What are the other verticals? What are the other ways that they can be making money in their business and kind of adjacent to their business.

Awesome. Well, thank you. Daniela, I’m excited to be here, and this is going to be a great conversation and hopefully informative for the folks that are listening and watching. Yes,so to give everybody just kind of a background of who you are, I know you’ve got 24 years of experience in our industry, but tell us a little bit about kind of how you started in our space. What were you doing, and then what brought you to founding mseeds

Gotcha. Yeah. So I’ve been extremely fortunate to have found the beauty industry early in my adult career. So my second job out of out of undergrad, I got hired as a junior marketer for a small, family owned brand here in the Chicago area where I’m born and raised, and I started on the marketing and brand management side of things within that, one of my first brands that I managed was the company, salon professional brand, which has since defunct. But it was amazing experience.

And so I went, I think, in the context of my experience, I went from starting to two weeks later going to a very large hair show in Atlanta, the Bronner brother hair show. And it was like magic for a then 22 year old Anthony to say, like, wow, these people are extravagant and so but it started my really love and appreciation of the beauty space and of supporting both consumers and professionals in the in the market. And so I spent 14 years working in corporate America for a lot of big companies, most of the time. I think eight of those 14 I worked in different divisions of Revlon on several of their consumer brands and some professional brands as well.

And then just a little bit over 10 years ago, at the last place that I was employed, I met a woman, her name is Erica Douglas, who was my co worker at the time, and was the cosmetic chemist inside of the company that we were both working in. And she had an idea, and that idea was she’d left the company, and then shared with me, after she left, that she had this idea for a company, and the The goal was to support small businesses entering into the beauty and personal care space across hair care and skin care and personal care. And I thought it was an amazing concept, because what I did know is most of the companies that I worked for had huge manufacturing facilities that were associated with them. In some cases they did, like most people didn’t know at the time, and still true today, that Revlon will actually manufacture for other companies, and so they have contract manufacturing as a part of their their business model. But the complexities of doing business in that environment are oftentimes a barrier for new entrepreneurs, and it is assumed that you’ve got to have six figures of revenue in order to start a brand. And while that’s true for most, it shouldn’t be true for all. And so MC group was formed with the ethos of lowering the barrier entry for both custom product of. Development, as well as for small batch manufacturing.

And so we’ve been super fortunate over the last 10 years now to have supported roughly 250 or so entrepreneurs at various scales, whether they’re newbies just starting with ideas like in the market for one or two years and trying to figure out how to grow, or a few established brands that are doing some pretty incredible things.

That’s amazing. I know we had Jamie Kern Lima on the podcast, and she’s the founder of IT Cosmetics, and it was such an eye opening thing when we had her on, because she it was like, how did she start this brand herself as like, in her living room, and, you know, got down to her last $1,000 before she got onto QVC and all of this. And it really just having that conversation with her made it seem possible for so many other people, because she started just like us and as a very small consumer, and then ended up getting purchased by L’Oreal for 1.2 billion. So it shows there’s, you know, her alone is proof of concept that with the right ingredients and work and marketing, you can really let a brand take off. You don’t have to be those companies that you know have $100,000 to invest on an idea. Right off the bat, correct?

I see so many aestheticians, nurses, practice owners that are so passionate about ingredients and what they want to create and what they need specifically for their patient and for us here in in the spa world were mostly exposed to traditional private label. So you can go to a manufacturer, you can get there already done. The packaging is done, the formulations are done. You just put your label on it and then sell it. And there’s a lot of interest in that. There’s better profit margins. And and you guys do that as well, from what I understand, but you also have the opportunity. You can help work with the product formulation and the the your customer can actually own that product if they choose that particular package, which really is a big differentiator from other private label companies, yeah.

And so for us, we we anchor ourselves primarily as we were starting the company. The thing that we did not want to be was this company that just has a vat of moisturizers and serums and hair care products sitting in drums in the back, and we’re just pumping them into bottles and jars and shipping them out. It was super important for us that these brilliant entrepreneurs that we were engaging with have the ability to have custom formulations.

And so even in today’s environment, while I do some private label the majority of my customers, like 90% are actually dealing with customized formulas today, 2025 and our current ecosystem. And so we do this model where even within stock formulas that we have, and so if you’re looking for specific product, again, our goal is to lower the cost of entry for most entrepreneurs to get into the market. Because our belief is that the real magic is when you’re on the field selling product to consumers or to clients. And so the idea shouldn’t be that you need a 250 $250,000 just to vet an idea. And so for us, when people come and they want to develop products, we find out, well, what is the profile of the product that they’re looking for? We then provide them with that profile with what the formulation cost will be.

Now that can be as little as $3,000 that could be as much as $15,000 depending on the type of product that you’re looking to put into the marketplace and what features and claims you want to be able to make with that sometimes a $15,000 price tag is a Whoa, sticker shock for a bootstrapped entrepreneur that is self funding an idea at that point. And so we offer them products at a smaller scale, or, excuse me, at a smaller price point, where you can take one of our stock formulas and you can add some customizations to it, but essentially, the base of the formula has already been has already been developed, has already been tested and validated to be effective, and then you have the ability to come in as a brand owner and then add the uniqueness that you want in terms of marketing story. What’s a little known fact inside of the beauty space is that in many cases, the things that people are marketing as the bells and whistles of a product are usually not added at significant amounts. There are some exceptions to that, but when we talk about ingredients specifically and unique things, there can be some variances there.

And so our goal was to support, you know, the entrepreneur that was doing that. So there is the stock formula option, and then there is the custom formula that then says, like, Let’s build it from the ground up and make sure that you’ve got something that really, really works for. You and will deliver and stand in alignment with how you’re positioning your brand. And both options exist in our universe, and it’s really, really important for us to be able to make that distinction and to make that offering available to our customer base. In addition to not having to buy 20,000 units or 10,000 units as a starting point. MC group has also been a place where people can come and start with 1000 units, or 2500 units, to really validate their concept. And then as they scale up, they get distribution. Multiple chains are taking it. Whatever the pathway forward is. I’m also happy to make 100,000 units of the same something as your as your brand, scales in the market.So what is the the kind of scope of products that you’re manufacturing? So are we looking at when we’re talking about skincare specifically? Are we talking about cleansers, serums, moisturizers? Are you additionally doing, like chemical peels or body products. What kind of Yeah,so for us, we’re doing most things that are liquid or cream, with some exceptions in today’s landscape. So for instance, I don’t do FDA regulated products in terms of pharmaceutical grade products, because they have a different set of requirements that are that are mandated by the government in order for us to formulate and produce it. But on the skin and body side, I’ve got the ability to do the foundational basics in terms of body washes, cleansers, moisturizers. We can do exfoliating agents in terms of depending on the format, if we can get them into a liquid cream or gel format, serums, moisturizers, what am I forgetting? I feel like I’m forgetting something.

Oh, body products. Big part. Did you say cleansers? Yes,cleansers, yes. So we can do cleansers and moisturizers, so all of the foundational things that are there. It gets a bit trickier.

I do have clients who then come in that are looking for very specific things that perhaps are outside of our purview, and then we’ve got partner organizations that we and partner manufacturers that we send them to. So my goal again, is to lower the cost of entry and lower the barrier of entry. And so if you come to me with an amazing idea and I’m not able to fulfill that, then I’m happy to then refer you to another qualified manufacturer that can do that. And we do have customers who do business, both with our company as well as with other companies. And so it’s not uncommon, particularly as a brand scales, to have multiple manufacturers, multiple formulators, that are working on on your behalf. And so we’re happy to play, you know, our role on the team as entrepreneurs are out entrepreneuring and making things happen.So can we that that what was coming up in my mind was packaging, because when COVID happened, and there were so many that were pivoting into the E com space and private label and all of these types of things, they were loving this formulation from this place, and this formulation from this other place. And the issue was this consistent packaging was not happening. And that was, that was a real challenge.

So how does it work with your company or your partners? Do you are you guys giving the products in the big gallons and then packaging is done themselves? Are they in the actual bottles. How does that work? So we’re,we’re a turnkey manufacturer, and so within that scope, we provide finished product to our customer base so that they can then go either execute on services or sell directly to their their retail customers. And so we want people focused on sales and marketing and not like, where’s the bottle or where are the labels that go along with this unique with this unique product. And so for us, we go out and we work with a dozens of packaging suppliers to come up with the format, whether those are salon sizes and larger formats or smaller formats that can be delivered and either used in service or sold directly to the to the consumer. What makes it interesting? You’re correct. I call 2020 and 21 The Hunger Games period, because we literally scavenged for packaging everywhere here in the US internationally, and it became a significant challenge.

But here was what was interesting in that is by force we had to make, we had to say the brand owners, you’ve got to make some pivotal decisions when supply is so low right now, do you want to sell product in the standard format, or do you want to make an exception during this global crisis to then do alternative formats in terms of packaging, so that you can still deliver what’s in the packaging to your end customer. And so it was a, you know, very not ideal situation, but it was the thing that we did, like most other brands, and we made tweaks and variations.

So people who traditionally had, like, pink caps, now we’re doing Black Caps. And I was like, but the product is the same, and the customers, if you communicate with them in.

The middle of this global crisis, will understand that, hey, I’m still able to get product and get delivered in the in the same format. So for us, packaging is a part of the process. When you come in to work with us, we start talking about, what do you want your product to do, and what the performance is that is conversation number one, and then conversation number two is then, well, what is the format that you want to deliver that packaging in. It gets really interesting when we start talking about, like, customization of packaging and the minimum order quantities that come along with that. Most of my customers come in and they have an idea and the packaging formats that they’re looking for, you know, usually have some sort of unique, ornate or customized format.

And I go, great, as long as you’re prepared to buy 10,000 units of that from a US supplier or a Chinese supplier, then we’re, I’m happy to go and procure it. But the minimum order quantities to do truly customized, innovative, never before seen packaging comes with a with a hefty, minimal order quantity. And if you can financially support that, then it’s a great way to go into the market with, you know, differentiated packaging. But here’s the thing, and this is a sometimes controversial stance, I’m of the opinion, particularly on the professional side of the business, with professionals, is that packaging is less of a less of a decision making factor for making a purchase, if you’re delivering a great service to Me and you’re a source that I trust, I believe most customers don’t care what format is.

I think you can actually go with more standard formatted packaging and still have an amazing business. Rather than going for the uniquely shaped double walled glass jar, go with a thing that is that is standard and that is accessible in massive quantities because managing the supply chain. Even today, when we talk 2025 we’re dealing with the issue of what are tariffs look like in terms of bringing in products from from other countries at this point, and if I’m sourcing your packaging from Asia or from Mexico or some other country. We’re now dealing with a cost implication that is going to be significant. And while we can do those same packaging formats in the US, we’re also now finding that there is a supply and demand issue where US suppliers are already higher than sourcing from from overseas. Well now that supply is going up, these same manufacturers are saying, okay, great.

Supply is is growing. I can actually take my prices up even more. And so as business owners, we are constantly playing this economic game of, how can we keep our costs lower reasonable? But these external factors that are beyond our control are then impacting us, and we now have to make really interesting decisions about what we want to do. And so if you’re a new business owner, just recognize that business ownership is all about a series of decisions and concessions in many instances, but keeping your eye on the goal of like I got to get in market and deliver this product, or deliver the value of this product.

