00:00:04:08 – 00:00:56:00
Jay Shorr
Welcome to Shorr Solutions: the podcast. I’m your host, Jay Shorr. I’m the CEO and Founder of Shorr Solutions, a national and award winning consulting firm, assisting aesthetic and surgical practices with their operational, administrative and financial success. I have an amazing team of practice management experts and clients across the U.S. and as an industry expert with firsthand experience owning a multi-million-dollar cosmetic, dermatology and plastic surgery practice. Listen in as I lend you my expertise and best tips to successfully manage and grow your aesthetic practice. I will also be bringing in guests along the way, so get ready to be equipped to operate your aesthetic practice strategically and profitably. Welcome to Shore Solutions The podcast.
00:00:56:02 – 00:02:03:20
Welcome to another episode of Shorr Solutions, the podcast. And as Steve Harvey says, I’m your man, Jay Shorr. The only difference between Steve Harvey today and Jay is nobody’s going to be driving out of here in a brand new car. And that’s only humorous to those of you who may ever watch Family Feud. So without further ado, let’s get to it.
Today’s episode is going to focus on I finally opened my aesthetic practice. Now what everybody says to me, What should I do? I’ve graduated from residency. I’ve graduated from fellowship. I’ve left the hospital. I’m leaving the surgeon or the doctor that I’m with. I want to open up my own practice. I want to open up my own spa. But honest to goodness, I don’t even know the first clue about how to do it, both legally, financially, ethically, morally. And then we’re going to get to everything that you need to do.
00:02:03:20 – 00:06:13:18
But what is the first? First and I mean first tip that I can give you nothing more than set a strong foundation for your practice. It’s like you wouldn’t build a house and just start putting bricks on top of one another without building a nice, solid foundation. Or this is what your house is going to look like because, well, that and the foundation there’s never going to be only trust. So let’s talk about what we need about setting a strong foundation.
First, we have to have strong policies, procedures and protocols in place. And what does that mean? It means what are we going to do? Who’s going to do it and how do we get it done? And all of the policies, procedures and protocols that must and I say must be clear, concise and consistent. I have to identify everything that I just spoke about and we have to develop. And periodically review your practice’s business plan.
Well, one of the next things I hear from everybody is I don’t have a business plan and what do I say? Shame on you. How do you not have a business plan? Right now you should always be working on a business plan that’s 1 to 2 quarters ahead. Why? Because how do you know if you’re effectively meeting your strategic goals if you don’t even have a goal? It’s not funny. I’m laughing because I see it all the time and the more intelligent and I don’t mean academically intelligent, but the more intelligent business people say, You know what? You’re right. I need a financial, I need an operational. I needed administrative and I need a marketing business plan. And most of the time, people need that to be able to take to a bank or a third party lending institution to get financial resources, because the lending institution wants to know one thing, and you’ve heard me say this many times before, how do they get their money back? So a strong business plan, incorporate it with a feasibility plan, gives the lender just that.
And next, you have to have a strong electronic medical record, electronic health record, one that has photo management, inventory tracking systems and theft prevention policies because many times people don’t know what they don’t know. And it’s important because many of your practice management softwares, they may have the scheduling process, but what I can share with you, they don’t have great financial reporting or one hand doesn’t talk to another. It doesn’t have good photo capabilities for storing and HIPAA compliance, and it doesn’t have great inventory tracking whether or not you have barcoding QR coding, anything that you can do with maybe say, a tween scanner where you scan the UHC, the UPC or the barcode or the QR code, and it eliminates and I mean eliminates all of the error from actually writing up and charging for the wrong item.
And then having a professional liability, commonly known as malpractice, cybersecurity insurance in place. And another one called e p l i. And what are these three different types? Malpractice, professional liability. You know what that is? That’s needed for the practitioner in the event that there is a disputable claim basically on the procedure that you performed, it doesn’t mean that you had to do something wrong. You may have to defend against that and cybersecurity insurance in case just in case you get hacked. And it better be at least $1,000,000.
00:06:13:20 – 00:09:59:05
Tip number two and probably the most important is your h.r. And your personnel. Hire slowly terminate quickly, but hire slowly to get the right people on the bus.
