00:00:04:10 – 00:00:31:01
Paige Hamilton
You’re listening to Shorr Solutions: The Podcast where our expert consulting team steps behind the mic to share some of the strategies and solutions we implement for esthetic practices nationwide. With decades of combined experience running and coaching esthetic and medical practices. We bring you the guidance that strengthens operation, elevates profitability, and supports long term growth. This is where solutions begin.
00:00:31:04 – 00:01:30:02
Cristian Devoz
All right. Welcome back to another episode of Shorr Solutions: The Podcast. My name is Cristian Devoz and I will be your host for this episode. And today I have the pleasure and the honor of having Paige Hamilton, our marketing and advertising manager, with me. And we’re going to be talking about seasonability in the practices, especially when it comes to this summer slump that everybody is acquainted with in our industry, which, to be honest, let’s talk about this for a second, is nothing new. All industries have seasonability as part of their business models. There are times of the year where certain factors will diminish your typical output in your practice, and that’s just common in any business. Understanding what that is and making sure that you plan for it and know how to prepare for it is what’s crucial to make sure that you can still be successful and utilize the time during those slow months. So with that being said, let’s get started Paige, and once again we’ll come back to to the podcast.
00:01:30:02 – 00:02:00:14
Paige Hamilton
Thank you. This is going to be a good one, especially because summer is coming up. And as you mentioned, the summer slump I think is what most practices experienced. But we want it to be inclusive of everyone as well because we know some practices maybe they thrive more in summer. If you live somewhere where you know, all the tourists come in the summer season, maybe your business picks up. Maybe your slow season is winter when you have really bad snowstorms and people aren’t wanting to get out. So this is going to be applicable for everybody.
00:02:00:17 – 00:02:37:01
Cristian Devoz
Absolutely. Because you’re totally right. Depending on where you’re located, your slow months are going to vary. We have a client, for example, who is in Nantucket, and for her, the summer months is usually the best month because she gets all the vacationers going in to their summer home. So it’s an opportunity for them to have more business coming from all these people that are coming in. So every practice is different, but what matters is for you to identify what those months are and to prepare for it ahead of time. It’s not a market problem. It is a preparation problem. It is a matter of planning and making sure that you are prepared for those months.
00:02:37:04 – 00:03:34:17
Paige Hamilton
Going based off what you just said, Christian, that it’s not a market problem. If you’re in your first year, you might not know what the market is, but if you have historical data from year, year to year, you’ll be able to see and recognize patterns. And I think that’s the most important part of this episode, is that you need to make sure you’re looking at your numbers and planning ahead, because that’s what’s going to be key. And all of these tips you have to plan ahead. So that’s our first tip, is that the smartest owners, the most successful, the ones who maybe don’t feel the hurt as much, are the ones who are planning. So it doesn’t matter whether you have your slow season in the summer, whether it’s in the winter, whether it’s for a few months, maybe twice a year or a few weeks a year, you need to make sure you’re not being reactive. So, Cristian, do you want to talk a little bit about the difference between reactive and then the difference that you would see in planning ahead?
00:03:34:19 – 00:05:44:09
Cristian Devoz
Absolutely. I think that the main thing when it comes to planning ahead is understanding your data. And you mentioned something that was key. If you have been in business for a few years, you already have data that you can use and analyze to know what your seasons are, and you can prepare for those seasons ahead of time. So I’ll give you an example. Let’s say that you have your P&L, your profit and loss statement for the last couple of years. You definitely want to break it down by month and then compare month to month and see if there is patterns between those months. And once you notice those, you will be able to start doing a matrix where you can actually put where your average is, and then compare those months to the average. That way you can see whether in that month you’re going to be above average or below the average. If you’re below the average, that means that those are your slow months. If you’re above the average, those are your very good months per se. That’s going to be an easy way for you to write that and then know and understand what your sustainability is. And that allows you to project for this year or the next year or however, you know, whatever period of time that you’re going to be projecting what your potential revenue is going to be, what your potential expenses are going to be, and that allows you to prepare for it. And if you know, for example, that you’re going to have a slow season and you’re going to have time, you know that you need to to fill in your schedule, you can start preparing ahead of time by having your staff call and try to reactivate patients that haven’t been there for a while. You can start doing things like doing more marketing efforts at trying to get people in for specials and promotions. There’s all these different things that you can do to make sure that those months, you can get the best out of those, even though things are slow, you can still try to maximize those, and you can even use that time as an opportunity to do a staff training and continuing to, you know, just streamline certain processes in your practice, making sure that your systems are working properly and looking at, you know, how you can motivate and strengthen your team so that they can continue to be productive. It’s very important, once again, that you take the time to look at these things, to work on the business and not just always be busy in the business. You want to be working on the business, looking at the data and preparing ahead of time.