There’s multiple ways to do that, but just recognize that packaging is one of those things that in today’s landscape is very, very relevant, and there’s things that are beyond both of our control. So being willing to negotiate and make compromise is, fortunately part of the process, because the unfortunate part would be, it’s not available. I can’t do it, so I just abort the brand completely. And that’s a that’s a tragedy, in my opinion.So you MC, your company also helps with consulting and business development. Your expertise and your experience has been bringing brands to mass market, so getting them into targets. Is it like Sephora Ulta? Something Correct?

Okay, most of my experience has been in the mass retailer. Some of it has been within salon, professional chains of distribution. But honestly, across this 25 year career, most has been direct to consumer, recognizing that the professional has a unique channel of distribution, and there’s expertise that comes along with that. So I always caveat in areas where I’m not like 100% subject matter expert, that I’ve got an opinion and some limited experience, but there are people who live and breathe that world that should be counseled and taken and their perspective should be taken into consideration. If you’re wondering, like, hey, how do I expand in this very specific, unique channel of distribution?

Yeah,I know there’s a lot of spa owners who want to create a separate vertical. So there’s, you know, one aspect of, here’s what I do in my spa. This is my professional brand, or this is my name brand. You know, we’ve seen some celebrity aestheticians out there that are kind of creating their product, but they are where, traditionally, in Spa, the perception, or the the kind of feeling. Is, we don’t want these things sold on mass market.

We want to we’re consulting with our patients. We are making our recommendations, and kind of what we have in house is a certain level of quality that’s balanced between the expertise and the treatments that we’re doing in the spa with, you know, the home care that we’re sending these, these individuals home with. But there’s also this whole other vertical, where, by being an aesthetician and by being a skincare expert and developing a product, where you have a separate vertical to get into mass market, would be something that you essentially would have a competitive advantage over someone who didn’t. And I love to look at like drunk elephant, or, you know, these different brands where her story, you know, she started in her 40s. And I love that. I love when I hear people that are starting midlife or later in life, to do things that really take off with great success. Because I think it’s never too late to kind of follow on a dream. And I feel like there’s a lot of estheticians who are interested in E Comm, who are interested in this, you know, direct to consumer or mass market type of thing, and that’s an area where you really shine and where you’re you can help them navigate.

How do, how do I even start with that? How do I, how would I even create something that would get into a channel like that?Yeah, so again, as you’re as you’re thinking about this as a business owner and a professional esthetician or doctor, the thing that I would start the conversation is, what is the intention? And so if the intention is, I have a service based business. I’m an esthetician, I’m providing a dermatologist or some other professional and I want to be able to have as much impact as possible within my practice.

If your goal is to make sure that your practice is thriving at the level and the scale that it can then, by all means, stay in that lane and excel in that lane. And I believe that there’s a ton of growth and opportunity that can happen within that model, but recognize you’re not going to be all things to all people then. And so if your desire is like, how do I go beyond the walls of these physical locations or the places where you or your teams actually physically show up and you want to make a footprint in the homes where there isn’t a person? The mass retail is the way to do that. And there’s tons of ways to approach it. I do believe that there’s tons of opportunity of leveraging professional expertise in the mass market. It is a tried and true methodology. I think as we start to look at just how the world is evolving, how technology involves the way that business was done 20 years ago is not the way that it’s going to be done four years from now. And so I know it’s a sticky topic.

When you talk about, like, how do you control and keep, you know, professional, great products out of the hands of the end consumer, because we don’t want them improperly using it. And yes, those are valid concerns, but I believe that the way that the world is moving from media to information to all these other things, it is the democratization of access, and people are going to be getting their hands on all of the things. And so how do you as a business owner maintain a proper ethos? And I, and it gives a great I have a dermatologist who was a client, and so we had a salon Grade Form, or a professional grade formula for him as a dermatologist that he used in his office. He had a two practice office on the east coast. But then he also desired to then move into mass retailer, and started with a direct to consumer e commerce site to leverage his expertise.

Clients flew from all over the country and sometimes the world to see him, and the ability that they didn’t have to come to his office or engage his office to get product, then opened up the landscape. And so if I’m having amazing experience with you, Daniela, and I’m like, oh my god, this is amazing. You’re you’ve cleared all of my issues, and I want to now tell my friend about this and provide them with access to the same things, but they maybe are not able to afford or get to the physical location where your services are being offered. Then it becomes a barrier, and the more barriers that you have, the more constraint you have in the scale of your business.

And so think about it as my only word of caution and advice to a business owner as they start to think about what limitations they want to have on the access to products that they offer and services that they offer to the larger landscape. If I’m in the middle of Kansas and things are just there, but I desire great products, and you’re on the West Coast, how do I. Still have that same experience, or a version of that experience, because it could be with consumer grade formulas in that instance, but it’s still branded around your brand, and then caveat it with the things that it can and cannot do within that specific format. I think there’s a ton of opportunity to be made there.

And so consider those things. It’s, it’s, there’s no easy one way. I know for a fact they’re going to be people that are going to cut the system. And particularly as my younger professionals are coming into the marketplace, they are like, I’m ready to make money. I’m ready to do these other things. And they are moving fast. And so this idea that, Oh, there has to be this separation between the two things, in some cases, from my experience, is not necessarily as rigidly held as it is with folks that are that are my age, that have been in this, this industry for some time, and are really looking to maintain what previously was the standard for salon and professional grade products.

So let’s talk about timeline then. So with your experience of, you know, your 250 plus patient or clients that have come to you. And I’m sure there’s a range, and it, you know, counts on how fast your client can actually have the answers that you need. But what would you say is a typical timeline like, Hey, I’m coming to you, Anthony. I want to have a product. I want it to be direct to consumer. And here’s my ideas from the time that we come up with a formulation, I bring you on for the business development as well. What can I expect as milestones? Is this a one year, a three year, a five year, like what am I looking at in a general range? Yeah. So we tell people the reality is, is that custom formulation takes time, and so be prepared to make that investment of your dollars as well as your time. Six months is a fast timeline. You’ve got a relatively simple product, and we know what we’re doing in terms of, like, the targets that you want to hit, we’re going to formulate against that six months.

We can generally do two to four rounds of revisions, because I’ll put together an initial formulation, send it to you, encourage you to use it yourself, or to use it on patients first, and to give us feedback. And so that’s six months in a fast time. And so those are typically base levels, slightly salon grade or professional grade products that we’re that we’re offering at that point nine months, is the average that we take in terms of being able to do product development. But on the longer side, particularly if there’s the need to see like progressive progress over a specific amount of time with continued use of a product. It can easily be a year and a half.

And so if you give yourself that time to be able to see the progression of what happens and to see it over a specific set of patients, then a year and a half is where I’ve seen brand and brand owners go from the time that we start the project to the time that we say this formula and this packaging is amazing, let’s go into production. Those are the timelines that you can typically, you can typically see, but you’re correct. It is a back and forth.

I always call getting customer and consumer feedback hurting the cats. And so we have an internal communication that’s like, have the cats giving you their feedback on that last round of product that we sent to you, because we know somebody sent an appointment for you, they pushed it out a month, or they pushed it out of two weeks, or they just stopped coming completely. And if they were one of, you know, five people that you were getting feedback from in terms of a product, it poses challenges because, you know, they may be three months into the evaluation process and then disappear or just not be able to participate for any number of life reasons. And so it’s the reason that, when we start talking about that evaluating product, I recommend seven to 10 people as a customer, as a testing base across clients that professionals are using, or consumers in general,and as far as the marketing strategy, website development, launch, all of that, can that be done at the same time? Or we wait? Are we needing the actual obviously, we have to wait to take the photos and all of that type of stuff. But are there other pieces of this project that can be worked on during that development process 1,000% and it is the reason that I encourage people start selling your product before you get a formula, goop in a jar or group in a bottle, and particularly as service providers, it’s the best time to pre engage your intended customer base.

You’re the professional. You’re providing these services as you’re either using them in your practice or encouraging others in other locations or people in your state. Have to do that, like bring them into the journey at some level. Now, you don’t necessarily start day one and then make people wait a year and a half, but certainly, when you feel like, hey, we might be about six months or so out from the actual launch of the product, bring people on that journey with feeding it start.

Oh my god, seed it. Give people like, Hey. This is the intention. This is what we’ve been working on. You know, I spent the last six months, and I think I’m about six months away, I want to bring you on this journey with me. We’re seeing incredible results along the way. A really great launch has pre sales associated with it. So the day that I ship you product, if half of that pre sold, you’re winning. And so that takes a level of consistency and a really strategic effort to do that, because, again, you’re selling something that doesn’t exist, and this idea of instant gratification is delayed.

But the really smart folks who get into this and really follow our process and our system see the value of it, because then those are people who are buying in day one, and those are the people that then will give you great, honest reviews from the onset. They’re also people who are more likely to then re engage you and re purchase products if you’ve got multiple products, if they try a small selection, they’re more likely to then try other products in your collection on a second and third buy. And so the idea of bringing people along on this journey is such a great, smart money wise decision to do and to execute on from the very, very beginning, before you ever have a product in hand. And do you recommend starting with one SKU, or are we starting with three? You know, what is the because that’s another thing too, right?

Like, there’s, it always evolves. It always evolves. So I it depends on budget, and so that’s what I what I tell folks. And it’s funny, you mentioned I had an esthetician who I was like, I think you should probably bring this. She started with, like, five products. And I was like, wow, that’s a lot to start with,but not for us. I mean, it’s like exactly it was like, yes, no, you’ve got to have follow the system. And it’s the pre system, it’s the thing, and it’s the post.

And I was like, okay, but launching and just the physicality of getting feedback from the consumer base is just when it’s done well, is a tedious process, and so I encourage folks, like, if you can do it in one to three products as a starting point, it’s so much easier. Because the hard part that I also advise is, like, the product development is a lengthy process, but it really isn’t the hardest part of the brand journey. The hardest part of the brand journey is actually selling product and selling product at scale, and understanding that you’re spending all of this money and then you’re getting, like drips of money in at a time as you’re selling product. And so managing cash as a business owner is is really where the hard part is.

And so minimize your exposure, I get it seven steps is really what’s going to deliver the best results. But if you can start with the two and really say, like, wow, this is making an incremental difference in my skincare and my body care routine, then I think you then position yourself on a second round to then do three or four more products. But I get the temptation, because the way that we’ve been structured and trained is that it’s systems, but I’ve seen folks do some pretty incredible things. I had a customer who did a spot removal product that was a single product.