Now, what does that mean on the bus? Well, we just got done the super bowl, and here my favorite line is how do you get to the super bowl? I know people say, well, you’ve got to win the most of the games and you have to win the wild card. Then you have to win the playoffs and then you have to win the division. Then the conference and the two conference leaders get to play each other in the Super Bowl. That’s really not what I meant. Assuming that there are two teams that get to the Super Bowl, they go to their hotel, but from the hotel, how do you get to the stadium? And the answer is, well, by bus, because it’s very close to the stadium where they stay. My favorite line is if you don’t want to get to the Super Bowl, get off my bus, because we only want to be winners. Now, you can’t win the Super Bowl if you don’t get to the Super Bowl. And that could be the Stanley Cup, the World Series. That could be the college playoffs. It could be anything the NBA finals. Just get the right people in hand.
And you have to have HIPAA and OSHA compliance, HIPAA for protected health information and OSHA for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to keep your people safe and keep your patients safe at all times.
Next, you have to learn how to convert your phone leads into recurrent patients commonly known as the conversion cascade. You spend all this money to market, then you market your practice and then you get a lead. Nobody answers the phone and nobody answers the lead and it goes to waste. They call somebody else dead lead. So you have to be able to market, get the phone to ring, get the people in for a consult, convert the console to a treatment, convert the treatment to revenue, and it goes around this cylindrical cycle all over again. And how to ensure that an amazing patient experience from the moment that they walk into your practice until the moment they leave. I can’t tell you how many times I have physically seen a patient walks in and the receptionist, they’re not even a director of first impressions because they make a lousy impression., sits at the desk and the person walks up to the desk and they say, Can I help you? Terrible, terrible experience from the start.
Now, the other way to handle that is the moment that somebody walks into your door the person at that front desk who is the director of first impression stands up, extends a greeting and welcomes that patient new or existing to your practice as a member of your family. That’s in the beginning. And then they have to be walked out of the office and thanked for spending a moment of their time and a part of their day with the family, and you use the name of your practice.
And lastly, how to perform their specific jobs well to meet expectations. That means do you have a job description for each and every position in your office? Last line and each job description is and other duties as assigned because there will be other duties as assigned. Get the right people so that nobody ever says, That’s not my job. The four words that to me will cause you almost to lose your job as quickly as you got it.
00:09:59:07 – 00:11:27:11
Yes. We’re going to take a quick break and a slight intermission. I’d like to take a moment to tell you about our conversion cascade online course. With this self-guided and powerful course, you and your team will be able to master acquiring and retaining more patients as a step by step sales funnel training. This course is designed to help you and your team attract more patients, convert calls to consults, convert consoles to treatments and procedures, and keep patients coming back for more. Not only will our conversion cascade online courses help to strengthen and develop your team’s phone sales and customer service skills, it will also serve as a valuable onboarding training tool for each and every new team member. Plus, in the course, you’ll receive downloadable marketing checklists, phone scripts, conversion tracking tools, and more. So why not sign up for the course today? It only takes less than 4 hours to complete and you can finish at your own pace and you’ll have lifetime access.
And as a special thank you for being our podcast listener, we’re giving you 20% off. Just enter the Discount Code “podcast” to start saving today. Click the link in our show notes to sign up for the conversion Cascade Online course, acquire and retain more patients right now.
00:11:27:12 – 00:13:25:00
Next tip number three have project management software to keep your team on track with projects and to hold them accountable. And these software should eliminate what needs to be done and who’s going to do it. Those are the first two and then the last two. By when does it need to be done and how much time was spent on that task if needed. Now here’s why you need all these things. You always want to know. There’s so many things that happen during a day and so many things that need to be done. We have to actually detail what needs to be done and who’s going to do it. Is it going to be you? Is it going to be the manager? Is it going to be the medical assistant? Is it going to be the nurse? Is it going to be the administrator? It could be a combination of all of these things and then put a timeframe on it, because then everyone throws our hands up in the air and says, Well, I thought it could be done next week, next month, because what’s more important to my boss is always more important to me and I have to know when does it need to be done. I usually like to put a deadline way before it actually needs to be done in case things just happen to happen. And you know that stuff happens, stuff happens.
And then if you want to know what was the actual amount of time that was spent on this task, it’s not bad to have a time tracker in our business as consulting when we bill by time and attorneys bill by time. You want to be able to have a tracking device on how much time. It’s not a bad idea actually in your own business to do the same thing so that you’ll know what did that project actually really cost you in the practice? Because time is money and that’s labor.