00:05:44:09 – 00:06:50:22
Paige Hamilton
I think something important to add about that too is you made that comment is if you’re too wrapped up in what’s going on right now, that’s when you’re going to be reactive. And then so you’re you’re busy, busy, busy. And then one day you notice, oh, well, why don’t we have patients coming in. And then the next day it’s like, oh well patients are coming in again. At that point it’s probably too late because by the time that you can actually analyze anything or start marketing efforts or start reaching out to patients, you’ve already missed a couple of weeks of time where it’s gone, the plane has taken off, and those seats can’t be sold again. So you’re not going to be able to recover as quickly. So that’s what we mean when we want you to be proactive rather than reactive. Because if you’re proactive, you won’t miss those couple weeks of time where, you know, marketing takes time analyzing, and maybe you have to reach out to your accountant and they’re busy. So then now you don’t have your financial data and maybe you don’t understand it yourself, or maybe even you’re busy and now it’s taking you a couple weeks to analyze it yourself. So that’s the key of being proactive versus reactive as well.
00:06:50:23 – 00:08:20:00
Cristian Devoz
Now. And I love that you mentioned the marketing takes time because it does. And what you’re seeing as far as patient influx right now is the result of your marketing efforts in the last three months. So it’s not what you do today what gives you the results of today’s what you do three months ago, two months ago, what gives you the results of today. So therefore if you’re location is three months ahead, you should be starting today to start, you know, marketing and doing the different strategies to ensure that you attract people during that time that you schedule trainings with that time that you start working on, you know, whatever it is that you need to do to make sure that you make the most of those month. But it’s that planning ahead of time once again, and understanding that the efforts that you do today will probably yield fruit 2 or 3 months down the line. So don’t get frustrated and don’t fire your marketing team just because you don’t see results right away. Because it takes time. And at at the very least, three months to see the results of your marketing efforts. Now, Paige, let me ask you there this question and it is what do you see Paige, since you work with the clients, now that you have become a manager in our team, you’re helping our clients with marketing and you have become an asset for our clients when it comes to helping them do their branding, putting together strategies for their marketing and marketing calendars and planning what they’re going to be posting, and all of these things. You have become very crucial when it comes to helping clients with this. So when I ask you what the worst thing that you have noticed that owners do during these low seasons when it comes to, you know, attracting patients or their marketing or just in general?
00:08:20:01 – 00:09:33:23
Paige Hamilton
That’s a really good question. I would say the worst thing that you can do is not knowing what you should prioritize and then prioritizing the wrong things. I think that’s something that we see often. A lot of doctors or owners will say, I really want to highlight this specific treatment, so maybe they really, really want Botox, but maybe their patients don’t want Botox, maybe they want Dysport instead, or any other brand of neuromodulator. So that could be a missed opportunity is not knowing what your patients want. Or for example, if you are trying to really push chemical peels in the summer months, maybe that’s the time where people don’t want chemical peels because they want to go to the pool or the beach or, you know, they’re taking their kids to the park more often because it’s nice outside and they’re home from school. Or, you know, there’s just a lot that goes into what should you be promoting? Not necessarily what you want to promote. So I would say that it would be the biggest missed opportunity to not be promoting the right thing in the right season. And based on what your, your patients actually want.