She did an excellent job of engaging and really delivering and just talking about a single topic for like, a year and a half, and then when she came out with like, two or three other products after that, like her pre sales were amazing, because she had an instant credibility as somebody that with a single product, could deliver the kind of results that people expected. And I think there’s also ways that we can incorporate products to, you know, really boost our bottom line help with the profit. Because, as you were saying before, our cost as business owners have gone up tremendously, inflation, like you know, all, all of the things have gone up. And so we’re looking at ways that we can make more revenue. So when we have even, like an oil that we use to Derma plane with or a body lotion that has a signature scent from our spa. It doesn’t have to be this insane, you know, formulation that is totally breaking ground of something brand new. It can be something that’s an extension of your brand that helps the person think of your spa and feel your spa when they’re at home. And that’s probably going to be less expensive and less time consuming to manufacture on that first go round, as you’re kind of getting your feet wet and understanding the process. Yeah, and so great. Great, great point and so, and that’s where for us and my manufacturing environment, I then say, hey, why don’t we consider maybe a stock formula that we then do some customizations around? So let’s add, you know, some key ingredients. Let’s add your signature fragrance. I’ve had a spa owner who did that, and again, her challenge was she’s like, Hey, my employees will use everything that I provide to them. They are horrible at selling everything that I recommend. They sell to our customers as they come to receive services. And so she wanted to do a massage lotion for not to have it as a gel or as an oil, but to have it as a viscous moisturizing lotion. And that was part of the service that they offered. And so we put together a great formula. And so then she had the, you know, the formulation was not the hard part, and that was the part that I said, Hey, I can help you and move you forward quickly there, but getting and setting the systems, the structures and the incentives to get each one of your massage reps to then sell this to somebody that’s received a service for them, I said that’s a little bit harder to do for me, and so it became really great point of entry for her to experience it without having to wait. Because in that instance, it wasn’t a year and a half of product development, it was, you know, a six month time frame that we were able to pull things together, maybe even a bit less, because, again, she went with a formula base that already delivered, and we just customized and tweaked that formula so that it was in alignment with, with her, with her business, specifically.And so that’s lowering her back bar cost Absolutely, and creating a more elevated experience, because it’s branded. It’s, you know, making it more unique. So there’s, there’s so much that you can do, if you really think about, you know, like you were saying, what is the intention, what is the focus that we want to do with this? And you don’t have to go in and create your entire line right off the bat. You can come in and think about, how do I create an elevated brand experience? How do I start with something and kind of go from there? I love that. No, it’s amazing.

It’s amazing. Anything else you want to add to, you know, questions that I’m not asking about this topic, because it’s so fascinating. I know there’s, there’s so much, but, you know, I feel like we covered a lot, but I don’t know.

No, this is great. You know, the only other thing that I that I encourage folks, Daniela, is that, if you’re thinking about it, do it. And now that’s a very Anthony thing to say in terms of just get in motion to making it happen. But I, the one thing that I consistently see across the board as I talk to business owners is this overthinking of a concept or overthinking of a thing? We always say action creates clarity. So oh my gosh, 1,000% yes, that is amazing. Action creates clarity. So I’m gonna borrow that. I will credit you. Go for it. No, borrow it, take it. And it’s so true, because in many instances, as particularly as professionals and people that are already in business and, you know, we’ve got life experience. We’ve been burned.

We’ve, you know, had failures and things that didn’t go well. The product entry space does not have to be a space that you spend three years thinking about an idea like, if it’s really sitting on your shoulder and has been there for some time, get in motion to make that thing happen. And this is the part where we talk about the concessions. You know, maybe you do have this idea for this amazing nine step system that then cures all and does all for the face and the body. Well, that’s the ending point, potentially, or the middle point for you, like, you can start with two products and then make that journey part of your process. But you know, we I say that we oftentimes think our way out of a good time, because we are just constantly in our head about like, this is all the things that couldn’t work. These are the things and maybe this and maybe that. And I find it incredible.

Every business owner that I know has talked about the lessons that they learned for questions they didn’t even know to ask at the beginning of the process. And so I believe that there this entrepreneurial journey is really a process of learning and experience, and those things happen together as you have the experience, you get the learnings. But if we are conceptualizing and ideating all the time, then it you know, you hamster wheel we’re stacking,yeah,no, I love that. So we’ll include all your links under the show. But where is the best place where you hang out the most? Where can people connect with you?

So I hang out the most on social media, uh, Instagram and LinkedIn.

So if you’re in both of those places, the Anthony Standifer, the Anthony Standifer, I’m in both places. Anthony standif on LinkedIn, but for you folks that want to take a look at my content, I’m happy to answer questions in DMS again, in places where I have time I am a person who I. Probably spends too much time on social media. It is my, you know, mindful or mindless thing to do is scrolling through the social media. So I’m like, literally on LinkedIn, just looking at videos, and then I’m like, oh, there’s a message. Let me answer it. Oh, yes, that’s right. I do have this lovely deliverable that was is due in an hour. Let me go back and focus on it. So you’re a welcome distraction for me in my inbox or in the comment sections of postings that I’m making. So I welcome questions. Again, information should not be, you know, hoarded. So I share as much as as possible.

And when there’s times where I can’t share, then I say, Hey, this is something that I don’t have expertise in, or it’s going to take a longer time to answer. But again, getting you and getting people the information that they need to make decisions so that they get an action is something that I’m super, super focused on. Well, hey, thank you for this interview. I mean, this was really great. Answered tons of questions, and I I do really hope, you know, we want that action to create clarity, but I hope that this episode really gets people thinking about what is possible for them and really opening their mind and expanding their mind to different ways that they can create revenue in their business or adjacent to their business, different things that they can do with their unique skill set. So I really appreciate your time and energy. It was really fun conversation. Thank you so much. Daniela.

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EP 422: Growth Through Acquisition with Susan Wos of Salonspa Connection

How would it feel if you could add $100,000 to your business in the next 90 days? Incredible, obviously. 

Your alarm bells and skepticism might be triggered, and that’s good! As a Spa CEO, it’s critical to be discerning about claims around how you can grow your business and how quickly. However, some growth pathways are like a rocketship–they take off fast and with a lot of power (and profitability). One of those pathways is acquisition – either you acquire a business or yours gets acquired. 

Joining me on Episode 422 is Susan Wos, a former hairstylist and salon owner who now helps sell beauty industry businesses across the U.S. through her company, Salonspa Connection. Susan has sold beauty industry businesses of all shapes and sizes since 2019. She now has a team of 17 brokers and assistants working with her to help Spa CEOs layer acquisition into their overarching entrepreneurial growth and wealth-building strategy.

What you’ll learn during this episode:

  • What Susan is seeing in the current beauty and wellness landscape regarding acquisitions, private equity, and market trends
  • What types of businesses are entrepreneurs looking to acquire, and what kinds of spa and aesthetic practices make for a lucrative acquisition 
  • The ins and outs of the business buying process (both from the seller and buyer perspective) and what assets carry the highest value 
  • What to expect when entertaining an acquisition offer and how to go about valuing a business to sell or buy, plus Susan’s top tips for those looking to build acquisition into their growth strategy

Resources Mentioned in Episode #422: Growth Through Acquisition with Susan Wos of Salonspa Connection

  • Learn more about Salonspa Connection on their website 
  • Check out Salonspa Connection’s free Valuation Calculator here
  • Connect with Susan Wos on LinkedIn 

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Keep the conversation going inside the Spa Marketing Made Easy Community by clicking here.

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WANT MORE FROM ADDO AESTHETICS?

Take just 5 minutes and find out YOUR biggest area of opportunity by taking my FREE Spa Business Assessment here → scorecard.addoaesthetics.com/

Join the Growth Factor® Fundamentals, an association dedicated to empowering women and strengthening their community by helping aesthetic professionals build meaningful connections with one another and fostering support and guidance to create businesses that align with the lives they love → https://offer.addoaesthetics.com/growth-factor-fundamentals

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Daniela Woerner is the founder of Growth Factor® Fundamentals, a leading spa association 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!

 

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. If you’re looking to add $100,000 of revenue or more to your spa in 2025 listen in, because the strategy that we’re going to share around growth through acquisition, could be the game changer in your business that catapults you to the next level. Now, is this strategy going to be easy? No. Is it going to take time? Absolutely. Is it worth it? 100% and I believe with my whole heart that this strategy can be such an incredible way forward for all parties involved. So listen in to this conversation right here on the spa marketing Made Easy podcast with Susan, the founder of Salonspa connection, as we unpack this strategy and walk through the process of buying or selling your spa.

Now Susan is a former hairstylist and salon owner who now sells beauty industry businesses all across the US. She’s been doing this selling businesses of all shapes and sizes Since 2019, and now has a team of 17 brokers and assistants. So I really hope you enjoy this episode, I’m really curious your thoughts on it. If you guys are in the Spa, Marketing Made Easy Facebook group post in there, feel free to send me a DM on Instagram, on LinkedIn, which is where I’m really spending most of my time these days. But I’m really curious your thoughts on this strategy, whether you are a solo wanting to sell, or whether you’re a multi six figure spa or seven figure spa looking to grow super curious, want to know more about it. This is really a topic that’s been on my mind, especially for the past six months, and I feel like we are at that point in time that this is the year that this is going to happen. So enjoy this episode and make sure you let me know your thoughts. All right, Susan, welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am so excited to have this conversation with you. I think that, you know, we talked last year, and I was like, Oh, I really like this woman. I want to figure out, you know, how it’s going to make sense to get you on the podcast share the incredible work that you’ve been doing. And I’m actually so glad that it took until now to get you on, because I think the timing is absolutely perfect for what we’re seeing in our industry. So welcome.

Thank you. Daniela, thank you for having me. I’m really excited to have this conversation today. I think it’s something that not a lot of people are talking about, but something that every you know, solo esthetician needs to know, every business owner, spa owner, salon owner. So thank you very much for having me.

So this is really like, what you and I haven’t talked about, is really a win, win situation for everybody involved. So we’re seeing, obviously, a lot of private equity come into the spa space, which is really transitioning into the health and wellness space. We’re seeing so much wellness come into medical esthetics. So we’re really at this interesting shift in our industry that I think has been coming along for quite a while. I mean, about to not to go on too far of a tangent. But when I started in the industry, I was in medical esthetics, and it was still, you went into the room and you pulled the white paper down, and there was nothing fluffy or anything about it. It was, go sit on the chair. There’s no like bougie stuff, right? And we started to see this trend more and more and and now I think we’re really reaching that pinnacle where health and wellness is combined very much with medical esthetics. But I digress.

The point of this call is to really show like this opportunity that we’re seeing in our space, and it’s not just for private equity. So private equity right now is really focusing on the medical spa space. They’re focusing on spas at minimum, doing 1.5 million in top line revenue, but really looking at the kind of bigger guys that are doing 345, million and above. And what about all of the other 1000s of spas out there that are doing the hard work, that put in the effort, that have got their, you know, that that initial, you know, maybe they got up to six. 7080, $100,000 which is, in my opinion, one of the hardest parts to just get it off the ground. But now they’re saying, How do I exit? What am I? How do I? How do I this thing I’ve built has value? What do I do with it? And that’s really where you and your business comes in. And it’s not that you just help these solos. I know you help large spas as well, but kind of talk to me about what you’ve seen in 2024 and then moving into 2025 in in this space, in the you know, buying and selling space, sure.

Well, one of the main things is that, you know, outside of solo aesthetics businesses, there’s a lot of people, you know, not necessarily private equity, but your regular investor types and or the wannabe investor types that are moving into the beauty space in general. And so they are looking for high cash flowing businesses. You know, I would say that most of our larger businesses that are selling right now aren’t necessarily going to private equity beat. They’re going to like couples, and they’re going to people who want to own a business. And they don’t necessarily understand anything about the beauty industry, but what they know is that, you know, it’s, it’s a high level want, right?

It’s not necessarily a need, but it’s a high level want, and it’s something that can be fairly recession proof, because, I mean, let’s face it, there’s nothing better than going in and getting your face all fixed up and getting a wax and getting, you know, Botox, or whatever it is. And people understand that, and they recognize that, and we are AI resistant. So as we move into sort of the AI age, you know, there’s not a lot of things other than I saw that. Was it the lash machine. But, I mean, oh yeah, come on, you know, like, that’s not going to be, I can’t imagine a real thing. And so people, you know, just your regular person who is interested in business ownership is, is really recognizing the beauty industry as a whole as something that is extremely sustainable and something that could be very profitable.