00:13:25:02 – 00:14:27:05
Now, tip number four, build your brand awareness by maintaining a consistent market approach and your image across your website, your social media and your physical location. So what does that really mean? What are your colors? What your color palette? On your website is it blue? Is it gold? Is it red? Is a yellow? Maintain that consistently throughout. Let’s try that again.
Maintain your brand and maintain consistency in your marketing and your image across all of your channels. And I mean all don’t have your colors and your brand looking one way in one area and one way in another. If you notice, even on our website, everything is the same color. Our e-blasts are identical with the headers in the footer. Our emails to you, even our branding in our podcasts and webinars are identical so that there’s brand consistency there. So you know who it’s coming from.
00:14:27:05 – 00:15:39:12
Tip number five, if you’re not doing search engine optimization or pay per click even I won’t be able to find you. SEO – Search Engine optimization, SEM – Search Engine Marketing, Invest on this search engine marketing campaigns to get leads from Google. The number one resource to get your leads from.
You can also invest in social media ad campaigns, whether it’s Instagram or Facebook or Google. Invest in your social media ad campaigns, but always look at the analytics to make sure that your investment is paying off because as you grow your patient base, you can switch to a more organic approach. For instance, pay per click versus search engine optimization. It’s like an unbalanced scale. The scale is up here and it starts to lower when you get more patients, you can lower your cost from pay per click search engine marketing to your search engine optimization. Otherwise known as organic.
00:15:39:14 – 00:17:04:00
Tip number six. And what I think is one of the most important one to get going, review your PNL statements, profit and loss statements monthly to look for disparities. I speak with practices and prospects who tell me they look at it every six months to a year.
My one number one question is how do you ever fix anything? If what’s happening is monthly, it’s actually happening daily, and if I don’t look at it at least monthly, I can’t fix what happened two, three, four months ago. But I can effectuate a change if I look at it at least monthly. Notice a disparity and then try to fix it going forward. So what do I look for? I look for ways to reduce expenses and analyze ways to increase my revenue. Now they are very disproportionate. Why? Because every dollar of revenue that you increase if you’re at a 30% margin, it means that you only have $0.30 of a dollar every dollar that you generate. It meant only $0.30 went to the bottom line. However, if you decrease an expense by $1, you have made a profit dollar. A reduction in your expenses is 100% margin dollar.
00:17:04:02 – 00:17:56:06
So let’s review. Tip number one set a strong foundation for your practice by having good policies, procedures and protocols. Tip number two hire slowly terminate quickly, get the right people on the bus. Tip number three, have good project management software. Tip number four, build your brand awareness. Make it clear, concise, consistent. Tip number five, invest on your search engine marketing and your search engine optimization to get leads from Google and invest, invest, invest in yourself because you could always change it. And tip number six. And lastly, review your profit loss statements monthly to look for disparities, to reduce expenses, and analyze ways to increase your revenue.
00:17:56:08 – 00:19:12:07
Lastly, but not least, seek advice from great practice management experts and consultants like Shorr Solutions, who have a proven track record of success and firsthand experience in the day to day operations of an aesthetic practice.
I am proud to announce that we have won three awards in 2024. We won the best aesthetic practice service company. We won the top CEO award in the aesthetic practice service industry. And I also just won the Lifetime Achievement Award for philanthropy and practice management from aesthetic everything. This is my second lifetime Achievement award from two different organizations. I don’t know that I’ll be able to win them again. First of all, I don’t know that I’ll live long enough to win another lifetime achievement award.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, are the top seven tips on. I finally open my practice now what? Thank you for joining another episode of Short Solutions, the podcast. I’m your man, Jay Shorr. Good luck and God bless.
00:19:12:09 – 00:20:45:09
So that wraps up today’s episode of Shorr Solutions The Podcast. If we mentioned any website links, you can find them in our show notes. To work directly with me and our award winning team of consultants to increase efficiency, increase revenue and decrease costs, and your aesthetic practice schedule a free console with us today.
We will help you establish and refine your aesthetic practices, protocols for maximum efficiency and productivity, decrease your expenses and increase your profitability with an expert financial analysis of your business, attract more patients, convert calls to consults, convert consults to treatments, and keep patients coming back for more with our sales training, coaching and complimentary access to our conversion cascade online course. Recruit, hire and train new team members and manage any staff turnover with our human resource expertise plus more, head over to our show notes and click on the link to schedule a free 30 minute console with us today.
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