00:09:33:29 – 00:12:22:13
Cristian Devoz
Right. And, you know, it’s very interesting because if you look at the data once again, and I’ll give you an example, let’s say that you have an ice cream shop and you start looking at your P&Ls and you realize, you know what, during the summer months, when its the hottest, that’s when I sell the most ice cream, obviously, right. That’s a very easy logic. However, it doesn’t necessarily translate to the practice. You’re going to look at. What are your top procedures during those summer months. And if you have historical data that you can look at and you find out, okay, so this is a procedure that does really well during the summer months. Now that you know we’re approaching the next summer months, let’s start planning our marketing around those procedures. And don’t commit the second mistake that we notice, which is to panic discount. You don’t want to do that. You want to be very conscious of what is it that you’re going to discount? How much are you going to discount this so that you’re not necessarily doing a losing proposition, where you’re going to be losing money every time you sell? You will maybe reduce a little bit that margin, but you still want to make money off of those services that you discount, whether that’s by making them part of a bundle, making them part of a membership so that they get those discounts. If they’re a member in your program, you can start thinking about these different things, but making sure that whatever it is that you do, whether that’s promotions or specials, it has to make sense financially for you. You cannot just lose money to try to attract people, because now you attract people that are going to be there for one time, and they are not necessarily going to keep returning as your regular patients. They might come back 1 or 2 times, depending on how well you’re able to upsell them for future services. But once again, you still want to make sure that whatever it is that you do, it’s not a losing proposition for you. The other big mistake that I see is that business owners tend to blame their staff or stop training their staff, and that’s totally the opposite of what you should be doing. It should be building your staffing training them to help, them sell more. Because it’s very easy to say these people are not selling, these people are not performing well. That’s why these are such a slow months. But there is some seasonality to it. So we cannot really put all the blame on them. And yes, they might need some training. Yes, they can refine their skills to sell more into close more packages, more memberships. But at the end of the day, if you as a business owner don’t have the right direction is going to be very easy for them to not know what to do or to be confused about what it is that they should be doing during those months. So we need to make sure that you have, first of all, a plan in place, your planning ahead of time. Number two, you don’t blame your staff, you just help them and edify them so they can perform well and they can attract those patients in preparation of those months. And and then of course, you don’t want to panic discount. And finally I would say don’t slash your marketing because at the end of the day, as we mentioned, marketing takes time. You want to take the time to market before the slow season so you can get the most out of those marketing efforts.
00:12:22:15 – 00:13:32:24
Paige Hamilton
It’s also an investment to you have to remember that the money that you’re going to put into your marketing, you should if you are doing it properly, should see that return on your investment. So it’s easy to say, well, I’m not making any money, I shouldn’t be spending money. And that may be true in some cases. Slow down your expenses and your spending in some areas, but in your slower seasons, maybe you can reduce your marketing. Maybe if you’re in an area where you know if there’s less people, if people are gone, if you have snowbirds and they’ve all gone to their, you know, their winter homes, maybe it doesn’t make sense for you to increase your marketing because you’re reaching less people. You can maybe reduce it slightly based on the demand, and that would be something that you should talk to your marketing agency, get their advice, see what they would recommend. If that’s the smart move. But don’t completely just say, I’m not spending anything on marketing because I have no money coming in, because then you really won’t have anybody coming in. Besides maybe your patients that are coming in on a reoccurring basis. You’re not going to get those new patients, and you’re not going to be able to create that new loyalty.
00:13:32:26 – 00:14:56:15
Cristian Devoz
Yeah. And you mentioned something that is key. Paige and is that you don’t want to completely stop marketing. What you want to do is you want to pivot your marketing. So instead of doing maybe ads, I will probably reach out to your inactive patients or the ones that haven’t been there for a while, do some phone calls, call your patients. You know, give them some promotions, give them some opportunity to come back sooner if possible, and just try to focus on the people that you already have. Because many practices have these big database of emails and they are not sending e-books, for example, they should be something that you should you should be doing on a regular basis, but you could switch your marketing efforts to more of these emails or in newsletters trying to, you know, get more people in that way. So it’s not necessarily completely cutting your budget for marketing, but making sure that the marketing that you’re doing makes sense. Like, I wouldn’t spend a lot of ads if I noticed that that’s not going to give me the the return on investment that I want to see. So you want to definitely understand that. And then the next thing I will say is make sure that your marketing spend is no more than 10% of your revenue. And you know, if you can reduce that and still get really good results, that’s the best case scenario. But just understanding that you should have the availability to market that much, and it will allow you to continue to grow and track more patients, but understand which channels are the best for you.