Well,even back in 2008 when there was the big crash, it was really only a year that we felt it in our spot. Was like, oh, what’s happening? And then all of a sudden, we were back, and with COVID, you know, so many spas ended up doubling, even with the restrictions that were happening there. And any economic book that you read, it’ll say that we are we’re one of the first to feel it initially, but we’re also the first to come back. And that’s because when people actually realize what’s happening, maybe they cancel their vacation. Maybe they, you know, they’re they’re kind of adjusting, but they want that human connection and human touch to feel good. It’s, it’s they’re looking at our services as a part of their health and wellness routine for overall care. And we saw that big time after COVID that they looked at it more as a part of their self care and health routine. So, okay, so, and I totally agree there are a lot of people interested in business ownership. That’s, you know, an area that’s definitely exploding right now. What I want to talk about today is really and what I’ve been talking about with our students a lot is this incredible opportunity that we are in the midst of right now, and that is that there are so many solos out there who, I think our industry has this tendency to push that that’s what you do, is you go and you become a solo, you rent a suite, you do your own thing.

That’s really hard. It’s really hard because you are what I say, just creating a really hard job for yourself. You’re not getting the benefits of the freedom and the financial find there’s a cap on what you can earn, because you’re one person, and so you still have to be in the room. You don’t get to take the two weeks of vacation and still be making money when you’re gone, you know, there’s all these benefits that you’re not getting, and it still can be a great model for the right person in the right season of life. But if you want to exit, what does that look like? You know, and I think there’s a lot of solos out there that are saying, I don’t want to do the marketing. I don’t want to get out there and be the mayor of my town. I don’t want to deal with taxes. I don’t want to deal with my website. I don’t want to build funnels. I don’t want to do social media, like all of these things that are a requirement, and even more so, a requirement to be seen and and attract those clients. Um. Right?

They just want to be in the room. They want to love other people. They want to do what they went to school for, which is learn how to care for and treat and solve problems with the skin. And so the opportunity is for these other types of spas that are really building a brand establishing who they are. They can build relationships by the business of this solo esthetician who worked incredibly hard to build bring that solo on as an employee, bring her book of clients, and it really becomes this win win for both parties agreed. So let’s, let’s kind of break down the business buying process of like, okay, how does this work? Like? Because solo estheticians, I think if they’re interested in selling they don’t know how to value their business. They don’t know where to find someone to buy them. And I think it’s the same way for spa owners that are saying, hey, I want to try this strategy. And you really, your company really kind of provides those solutions. You’re the the mediator, you’re you’ve sold over 150 businesses, or probably more by now, right in the spa and salon space. And tell me about the types of companies that you’re working with, solos, mid sized spas. Like, what is the normal person that comes to you well, we see it all. And so we see the solo estheticians all the way up to, you know, multi million dollar businesses.

So we definitely see a huge, wide range. But the common denominator, the common denominator is usually the same, as far as, what is it you have to sell? So is it, you know, is it an equipment, heavy business, or is there actual, you know, revenue, and something left over at the end, you know, a net profit? Are you able to pay yourself? And so that those are the things that really are looked at first. But yeah, we see the widest range that you could possibly imagine, in the beauty, all in the all in the spa and salon space.100% salon, spa and Barber, yep. So okay, we’ve sold online businesses before. You know, software, we had a talent agency, we’ve had a huge variety of businesses, but it’s all in the beauty industry. And the reason, well, I’m a lifetime cosmetologist, I’m a former salon owner, and so I ended up selling my business on my own after I worked with broker who just didn’t get it. And we find that that is why people like us so much, is because all of our brokers, including myself, were all Solana spa experts, so we’ve worked in the field, and so we understand not only the language, but the value, and that’s really, really valuable when we’re talking to non industry buyers, because most of the time, they’re just looking at numbers and they don’t understand the industry. And so we’re able to talk to them about what to expect, you know, how to understand this terminology, and then how to grow their business once they’ve bought it.

Okay, so talk to me about the valuation, because for me, I’ve always looked at, you know, net profit times three. And so we’re looking at kind of a multiple of two or three, depending on that. When you talk about equipment heavy, are you looking at like an asset sale rather than the actual sometimes, sometimes it really depends on the business. And so a solo aestheticians business is going to be looked at a little bit differently because you’re looking at, you know.

So let’s say a spa owner buys it, or another esthetician buys the solo esthetics business. What we advise is to, you know, buy the equipment. If this is something that you want. Obviously, if you’re depreciating the equipment on your taxes, that’s really helpful. So then you have a better idea of what the actual value is. So that’s kind of where we go with the value of, you know, not only inventory, but, you know, any type of furniture, fixtures and equipment that you have on top of that, if it’s a solo esthetics business, what we advise is to, you know, agree upon some sort of arrangement where you the seller is compensated for the clients that actually take action for the buyer, and so that is somebody that comes in that, you know, whether it’s one time or six times, you know, that looks different for every single situation, but it’s a matter of them agreeing upon, you know what is fair for everyone involved. So let’s say, you know, client a, she spends $2,000 a, you know, a year in the business.

You know, if that, if client a comes to the buyer, then the seller should be compensated X amount of dollars for every client visit. Or. Or you can buy out an entire client list, which I don’t necessarily like that, because there’s zero guarantee for the buyer, and so it just it looks really different. It’s a matter of everybody feeling like they’ve been fairly compensated for the transaction and really being organized for a solo esthetician, you know, you’ve got to have all of those client files really, really well updated. You know, the notes, the email addresses, the phone numbers, you know, are you? Are they responding to you? Are these clients that haven’t been in for a long time? You know, there’s not a lot of value in just somebody’s name and phone number, right? You’re looking at people who are taking action on a consistent basis.

A couple of questions there. So have you ever had anyone use this strategy that we’re suggesting of actually having the solo join the team of the new buyer and transition into being an employee and help with that transition of getting those clients or patients into the new practice, not personally, but I think that’s a brilliant idea. As a matter of fact, I would love to start encouraging spa owners to do that. But No, we’ve never done that, because usually that’s a thing where you know, there’s an agreement, a private agreement. They already knew each other, or there was a conversation that happened long before, you know, we came into the picture. But I think that’s a fantastic idea, and what an amazing way for spa owners to grow their business, and right, because the new employee has already paid for I mean, I think there’s obviously some hiccups that can happen on like, if you’re used to being the owner, and then you’re merging into someone else’s business. But these are all things that can be navigated and discussed in advance to ensure, like, a smooth transition. I want to give just kind of like an example. Like, let’s say we have a solo esthetician who’s doing maybe 80,000 a year, profiting maybe 20,000 a year. Has 20,000 of equipment. What are the types of things that we’re looking at to actually price this as a business owner,right? And so you say, Annette, does that include, you know, we’re, we’re looking at, where’s that money going, you know, is the net the only thing that the aesthetician is gaining? Or is there cell phone built in? Is there car insurance built in? So we see a lot of, you’re looking at, like the Add backs as well. Yeah.

So we’re, you know, is, how much is it actually costing the aesthetician to perform these services, you know, taking away marketing, taking away all that. So it kind of depends on the buyer. So an individual buyer would be different than, say, an employer buyer, but we’re really looking at what is the actual cost of doing business here. And so it really depends, you know, the net is great, and so the more net the better. But so many business owners, whether they’re solo estheticians or spa owners, there’s not a lot of net there, because there’s they’re either paying themselves a lot, which is okay, because that’s an add back to but a lot of times the net is really low. And so we really need to look at kind of, what are the mandatory expenses here in order to arrive at a fair market value for the business.

And are these being funded through SBA loans, through seller financing, like, how is the actual structure? Are they all cash sales, you know, depending on the size of the business.

What are the different structures that you’re seeing, all of the above, all of the above,literally, all the above. And that’s dependent on business size, you know. And so if you’re looking at a solo esthetics business that maybe is $50,000 a lot of time that can be arranged, either an all cash deal or a seller financing type of situation to where, hey, we’ll pay you, you know, $50,000 over the next year, two years, based on, you know, criteria, a or we will just pay this to you, regardless of what happens. And so it’s it’s every sale, every business is super unique. And so it really is a matter of what is actually going on, what is the arrangement in the agreement between buyer and seller? So, yeah, absolutely. SBA, you know, seller financing, all cash it.

We’ve see it. We see it all. And typically deals do include some sort of seller financing. You know, it’s kind of unusual to have a deal that is all cash or all SBA, usually there’s some sort of seller financing involved.

And so to clarify, for those that are not familiar with seller financing, it’s essentially you’re paying the seller is the bank. And so you would maybe like, let’s say we have a 50. $1,000 business. Maybe you as the buyer, put down $5,000 $10,000 so that aesthetician gets that initial chunk up front, and then you would have a deal that, hey, come join my company. I’m going to pay you this amount as an employee, and separately, I’m going to pay you $2,000 a month for the next, you know, X amount of months with this percent interest to be able to pay down the remaining 40,000 that I owe you for the business.

And so presumably, like the goal is that you’re always increasing the profit from your from your purchase. And so that employee, the goal would be that that employee that you purchased the business from is generating enough to pay for herself and to pay for the cost of the business that you purchased. And so it makes it a really incredible like that solo aesthetician who sold the business is probably getting paid more than she’s ever been paid, and is also so she’s, you know, getting the benefits of all that hard work that she put in up front. She’s getting to do what she loves. She’s getting paid as an employee to do it with the people that she’s already built in. Right? What do you see as the like hiccups that could happen in a transition like this?

Oh gosh, there’s, there’s many things. I mean, the most important thing is that everybody sees the same value, right? And so the buyer understands what the seller has. The seller understands what they’re selling. So I think the major Hiccup is when the seller thinks that they have something that they don’t, that’s, that’s usually the biggest and then, you know, it’s our job to kind of go, Okay, here we have this, this and this, this is what we feel it’s worth. It is up to you to either agree with that or work towards understanding that we can’t create something and sell something just because you think it’s A, B and C.

And I think that it’s a natural tendency to think that your business is worth more than it actually is, because it’s so so much time and energy and effort, and we put so much of ourselves into building these things, and oftentimes the the hard work is just learning that skill set in the beginning, You know, putting yourself out there, which is always uncomfortable, but in my understanding, is that we want to be able to pay, we want to reap the benefits in about three years. Is that the kind of model that you’re looking at, depending on the size of the business, the smaller businesses, it would be a lot faster than that, but your business is, yes, absolutely, three years is a good timeline.

Okay,so let’s walk through just kind of a high level overview of what the process looks like if someone, let’s say someone, is coming to you to sell, what are the the stages or steps that someone would go through. And if someone is coming to you, searching for a business to buy.

Okay, so selling, what we start with is usually a consultation, and so that is myself and or one of the people on our team, and we are talking to the seller. And so we’re trying to understand their goals. We’re trying to understand their expectations, because that’s really important. One of the things we ask always in that first meeting is, how much would you like to get for this business? And so we understand, going in, kind of what they have imagined the value of their business to be, you know, we’re asking all kinds of questions. And so we want to know about the lease, you know, or is it a building that they own? We want to know about the landlord. We want to know about employees and or revenues. You know, just give us an overview. After that consultation, we send a non disclosure agreement, and then we ask for the finances, and we ask for a balance sheet, you know, p and L’s tax returns and the lease, because we want to look at the overall health of the business. We then perform evaluation, and then we meet again. And so we go over, you know, we already understand what their expectation is on selling, but now after the valuation, we have a good idea of what the fair market value is. And so we then meet again, go over the valuation, and we say, this is what we feel we could list your business for. And so it’s kind of up to the seller at that point to either go, okay, you know, maybe I have a couple years left in me. I can really, you know, hit the business hard and grow the business, or, all right, fine, I’m ready to be done. And so that’s kind of the tipping point after that value, or after that second consultation. It’s like. Well, if you want to move forward, this is what this looks like. And so we’ve got three options for sellers. So we’ve got, you know, a very simple DIY type of service. And so basically, we list them, we advertise, they handle everything.

Then we have, obviously, the broker service, which is the full service, where sellers don’t really have to do much other than answer our questions and help, you know, with getting information. And we kind of have this middle ground, what we call broker light. And a lot of solo aestheticians go into that category because they don’t, you know, it’s hard for us as brokers to, when we’re selling a solo business, to really follow up if there’s some sort of, like, you know, agreement between the seller and the buyer on, I’m going to make X amount of dollars over the next three years on these clients. So we typically steer them towards broker light and that sort of, you know, you get a lot of the benefits of broker services, but you can do add ons, so like NDAs, you know, we can send NDAs, we can pre qualify, we can do comprehensive business memorandum. So that’s kind of where we go with our sellers. We try to guide them and give them as much information as they can, and we try to really set their expectations in line with reality, because it’s not usually a fast process.

And so, you know, finding buyers is quick. It’s the buyer decision making process that takes a long time. And then if they need to obtain funding, that takes a long time too. You know, SBA typically is a faster 90 days, right? At least now, yeah, 60 to 90, depending on the lender that you’re dealing with, and you’ve got a good relationship with your bank, that’s, that’s great. So for the buyer, when buyers come to us, you know, it depends on, again, watch what package the seller has chosen. So we’ll just talk about the broker package, because that’s where we’re most involved with buyers. So with our buyers, they come in, submit their information, they sign an NDA, and then we have a conversation with that buyer. And so we don’t reveal what businesses is until we are satisfied as brokers that this buyer isn’t going to be harmful person to the sale, and so that we look them up on social media. You know, we’ve got their NDA, which is cool, but we want to understand who we’re talking to, and so we call the buyer, you know, we set up a meeting, or have, you know, text exchange in order to have that phone call or zoom, and we are looking to pre qualify that buyer.

So we want to gage level of interest, right ability to pay for this. You know why the first thing we ask buyers is, what interests you about this business? Because we want to understand upfront what their main goal is. And usually they tell us so much just in that first question. And so for a buyer, you know, we’re having that conversation, we if they pass, we always say, if they jump through our hoops, we will provide financial information, so P and L’s, we will provide that sim. We call it comprehensive business memorandum. And then we say, let us know if you have any questions. Usually at that point, they’ll either have more questions or they want to move forward to meet the seller. And so we help arrange that seller conversation. You know, if they like what we if they like what they see, we give them a letter of intent template, if they don’t already have one. A lot of our savvy buyers have written many letters of intents, and so they don’t really need it. So they would submit a letter of intent, we would then go to the seller, say, here, this person wants to buy your business.

This is what they’re offering. And that’s kind of a negotiation period, you know, not typically the first offer is something that the seller loves. And so there’s quite a bit of back and forth between, you know, what does this look like? The time frame, and if the seller wants to accept a letter of intent, then we get an attorney involved at that point, because we’re not attorneys, we’re not accountants, we are intermediaries, and so we help, you know, then work with the buyer, the seller and the attorney to get the letter of intent signed and then take it through due diligence all the way up through the sale. So there’s kind of a long answer, but that’s generally speaking, but it’s,it’s important to know all of the steps, because it’s not just a, oh, I’m just going to go buy a business tomorrow. I mean, there’s a step by step process. It’s something that takes time. What do you see? You had mentioned earlier that you kind of help once the business sale has gone through, how are you helping and supporting those buyers after? What does that look like?

So every buyer is different, and we give buyers a host of information, including it starts with how to announce that the business has been sold. And so we have a video that we provide them, and so that is actually for the buyer and seller, so they can sort of, you know, plan ahead and see what this looks like. Because if you have a sale that involves employees, there’s going to be emotions, you know, there’s going to be things that happen. And so handling that is super important, and that is really equal between the buyer and the seller. Seller. In my mind, after that, we provide a list of consultants, we provide a list of education they can get, and we’re there to talk to them, you know, for an extended period of time, say, you know, the next year, we want to provide resources for them and advice for them, because truthfully, they may be a seller someday, and nothing is better than us seeing somebody who bought a business and thrives under it. You know, we don’t want to sell a business and think,

Well, this buyer has no chance. You know, we want to be able to we’re non brand affiliated, right? We, we will provide resources all day, every day, and not you know, there’s no products that lead towards that. You know, we’re just giving advice. And so if our resources that we provide our buyers are not what they need, we go out and find them. So it’s people like you, you know, we will recommend people like you, because you’re actually there to help people, rather than sell more skincare products, you know.

So any other pieces I feel like this is one of those things that I’m just like, oh my gosh, we’re going to see so much of this in 2025, 2024, was a challenging year. There’s people deal. I mean, it’s a whole host of things, right? People are dealing with inflation. People it’s was an election year, which always causes uncertainty, you know? So there’s, there’s this kind of mix of things where people are at a place where they’re like, You know what, I’ve been through COVID. I went through this. I kind of just want to take care of people. So I think we’re going to see a lot of of business owners wanting to sell. And I think also there’s going to be a lot of savvy spas that use a strategy like this to acquire if you buy a solo estheticians business that’s doing 80 to 100,000 a year in 90 days, you could Add 100,000 in revenue to your business, potentially and in what other marketing strategy could you grow that fast? If you study businesses and look at like, how are these other companies growing so quickly? They’re not growing 10, 15% year over year. They’re buying other businesses, buying that business for growth. And it’s it’s kind of like, once you understand the strategy, and I mean, you could grow so quickly if you master that emotional intelligence, the piece of merging the the the employees together, getting everybody on on board with the vision and mission of your spa. I mean, this, for me, is like one of the greatest competitive advantages if you master this skill. agree, and I think there’s a real lack of understanding of that in our industry. You know, we’re not taught that from the beginning that acquiring businesses is the way to ultimate wealth. I mean, it just is. And we that’s a lost concept on so many people in our industry, there’s a lot of like, well, I’m going to retire and I’m done, I’m just going to shut it down. Or, you know, even business owners, there’s so many, they’re just like, it’s like, Are you kidding me?

There’s so much like get the value, after all that hard work that you put in, you know, even, even if you just sell for 20,000 $30,000 that’s a huge chunk of money to be able to get. And think about what you can do with that, as that could be a down payment on a rental property or an Airbnb, that could be a car, that could be an incredible vacation, you know? I mean, there’s so many different things that it could be simply by you putting that energy and effort forward and not just closing your doors.

Yeah, and even digital assets. You know, a lot of people, there’s, there’s no way to really assign a value to digital assets, but if they are producing business for you that’s valuable, you know, we’ve actually had sellers that are like, I don’t really want to sell my Instagram with the business. And it’s like, well, guess what? I mean, if that’s a client funnel, that’s part of the business. And so I think that’s, you know, in my mind, you know, knowing the entire beauty industry and how you know all everyone is growing and working, esthetics can be one of the most challenging to build clientele. So we definitely see a lot more in the spa space. As far as solo estheticians being acquired. Hairstylist business, not quite as much. But I personally always feel like the aesthetics businesses are more valuable because it is such a challenge to grow in esthetics versus, say, hair or, you know, barbering, or even nails, and so, you know, there’s so much value even stuff that can’t be, you know, nailed down like this is worth $10,000 I mean, What? What? Spar statistics? You wouldn’t love to inherit a website that’s producing or a Google business profile or a Facebook page that is actually paying off. So yeah, there’s so much. Even if you don’t think you have something you know, talk to somebody who understands the value in businesses before you go,yeah. So true. Alright. So any last thoughts you want to share before we wrap this up and have every I want, obviously, you to share where people can find you and get in touch with you. But any last thoughts around this conversation, this strategy, anything I’m not asking to make this episode complete, Iwould say the biggest thing is just planning ahead. You know, really thinking ahead as to what is my exit strategy? If you’re someone who owns a business or you’re in a solo esthetician, what does it look like for me to retire? You know, a lot of people move or life things happen. You know, where they can’t necessarily perform the services in that location anymore. And so always having some sort of exit strategy in mind, and understanding, getting your business valued early, that’s probably one of the biggest things we see, is that people come to us too late, and so planning ahead, understanding, you know, we’re working with a couple salons and spas right now to where they said we want to sell them three years.

How much is our business worth right now, that’s the best thing you can do, absolute best thing you can do, because then you know where to go, you know what, what levers to pull to be able to get it okay? So I would say that’s probably the biggest thing. If you’re buying, you know, really understanding what it is you’re buying and nailing down sort of a target business. We get a lot of buyers who will inquire about a multitude of businesses. And to me, that is someone who’s not serious, like, if you don’t understand, like, if you’re not actually chew, if you chose a barber shop and a spa to inquire to, like, really, you know you don’t fully understand what it is you want. So just that, think forward thinking, I guess, is really the idea here. Love it.

Okay, so I know you’re going to have a lot of a lot of people reaching out, which is a great thing, a great thing. I you know, a lot of our clients will call me an esthetician matchmaker, and because I found some some Estee besties in the world, and now I feel like this is such a needed connection to really benefit. It just feels like such a win, win on so many levels. And you are that bridge. And so I want to make sure that everybody knows where they can find you, get in touch with you, reach out to you, learn how to value their business and start that relationship.Yeah, thank you for that. So I’m my last name is pronounced Bosh. Susan Bosh. A lot of people go woes or woos. It’s Bosh. That’s okay, easy to spell. I’m on LinkedIn. My company is Salonspa connection, and so there’s a variety of ways to work with us. We do have a free valuation calculator that anybody can use at any time. It gives you an instant result. And so that is on our website. You can consult with us at any time. We have people. We have representatives now all over the United States. We have a couple of spot experts on staff. And so I would say, book a consultation. You know, let us do evaluation for you.

That’s probably the best thing that we can do to help you, and you can either fill out our contact form or on our website, book a consultation, and that’s always free, because we like to help people, we will include all the links to your website, to your calculator, all of those things below the episode to make sure that Our listeners can find those incredibly valuable resources.

Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for what you’re doing in industry, and I’m so excited to see these Win, win relationships happen in 2025d ame, and right back at you, Daniela, you’re doing such an amazing service for everyone, and I really appreciate you having me on today.

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EP 421: 3 Ways to Increase Your Spa’s Profit Margins

Your sights are set on growth for your spa business, but what happens when economic conditions impact your area or clientele? 

Or if you face personal challenges beyond your control?

You want to be prepared to respond, not react, and one key thing that allows you to be calm and controlled in your response is knowing you are on solid financial footing. 

That’s why this year, I’m focusing on teaching you how to focus on profitability. 

In this episode of Spa Marketing Made Easy, I’ll discuss three steps you can take today to help increase your profit margins to continue growing your business and being financially sound, even if the economy or your environment is unstable. 

What you’ll learn during this episode:

  • Why profit needs to be the number one KPI you understand how to grow in your spa business and why it’s so critical to your company and personal success
  • What you’re missing out on if you’re solely focusing on the bigger-picture numbers, like top-line revenue, without digging into the data on how much of that revenue you get to keep 
  • The three key ways you can increase your spa’s profit margins (great news – you can get started with all of them today!)
  • How your profits can continue to grow even during tight economic conditions or uncertain times

Resources Mentioned in Episode #421: 3 Ways to Increase Your Spa’s Profit Margins

  • See all our upcoming events under our “Virtual Events” tab, and be sure to check out our upcoming masterclass on March 10, 2025 on “The Art of Pricing Your Services for Maximum Profit and Experience”
  • Click here to learn more about becoming a member of the Addo Professional Association
  • Explore tools mentioned in this episode including Loom, Otter.ai, Canva, and ChatGPT

Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe on YouTube

Keep the conversation going inside the Spa Marketing Made Easy Community by clicking here.

join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community

IG / @addoaesthetics

WEB / addoaesthetics.com

YOUTUBE / @addoaesthetics

LINKEDIN / @addoaesthetics

WANT MORE FROM ADDO AESTHETICS?