00:14:56:17 – 00:17:39:23
Paige Hamilton
I think another opportunity as well in these slower seasons are events. And Cristian mentioned, you know, emails and text and that should be happening year round. You should always be reaching out to all of your patients, whether they’re coming in on a regular basis, whether they haven’t been in in a few months. So that is something that you should always be doing. That’s always a great idea, but events are a little bit more exclusive. Maybe you don’t invite everybody because I mean, if you have 5000 contacts, your office can’t handle 5000 people coming in. But if you have an event, you can invite exclusive members. Maybe we talked about your your membership program. If you have your VIP members come in, it’s an exclusive event just for them. You know, you offer maybe at this point is where you offer them some sort of incentive or something that makes them feel really welcome. Maybe you invite them to bring a friend, and there’s some sort of discount for the friend being invited that encourages them to bring in people who may not have already been exposed to your practice or have come in. So you could have a bring a friend night. At that point, you can sell them, try and sell them the membership, and that gives you the opportunity if you’re selling memberships at this point, then that gives you a year’s worth of revenue coming in at this point where it’s your slow season. So if you’re having an event where you’re selling products or services in bulk, that kind of supplements, maybe you’re not having as many patients and you might see that, well, then I’m not getting as much money in the coming months, but you need the money now because you don’t have as many patients coming in. So it kind of balances out. But having events and rewarding your loyal patients who are with you in the slowest time, or encouraging them to bring in more patients for you is always a great idea as well. Make sure you’re not spending too much on these events. Have clear goals in mind. What do you actually want your outcome to be? How many products or services treatments do you need to sell to make the event worth it? And then keep in mind what you’re doing at the event and how you’re trying to convert people. Because if you have an event where ten people show up, you might not think that that’s a super successful event. But if you get $50,000 out of that, I mean, I would consider that successful from ten people versus maybe you have 50 people who come in, maybe you’re counting 50 people came that success, but they only spent $2,000. That’s not I wouldn’t say that that’s a successful event in that case, because you probably spent more than $2,000 to put on the event.
00:17:39:26 – 00:17:47:24
Cristian Devoz
You can look at your return investment. Right. So it’s, was the actual number of dollars, not of people. Right?
00:17:47:27 – 00:18:05:12
Paige Hamilton
Yeah. So you want clear goals in mind. Is it converting patients? Is it converting to consults. Is it actually booking the treatment. Is it performing the treatment at the event. Whatever your your KPIs for the event are, make sure you’re hitting those and you have those established before you start promoting it.