Take just 5 minutes and find out YOUR biggest area of opportunity by taking my FREE Spa Business Assessment here → scorecard.addoaesthetics.com/

Join the Addo Professional Alliance (APA), an association dedicated to empowering women and strengthening their community by helping aesthetic professionals build meaningful connections with one another and fostering support and guidance to create businesses that align with the lives they love → https://www.addoaesthetics.com/addo-professional-alliance/

ABOUT THE SPA MARKETING MADE EASY HOST 

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Daniela Woerner is the founder of Addo Professional Alliance, a leading spa association 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!

 

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

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EP 420: Building Strong Relationships with Your Vendors with Danielle Cobo

Here on Spa Marketing Made Easy, we’ve had numerous episodes covering the topics of building and nurturing client relationships, using events to draw in new clientele and provide exciting opportunities for existing clients to try new treatments and products, as well as how to select aligned products and partners, but diving into nurturing those vendor and partner relationships is something we’ve yet to cover in a dedicated episode. That’s why I’m so thrilled to have Danielle Cobo joining me on the mic for this episode, as she’s a rockstar at helping both Spa CEOs and aesthetic vendors go deep so they can build relationships that spur incredible results. 

With over 15 years of corporate experience, including 7 years leading a high-performing team for one of the top Medical Aesthetic companies in the world, Danielle knows how to increase sales, productivity, and employee retention. Through keynote speeches, corporate programs, and one-on-one coaching, Danielle has taught thousands of people how to achieve their career goals with unstoppable confidence and live their best lives. 

She’s also the best-selling author of Unstoppable Grit: Break Through the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals, a mom to thrill-seeking 7-year-old twin boys, and a military spouse. From her professional prowess to her personal drive, she has a wealth of knowledge to share that I know will leave you feeling inspired and empowered as you work to grow and scale this year. 

What you’ll learn during this episode:

  • Why it’s critical to understand the perspective of your vendor partners, so you know how to leverage their skills and resources best 
  • Key activities that help to make partnerships a supportive relationship that garners the best results 
  • How to align your needs as a spa owner with the nature of your vendor’s role and understanding whether they’re a brand rep, consultant, etc. 
  • Danielle’s tips for setting expectations and fostering a space for clear communication, as well as how to work together with your vendors to reach goals throughout the year

Resources Mentioned in Episode #420: Building Strong Relationships with Your Vendors with Danielle Cobo

  • Learn more about Danielle and her work on her website: www.DanielleCobo.com
  • Connect with Danielle Cobo on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube
  • Read Danielle’s book, “Unstoppable Grit: Break Through the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals”
  • Tune in to the Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo

Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe on YouTube

Keep the conversation going inside the Spa Marketing Made Easy Community by clicking here.

join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community

IG / @addoaesthetics

WEB / addoaesthetics.com

YOUTUBE / @addoaesthetics

LINKEDIN / @addoaesthetics

WANT MORE FROM ADDO AESTHETICS?

Take just 5 minutes and find out YOUR biggest area of opportunity by taking my FREE Spa Business Assessment here → scorecard.addoaesthetics.com/

Join the Growth Factor® Fundamentals, an association dedicated to empowering women and strengthening their community by helping aesthetic professionals build meaningful connections with one another and fostering support and guidance to create businesses that align with the lives they love → https://offer.addoaesthetics.com/growth-factor-fundamentals

About Your Host, Daniela Woerner

Daniela Woerner is the founder of Growth Factor® Fundamentals, a leading spa association 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!

 

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. Relationships make the world go round, and when we’re looking at business relationships, the ones that you have with your vendors and reps can be absolutely essential for the success of your spa. That’s why I was so excited to welcome Danielle Cobo to the show to dive into this topic and discuss how we can look at these relationships and understand the best way forward to create a win, win, win for the rep, the practice and, of course, the patient. Now we absolutely went off topic and talked about a variety of other things. It’s a really great conversation of fun.

Listen. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope that you get Danielle’s book, unstoppable grit. Break through the seven roadblocks of standing seven roadblocks standing between you and achieving your goals. All right, I’m going to do a quick read of her bio, and then we’ll play that interview with over 15 years of corporate experience, including seven years leading a high performing team for one of the top medical esthetic companies in the world.

Our guest, Danielle Cobo knows how to increase sales, productivity and employee retention through keynote speeches, corporate programs and one on one coaching, Danielle has taught 1000s of people how to achieve their career goals with unstoppable confidence and live their best lives. Danielle is the best selling author of unstoppable grit break through the seven roadblocks standing between you and achieving your goals. She’s also a mother to thrill seeking seven year old twin boys and a military spouse. All right, she’s an incredible woman. Make sure you get her book and follow her on LinkedIn. And let’s go ahead and play that interview.

All right. Danielle, welcome to the Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m so excited to have you on here. I’m so glad you reached out. I love seeing all of your content on LinkedIn. You are just really knocking it out of the park when it comes to leadership. You’ve got a book called Grit, which I love. You know it’s you are speaking my love language. So I’m so happy to have you on the show today to talk to our listeners. Welcome. Well, thank you so much for having me on the show. Anytime that I get to speak to the Aesthetic industry, it always excites me, because that’s where my passion, that’s where my background comes from.

Tell us a little bit about your background. So how did you I know it’s we were just talking pre show and found some some overlaps. And that’s one of the things about this industry, is that when you are in it long enough, you are bound to have connections and overlaps, and that is why relationships are such an important piece in anything that you do, but in our industry especially, so tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into what you’re doing today. Yeah.

So I started in dental sales. So I worked in dental sales for five and a half years, selling capital equipment, selling practice management, software, digital imaging and cone beam CT scanning. And then I was actually recruited into esthetics. I wasn’t looking for a job, but a recruiter reached out to me, and I was recruited for a company called sold to medical so that’s where I really found my foundation in medical esthetics, selling non invasive body contouring, skin resurfacing lasers, and then transitioned into working for Allergan Aesthetics. So I worked for Allergan Aesthetics for over seven years. I was their senior regional sales manager, first starting in the Southern California area and then moving over to the southeast, where it led a team to number one in the nation, working in their topical esthetics division, so representing Skin Medica Latis as well as diamond glow. Wonderful.

Congratulations. And how did you transition into what you’re doing now? And tell us a little bit about that as well, because I want to, I want to give the full picture before we get into our topic of theday. Yes, so I had absolutely no intention in starting a business. I was actually the best one start. Yeah, exactly I was. So it was right after a series of life changing events that took place in 2020, 2020. Was the year for many of us, the year of change.

For me, within six months, my husband had just returned home from serving a year deployment in Iraq. While, at the time he was deployed, I was leading a team across five states. My twins were between the ages of one and a half and two and a half years old, and I was traveling every single week, so it was very demanding year.

But luckily, he came home and. Uh safely from Iraq. Then, uh, shortly after he returned from Iraq, my mom had passed away, and as I was grieving through the process and trying to cope with the loss of my mom, a week later, the pandemic hit shut the world down. And then the next event that took place was the company I was with was acquired by a larger pharmaceutical company, and the culture shifted. And so these series of events that took place within a six month period had me at a turning point in my life where I started to reflect back and look at, am I really happy? Am I doing what I want to do? What not so much focus in on the title and the awards and what success looks like to society, but more about what impact can I make, what is a legacy that I want to leave behind as I kind of go into the second half of my career.

And so I left the company I was with, and I started to post on LinkedIn, because I was like, well, I need to look at finding a job and and really developing my brand presence on LinkedIn, and then that posting trans into people reaching out to me, asking for coaching and consulting. And fast forward four years. Here I am. I’m doing exactly what I was meant to do, which is sales and development trainings for organizations, and also doing consulting as well.

Now, are you sticking just in the Aesthetic space, or do you you work outside of the Aesthetic space as well, right for the sales training and leadership training?Yes, I do work outside of this space. I’ve I’ve worked in everything from asphalt paving and milling to working in the veterinary sales but I would say majority of my work is in medical aesthetics. That’s definitely where my passion lies. And because I know the industry so well and it’s such a unique industry to be in, that’s kind of where I found my niche.

Yeah, well, I love it. I love it, all right.

So today we are really diving into this topic of how you build strong relationships with your product reps, with your with company reps, your vendors. And this is such an important thing for practice owners to know, because there’s any type of relationship is two sided, right? You’ve got to nurture relationships and you’ve got to find what that that point of connection is.

So if you are a skincare rep, then you know you obviously like you want this practice to grow because then they’re going to buy more things, and it’s it’s a wonderful it’s great for them, it’s great for their patients. It’s also great for you as the rep. But we also, I’ve heard both sides of the relationships. Sometimes accounts are not feeling supported, and then sometimes reps are feeling like all they’re doing is asking, so how do we how do we understand the dynamics of these relationships and really focus on how we can make them better and mutually beneficial? Because when you find that kind of harmonious ecosystem, it really can be a win win. For the practice, for the practice owner, for the rep, like it all just kind of gels much more cohesively.

Well, you had said something about the uniqueness of being able to see both sides. And I believe that the more we understand the perspective of each other, the vendors and the the accounts, the better we can understand how we can support each other.

Ultimately, I believe it’s a big mindset shift and understanding that ultimately everyone’s goal is to help drive revenue for the practice for the sales rep, we have the same goal. And when you think, let’s kind of look at the esthetic sales rep, okay, so they’re given a quota for them. Oftentimes, when I was hiring sales reps for our team, I would say 90% of our role is helping esthetic practices sell through the inventory that they have so that then we can go in and sell in new inventory.

So understanding that the pull through strategy is the most important part of that role. And if you have a sales rep, a vendor rep, who truly understands that, know that their purpose there is to help you grow and also understanding from a sales when you’re looking at your when you’re working with your vendors, understanding that they’re given a quota, and ultimately, there’s so many accounts that are driving sales that are going towards that quota, so they’re going to go where the business is.

So it really takes an understanding. What does that partner look like? Partnership look like for the esthetic practice? In for the vendor rep, so that you could come together, collaborate and support each other.

Yeah, I think that’s important. And I what I noticed sometimes, though, and and there was one particular company, I’m not going to name any names, but there, there was one particular company where their stance was, if you haven’t sold X amount of dollars, we’re just not going to show up at your event. And it was a very it was a six figure amount, and that was really off putting for a lot of spa owners, because they’re saying, Hey, we’re investing a lot of money into this equipment, and we’re not receiving any type of support like we would love to get to that amount of revenue.

Please help us so with your experience, you know on and I know you have that unique perspective now that you’ve stepped into the consulting role and you’ve worked with practices, how do you manage a situation like that? Is it? How do you get on the same page?

Is that a cultural thing with the company? Is that a relationship with the rep when, when there’s these, when you’re looking for support as a practice, and you’re just told we can’t help you unless we get to this level?Yeah. So I definitely do not agree with that stance for that particular organization. I do agree and understand so understanding the perspective of the sales reps, and especially when it comes to we call it event season. So an event season, typically between October and December is when most practices are hosting their holiday events or patient appreciation events.

And so one of the challenges that the sales reps run into is they’re being pulled in a lot of different directions. So here they are having the responsibility of the during the day to be going out, doing trainings, to do business meetings with their offices, and then at night, or even on the weekends, they’re being asked to do these events, and it can burn these sales reps out, which is really challenging.

I feel like that is oftentimes what I hear. The number one complaint is, I’m just exhausted. I’m overwhelmed. I’m being pulled in a bunch of different directions. And so the guidance to the sales rep is, is really partner with the offices that are going to partner with you as well. And why is that valuable for the practices? To understand is because if you’re calling a sales rep and you’re saying, I need you to come in and work this event, and I need you to spend this much money to contribute to the food, that’s not really a true partnership. A true partnership is sitting down with the sales rep and saying, ahead of time number one, what are some days that work for you? If there’s a particular representative, a vendor that you want at your event quarter, work with them and coordinating the date so that you’re not running the risk of them already being at another event. Second to that is sitting down with that vendor rep and saying, Hey, you cover so many practices.

Share with me what are the top three, top three steps that you see practices make that lead to a successful patient event. And what I mean by that is I know that there’s this one particular office that they do a patient event every year. It generates a million dollars in revenue each year. And when we go to our national sales meetings, their sales reps will go on stage and they’ll talk about, here are the top 10 steps that this practice does every patient event to yield those results. As a practice owner, would you want to know that information? Absolutely, you would. Yeah, I believe you would. So look at it, at these vendor reps as your opportunity to get insights into what works well, what doesn’t work well and what strategies you can implement to yield a successful patient event.

And that is what a partnership is. Oneof the things that we talk with about our clients is the importance of that relationship with the rep. So the relationship that you have with them, as equally as important as the science and the the of whatever the device or product is that you’re bringing into your practice, because there’s, there’s a lot of great products out there.

There’s a lot of great science out there. We’ve really evolved as an industry in the past 20 years, and so there’s a lot of options. So it’s finding something, a product or technology, that aligns with your culture, with the needs of your patients, but really then building that relationship with the rep of what you need and what your expectation.

Friends are as a practice owner and aligning that with what that rep is able, how they’re able to support you, I think that’s one of the most important conversations to have when someone comes knocking on your door saying, Hey, can we do a lunch and learn or can we, can I meet with the the spa manager, the practice owner, or whoever is the decision maker in the practice, is like really understanding your needs and expectations of a partner, and like, lay it out on the table in the beginning, because I think, like any relationship, just having that clear communication. Are you someone I’m going to talk to on a monthly basis? Are you someone that’s going to come visit on a quarterly basis.

Are you someone that when I hire new staff, there’s going to be trainings? Do you guys have a portal for these trainings, like, how does all of that look? These are the conversations that I think are so important in really finding that perfect match. Because when you have a match like that. Oh my gosh. It works so well. And that rep, we had a rep when I was I was director medical services for Bela sante. There are three location, day spa, med spa in New England, in Boston, and our Neocutis rep, who now has gone into, you know, sales and done all kinds of stuff in the industry, but she was such an incredible rep, such an incredible partner.

She was showing up, she was running contests for our team. She was, you know, really helping to drive sales, and her presence made Neo cutest, one of the top lines that we sold, because she was there consistently every single week. You know, not in the practice, but she was talking with our practice. Those are the types of things that like, if you know, depending on your the size of your business, the amount of employees that you have, you need to have those understandings, I think, in advance, and you can really develop an incredible partnership by that clear, honest communication. I think so often we don’t know what we want or what we need. You find that too. You’re shaking your head, yes,yeah. I mean, what I’m hearing you say is being clear and concise as to what your expectations is. And so one of you know when I’m when I’m working with the sales rep teams, I’ll say, at the beginning of the year, sit down with each of your practices and ask them, what are your top three goals for this year? And not just specific on your particular product, but what are the top three goals with the practice? What are the top three challenges you faced last year that you want to address this year?

What are some areas within your practice that you want to grow and what expectations and what do you see as a great partnership for us, for me, to support you in achieving those goals and sitting down the sales rep and the aesthetic practice, sitting down at the beginning of each year and getting on the same page with what those expectations are, and seeing all the different ways that a vendor can support you. So you talked about your neocute this rep, for example, and I think that’s a great example, because a lot of times these reps can come in and they can talk about the clinical science of the products, which is great, but let’s also think about the other areas that they can support your practice, specifically in skincare.

They can help you with the strategic approach to effective merchandising and the merchandising display, where to place things, how to place things. There is a science behind merchandising. There absolutely is so merchandising, helping your sales or helping your providers with consultative trainings. You know, when is it that you’ve I know a lot of esthetic practices. They don’t want to come across as sales people, and we don’t want you to either. We can provide you with the tools to help you with delivering effective consultations that, as a result, are going to optimize the patient outcomes because you’re doing treatment planning. But in addition to that, it’s going to help support driving revenue. They can help you with inventory management. They can help you with customer service training, phone skills training.

There are so many different ways that they can support your practices beyond just coming and talking about the clinical benefits of a product.Yeah, that’s so true. It’s so true. And I see so often, you know, you talked about the sales is such like a bad word in aesthetics, and it’s really, you know, whether you’re training the patient care coordinator or the aesthetic staff, because oftentimes.

Will have a dedicated patient care coordinator doing the consults and the estheticians, perhaps just needing to understand and recommend those things really teaching how sales can be educational and how sales like we are in such a unique position where they’re coming to us and they’re asking us, and it’s such a disservice for us to not give our expertise and our advice on those things.

Totally agree. So when we’re looking at this initial meeting, is this something that the the product rep is establishing, or is this something that the practice needs to reach out to their reps and and ask for?Oh, great question. It really depends on the rep, quite honestly, and I, and I don’t, I almost don’t even like to say the rep. There’s a difference between a rep and a consultant. So really good reps are sales consultants. They are business advisors. And that’s what makes this role of working in esthetics very unique. It’s very different than other medical sales types. Roles to be successful in medical aesthetic sales, you are a business advisor, a consultant to these aesthetic practices. Great reps are initiating those conversations. However, it really depends on the experience of the sales rep. It depends on their approach.

But if you’re not getting that from your sales rep, then, and you’re the practice owner, initiate that conversation. Hey, I want to sit down with you at the beginning of each year and every quarter, and let’s evaluate the business, what’s working, what’s not working, what can we do differently? What are some different ways that we can partner together to ultimately support each other in the growth? Understanding that these sales consultants, their success is driven off of your success.

So they want to help you succeed on the same team. They’re, yes, you’re absolutely on the same team. Now, if you have a and I will say this will be more of a sales rep. If you have a sales rep, that’s saying I need to get this much in order so that I can hit my number. It’s not a true partner. Probably not a great rep, either.

You’re the aesthetic practices. Should never know what the sales reps numbers are, what their quota is. Ultimately, if you are supporting your practices and achieving their goals, you will be successful, because the practices will be successful. So when we’re looking at again with these, these relationships, if you are how, how would a practice navigate, if they are still in that kind of how do I say it in a nice way?

Besides, they’re in a growth year, they’re not in the place that you know, and a lot of times you’ll have, like inside sales or different people that will help, what kind of support or resources? How can those accounts get to that higher level where they can have the support of a, you know, the rep or the sales consultant, business consultant, how, whatever we’re wanting to call that particular role?Yeah, so perhaps you’re a new practice, or your emerging practice. So maybe you’re not the practice that is a high level tier with a particular organization, because you’re new and emerging. You might be working with the inside sales team.

That’s what they’re but that’s what they’re also specialized in working for a lot of times these companies offer special promotions for these new and emerging practices because they can’t afford to do the higher buy ins, they might have special promotions for them. So there’s a lot of things that you can do virtually.

You could do virtual trainings via zoom Skype or teams with these inside sales team. There’s a lot of organizations have online courses that you can offer as well and and then also, maybe, depending on the the geography of the local rep, sometimes it could be, it could be asking also to have the local rep come by as well. How do you feel about partnering with other reps for a practice. So that’s one thing that I, I personally, always think is incredibly beneficial when you know you have a rep that’s like, Where does my product line? How is it positioned? And how can these two services benefit one another and not just be like, Hey, I’m the only one in town.

But if you’re a skincare rep that works really well with a particular device or anything like that, like, are you seeing those reps like work together to benefit the particular practice? Or what kind of relationships like that are? Are you seeing? Yeah, so we used to have, at the company that I worked at, we used to have a collaboration award that was given, and what that was, you look at some of these larger companies, and they’ll often have, times have a neurotoxin, a filler, they’ll have a particular device, like non invasive body contouring or an aesthetic laser, and then they’ll have a skincare line. And so they have all these different divisions, and when they cohesively work together to support the practice everybody wants and and I so we used to have what was like a collaboration award for those particular situations.

And now if you don’t, if, if, if, let’s say, a particular organization or company doesn’t have multiple divisions, oftentimes having those reps come together. So maybe you have one company who just sells aesthetic lasers, and you have another company, for example, that does x zones, having them work together, and building out promotions and protocols and helping with consultation, trainings on providing the clinical knowledge to the patient on here’s, you know, if you want to improve tone and texture in the skin, this Is the aesthetic laser that I recommend, or the micro needling treatment that I recommend. And these are the exosomes that I’m going to recommend that you do immediately post to help with the healing process and optimize the results.

So yeah, I would absolutely on, on our side, on the vendor side, absolutely, uh, encourage collaboration and and from the vent, from the esthetic practice side, see if there’s areas of opportunity where your vendors can partner together to create promotions together for your patients. I love that. Yeah, it’s, you know, back in the day, and I’m talking maybe 15 to 18 years ago, we would, on occasion, have people that come in that they only wanted their brand, you know, and it was, it was always a challenge to to work with individuals like that that it was just like, Nope, we’re the only thing. And I don’t think that that creates a winning scenario. And when you find a rep or a company that’s open to like, Yes, this is how practices work.

Like you’re most likely not going to only carry one skincare line. You’re most likely not going to even today, not only, not only carry one neurotoxin, you’re most you know, there’s so many different things, and so really being able to find the collaboration and the positioning of your product without getting defensive or, you know, all of the thing you know, like, oh, well, ours is better than that.

It’s like, No, how is it going to make the practice with their beliefs and their patients and all of that, when I think that’s a really positive thing to look for when you are working with a rep of a particular brand, you said something really important that I want to add to, and that is positioning. So a lot of practices that reach out to these sales consultants, they’re saying, I’m going to do an open house, and I’m going to have all my vendors here, and each person is going to get a room, and then the patients are going to go to each room, and they’re going to hear your pitch, and they’re going to stamp a card, and then they’re going to get that card into the raffle, which we hear so frequently.

That can be valuable in the sense that your patients are getting educated on the treatments and services that you offer. It can also be very confusing for your patients if you are not meeting with your vendors ahead of time and discussing how you position each of those treatments. So let’s say you’ve got three different filler companies in your open house, or four different skincare brands that are in your open house.

And here a patient is going from one room to the next room to the next room, and they’re hearing why their product is the best neurotoxin treating the same area that is extremely confusing for the patient, to the point where what happens is the messaging has gotten so confusing that they end up purchasing nothing, and so meeting with your vendor reps ahead of time and saying, Here’s how we’re positioning each of you or doing a dedicated day, this is going to be my day where I’m going to have this skincare company, this neurotoxin, this filler, is going to help actually get you a better relationship, partnership with your vendors, and be clear, more concise messaging for your patients. I have been to both types of events, and there was one where this rep, I was just like, what is happening?