00:18:05:14 – 00:22:07:26
Cristian Devoz
Correct? No, it’s absolutely right. And the other thing I will say, going back to what you were mentioning about memberships and how, you know, you might see at this event a lot of people signing up for memberships or prepaying for certain packages. But then of course, the next months you have to perform those services so you might not see as much revenue coming in. It comes down to always looking at your practice on a year to year basis. Yes, you want to analyze month to month for disparities, and also to make sure that you’re in a good trend towards the end of the year so you can, you know, make as much money as you should be making or as you’re planning to make, but you also want to make sure you protect your bottom line. It’s not necessarily so much about increasing revenue as it is about protecting the bottom line, because what good is it if I go from making 1 million in revenue to 2 million in revenue, but my expenses increase so much that my bottom line went from, I don’t know, 300,000 to 150,000, I’m making more money, but I’m not really making more money because my expenses increased so much compared to revenue. So always protect the bottom line. How do you do that? Well, that is number one. You want to reduce expenses. You know, if you can reduce an expense that’s pure margin that you’re getting, you know, the bottom line. So you want to make sure that you want to look at your expenses, see where you can reduce credit card, for example, your credit card merchant processing fees. You want to look at those. What are they charging you percentage wise. And we even have a partnership with Blue Swipe. And for many of our clients we have been able to get them really good savings just in that line item along the fact that, you know, we can help them reduce maybe a couple few thousand dollars or even tens of thousands of dollars, depending on how much volume you have. You know, it can be significant. So you want to look at your rates. That can be just one line item I can give you right now. And there are a lot of line items that you can look at. You can look at what are you spending for your office supplies? Are you wasting your money when it comes to that? What are you spending on your actual staff? Are they costing you more than they should? And I’m not saying that you should reduce their salary. I’m saying how do you help them and motivate them and train them to upsell so that they can increase their revenue so that the percentage to revenue will decrease so that the way they will be more productive. And these are little things that you want to look at, but definitely protect your bottom line. Start by reducing your expenses, understand your expenses, and ask questions like if you notice a discrepancy, I definitely want to ask my accountant what’s going on here? And they might give you an explanation. Sometimes you might find out that there is something wrong going on. Maybe you have some staff theft that you got to look into, and you wouldn’t know unless you actually look at the P&L. So always look at your P&L. The next thing would be, how do you increase revenue? And that is by doing the things that we have mentioned before, marketing your marketing efforts, making sure that you are thinking outside the box, the memberships, doing promotions and just trying to do anything and everything, or specializing in something specifically. You could go either way. You could be, you know, I’m the specialist when it comes to if I’m a surgeon, I’m the specialist for the face and all the surgeries that I do have focused on the face. I’m making it look very young and beautiful with the best results possible. If that’s your specialty, that’s what you want to tailor to. You know, you can charge more for that level of specialty. That’s one way of doing it. The other way of doing it would be to actually increase the things that you do. So get new equipment, get new services in, and that could be another way for you to also attract more revenue. But these are little things that we look at with our clients on a regular basis. How can we increase your revenue? How can we reduce your expenses and protect that margin? So, Paige, any final thoughts or any final advice that you will give our clients when it comes to a slow season approaching? Well, not necessarily for all of them, because I know that for some practices this might actually be the high season. But in general, for them as they go through their own slow seasons, what would you recommend?
00:22:07:28 – 00:23:30:12
Paige Hamilton
Don’t be scared of it. I think that it can feel intimidating, especially as a practice owner. Both my parents are business owners, so I see them go through, you know, the different seasons of their business, and it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed to feel like you need to problem solve. And I feel like as a business owner, your brain never shuts off and you’re always working. And that’s just the perks of being a business owner. But don’t be scared of the slow seasons. Just know how to do the best that you can to push through and I think that if you see that there’s even a week where or two weeks where you see every single year, this is your slow period, maybe that’s your time to take a vacation. So there’s all these ways to kind of spin it, look at the positives in it, and just do the best that you can to push through and not let it discourage you, because then that will be contagious throughout the practice, especially as the owner or even if the you know, your practice administrator, if they’re feeling the stress from the slow season, then it’ll kind of just plague your whole office and everyone will feel the stress. So try and keep the mood up. Find the positives. Do the best you can.
00:23:30:15 – 00:23:44:20
Cristian Devoz
I love that I really do. So, Paige, with that I think we have a wrap. Thank you so much for being part of this episode, and thank you for everybody for listening, and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Short Solutions: The Podcast.
00:23:44:22 – 00:24:03:04
Paige Hamilton
before Before you go, new episodes are released every two weeks, offering perspective on the decisions, systems, and leadership behind well-run practices for continued insight between episodes. Follow us on social media @ShorrSolutions. This is Shorr Solutions: The Podcast. go. New episodes are released every two weeks, offering perspective on the decisions, systems, and leadership behind well-run practices for continued insight between episodes. Follow us on social media at Shaw Solutions. This is Shaw Solutions, the podcast.
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