Like this is. Not I was, I was supporting another spas event and going there to show support. And I was just like, What is this individual talking about? Like, it’s it’s not benefiting the practice. I personally think that for the larger style open houses, when you do the demos like that, like it has to align with your offer, and it has to make sense with your offer.

And the practices that we’ve seen do more than six figures in an event is, like, it’s very focused, and oftentimes they’re actually pre selling and doing the consultations ahead of time, so that those patients go in and they already know what they’re going to buy, and they just have to, you know, swipe their card on that day, and then they get to enjoy and maybe they’re being a part of the demos or whatever. But I think it goes back to the theme that I’m hearing through each of these things, each of these topics, is proper planning and preparation and and it’s that, that overlay of like the clear communication, whether it’s where your product is being positioned, what your needs are As a company, um, really understanding that for yourself, and being able to communicate that with your reps.

And this is why I love annual planning, instead of like, oh, it’s Black Friday in two weeks, I’m gonna throw an event. Like, can you be there, and can you pay for all the food? You know, it’s like, that is overwhelming, and it’s it’s not going to get a great response, and it’s also going to create not the best like relationship, where you’re scrambling and feeling just pulled in so many different directions. So agree,patient events take week. A successful patient event takes weeks to plan, and you’re absolutely right, but to market for eight weeks, not even it’s like eight weeks of marketing when it’s already planned in advance.

And so when you when I’m when I’m working with these sales organizations and I’m working with these sales consultants. You know, we’re sitting down and we’re talking about, okay, at the beginning of the year, do a business plan with your practices that you’re working with, understand their goals again, what’s working, what’s not working, what do they need to be successful?

And plan out your promotions. So I have, like, a marketing calendar that I work with them and we plan out the promotions for the next year. Now, I understand a lot of these companies don’t roll out the details of the practice promotions until like the month of which could be frustrating, but we can at least have an idea. Hey, we’re going to run a patient event this month. We’re going to do a phone event this month, we’re going to do a special laser event.

This particular month, you can kind of have an idea, and if you plan it ahead, then the rest of the year you’re implementing, executing what the plan was at the beginning of the year. And that’s what I teach these sales consultants on how to do effectively, so that it is a partnership with these practices, and I’m sharing that with these esthetic practices, because that’s also what you can be doing with your vendors at the beginning of the year and throughout the year.

And it’s when you do it like that, it’s making a decision from a well thought out conscious space instead of a reactive space. And so I think so often, especially, you know, 2024 was a hard year. There were a lot of it was an election year which caused a lot of uncertainties. You know, there it was really one of the slowest summers that so many accounts have dealt. I mean, I was talking with a plastic surgeon that said it was the slowest summer that she has had in 15 years, and she’s multi million dollar practice, and so, like, it was a tough year, and that can bring up emotions, it can and it can say, we’re going to start throwing spaghetti at the wall and see what what sticks, and the real thing like, yes, we have to be able to pivot.

But I know that as the CEO of my company, I want to be making decisions, long term, strategic decisions from a grounded and intentional space. And so for you listening as a practice owner or a sales consultant or a product rep like when you really can take the time to do that intentionally, you’re going to win long term. And it’s it removes that like shiny object syndrome that so many. People get and it really allows you to, like, be intentional with your path, your patience and really what your end goal is. It’s such an important piece of the process,absolutely, being intentional with everything that you do, because it’s so easy to get caught up in the comparison of what other practices are doing, or what’s the shiny new thing.

But be strategic. Be intentional. Look at the long term of what your goals are for your practice and and and align them and sit down with your vendors and use them as an opportunity for cons like consultant type work. Think about too. Just a perspective to add is these sales reps. They’re going to their national sales meetings. They’re jumping on weekly conference calls. They’re they’re seeing the top aesthetic practices in their local area, and they’re hearing best practices of what’s working across the nation. That’s when we go to the national sales meeting, we’re hearing what’s working well across the nation. And we get to take those tools and nuggets and we get to share it with our esthetic practices that are local in the area, so use them as a resource.

I want to pivot to your book. I’ve not read your book, but I’m going to grit. I love the title. I’ve actually read Angela Duckworth book grit, which I think a lot is a lot about resiliency and keep going and get up after you fall down. I imagine these are themes that are covered in in your book as well, and I think that that those are important skill sets, in entrepreneurship, in sales, in in the things that we are doing. So can you give just like a snippet or a little bit of advice, from your book to these practice owners that are wanting to plan, that are wanting to build the relationships, that are wanting to do all these things, but they’re feeling the overwhelm. They’re feeling the stress they’ve gone through COVID They, you know, and and whatever COVID did for and you can’t do facials because you had to wear a mask. Like, I mean, it was insane, the things that were going on in that time period. And by the way, my son was born in April of 2020, and my husband was also active duty at that time, and so he was essential, and it was before they changed paternity. So he had 10 calendar days, and the CDC had, like, six months wait for active duty. So I had a three year old and a newborn, so I totally feel you. And in that space, it was a hard time. And so going through that, and just feeling like we were getting our wheels moving again and getting things going back tomorrow. And then we had 2024 where it was just like, what is happening. You know, I feel like your your book, just from the title and just seeing the the messages that you have on LinkedIn could be a really great read, or really great support for women leaders in our industry.

 

Yeah, so the book is unstoppable grit and it’s breakthrough, the seven roadblocks standing between you and achieving your goals. And what’s unique about the book is it starts with each chapter. Kind of starts with a relatable story, the practical learning lessons that were learned through that. And then how can the reader apply it to their life? I want, yeah, I want the reader to walk away saying, Okay, here’s a couple things I can implement in my life to make transformation. And in the I have three chapters on how to overcome burnout. I share my story of like I said, I was leading a team for an esthetics company across five states. I was traveling every week. My husband was deployed for a year, and my twins were between the ages of a year and a half and two and a half years old. And I talk about what were the practical things that I did and that I learned through that year to help me so that I wasn’t feeling burnt out and overwhelmed, and it was a lot, but I can tell you that there was a lot that I learned through that process that I do believe set me up for success for any business owner. And then there’s stories in there about leading through change. So I tell the story of the time that I worked for a company and we were going through a hostile takeover from a competitor, and I lost half of my team in one day, and I had no idea it was happening either. The leadership team didn’t tell us as managers. And this is chapter nine, and I walk the reader through how we how I led a team through uncertain. Certainty, and we ended up becoming the number one sales team in the nation the next year. And it’s chapter nine, and in each each of the learning lessons and practical advice, I say, if you are in a sales role, here’s some advice for you. If you’re in a management role, here’s some advice from you. And because I’ve also been a business owner. If you’re a business owner, here’s the advice for you. So it’s broken down for each type of reader, so everyone’s walking away with practical strategies on how to develop unstoppable grit.

 

I think that’s so important because with with books in general, and I’m a avid Well, I’ll say I’m an avid listener. My my season of life right now, my kids are four and seven, so I am basically a chauffeur. I’m driving to and from school into after activities, and so I’m in the car a lot, and so I’m really trying to be intentional with that time and make sure that what I’m putting into my mind is, you know, productive and and good, and so I’ll listen to a lot of books, but the really, the most important thing is to actually apply what I learned. And if I only got one little piece of information, like, was my time? Did I get an ROI from my time? And you know, what am I able to apply to my business or to my life? And oftentimes the book doesn’t tell you what to apply. So I love that, that you have it in the sections of like, here’s how you can use this. Here’s how you can apply this. Because just buying the book, you know, a lot of people will buy the book and never listen to it, or they’ll listen to like, the listen to like the first three chapters or whatever, but you’re doing yourself such a disservice. It’s like, listen to the book, apply what you learned, and you know, move forward from there. We have so much available to us in books, like years of people’s knowledge and experience is just given to you for 20 bucks, you know. And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s 20 years being in sales, and 10 years being in leadership, and every point that I make when I’m when I’m making a recommendation on here’s strategies, tactics, things that you can implement into your life. I support it by research too.

So there is actual research behind Here are steps that you can take to change habits that are going to drive results. And here’s the research to support it. What’s interesting and is going to be a lot of fun for your audiences is most of the stories are from me and my team working in esthetics. So they’ll probably read that story and be like, Oh, I can totally relate to that one, because it’s all about working in esthetics. Oh,fun. All right. So before I ask you to share where people can find you and follow you and get your book and all of those types of things. Is there anything else you feel like you want to add to make this episode complete?

 

I mean, we’ve talked about so much valuable information here on the podcast. I think if anything, the resounding message is is, see how there’s different opportunities to work with your vendors. See them as a resource. See them as an opportunity to share knowledge with you on how you can be successful, and when you really true. Invest the time in that partnership, you will both yield positive results. I love

it all right. So where is the best place for people to contact you? Where can they get your book? We’ll make sure that we link everything up below the show notes. Yeah. So the book, unstoppable grit, is available in audio, Kindle, paperback card back on Amazon and any other book provider as well. And then I’m available on LinkedIn, so Danielle Cobo, and then any other social media platform on all of them, but tiktok. Ah, yeah, never did the tiktok. You’re not gonna see me dancing on tiktok, so but you will see me on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Love it. Thank you so much for your time, and thank you so much for your expertise. I really appreciate all that you’re doing in the industry. Thank you, you as well.

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EP 419: The 2025 Meta Ads Landscape with Tara Zirker

After a whirlwind 2024 (and the wild ride to the start of 2025), you might feel a little scrambled and perhaps a bit anxious about where this year will lead as we navigate economic shifts. 

That’s why I brought back my good friend and personal Meta ads expert on speed dial, Tara Zirker, who will help put your mind at ease about your marketing and how paid ads fit into the picture. 

Tara is an advertising expert with over 10+ years of experience running ads for clients across a wide array of industries and with a variety of budgets. 

She is also the founder of Successful Ads Club, where she has taught thousands of business owners to rapidly scale their revenue through the power of Facebook and Instagram ads.

In today’s episode, we’re talking about the current paid ads landscape, what to expect in the year ahead, how to claim your slice of the pie, and how to set yourself up for ad success. 

Whether you’ve never put a single cent behind ads or you’re a seasoned spa owner who currently leverages them, there are tips and insights for every skill level in this episode!

In this episode, we discuss: 

  • Recent big changes to Meta and how that will affect business owners leveraging paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram 
  • Policies to be mindful of to keep your ads up and running and predictions of what to expect in 2025
  • Tara’s top tips on building a successful ads stack and what stands to be your biggest competitive advantage in the year ahead
  • Utilizing the power of AI in your advertising creative process 
  • The four key types of ads to build into your successful advertising foundation

To keep the conversation going, ask questions, and connect with other like-minded aestheticians building thriving careers,

join the free Spa Marketing Made Easy Podcast community


References Mentioned in Episode #419: The 2025 Meta Ads Landscape with Tara Zirker

  • Register for our upcoming webinar with Tara where we’ll further break down the four types of ads spa owners should be running right now.
  • Learn more about how you can work with Tara in Successful Ads Club*
  • Connect with Tara on Facebook and Instagram @tarazirker
  • Listen to some of our past episode with Tara including Episode 362 and Episode 238
  • Check out the reports mentioned in this episode from SkyTale Group and Q site.

*Affiliate Disclaimer: As a strategic partner of Successful Ads Club, if you use our link to enroll, we will earn a commission from your enrollment. At Addo Aesthetics, we only use affiliate links for programs and services we love, trust, and use ourselves!

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

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