MSD Insider 0:00

Welcome to MedShark Insider with Bill Fukui, your expert host on all things medical marketing and SEO.

Bill Fukui 0:08

Hello, everybody, I want to welcome you to another episode of MedShark Insider. And today I have a, really a longtime friend. But really one of the more experienced consultants and business development people in the aesthetic arena, I’ve known for many years, Kara McClanahan, she is the Chief Executive Officer for Aesthetic Practice Partners. And I want to share with our audience today, a lot of the things that they’re doing that’s very, very cutting edge, I think it’s very different than most other, you know, quote, consulting agencies, and really some of the events that they’re doing. It’s just stuff that I think practices need to know that there are other options out there. So welcome, Kara. How are you today?

Kara McClanahan 1:02

Thank you, Bill. Thank you for having me. I’m so honored to be here with you. I’m doing amazing and super excited to have this conversation with you and share with the audience all about APP and all the fun things that we’re doing and just connecting with you with you on this.

Bill Fukui 1:17

Yeah, well, you know, you had brought up a little while ago that you were, you know, and your background, maybe just start with a little bit of background, you know, for our audience, because I known you and I think you’re one of the most credible people in this business I trust. You know, when I have clients, when you work with clients, you’re honest, you’re candid. You don’t hold any punches. But I think at the end of the day you deliver at the end, so please share a little bit of background with our audience.

Kara McClanahan 1:53

Yes, well, first off, thank you for those kind words, Bill. Um, so I’ve had the pleasure of being in aesthetics for 28 years. And to say that I live and breathe cosmetic medicine, aesthetic medicine, whatever you are calling it from plastics to derms, and med spas, and everywhere in between. I’ve kind of lived in all corners of the industry. So in my 28 years, I actually started out as a provider. So I started out as an esthetician and spent the first half of my career transitioning from provider to managing aesthetic practices from inside the practice. So I worked with small, medium, and very large aesthetic organizations on the business and operations side. And so again, the first half of my career spent living there. That’s where I kind of started to dive into consulting. Because quite honestly, when I was managing aesthetic practices, I wished I had a me. There wasn’t really consultants, right? And it doesn’t matter how new, noviced, experienced or really like entrenched you are. There’s no, there’s no rulebook for managing esthetics businesses, we know that while this is medicine, and business, you know, a kind of 101 applies, is, it’s very distinctly different in the aesthetic space. And so I actually started more mentoring and consulting on that journey, because I wanted to give back and share the knowledge that I had learned along my journey of managing aesthetic practices. So very, very low key it was just like, I always like to say it was Kara, her laptop and her brain and I started my own little private consulting company. But I also transitioned at that point to the industry side. So I’ve spent the latter half of my career last 12 years on the industry side working with manufacturers from medical device, skincare, breast implants, and a lot of other industry side, consulting with them to create post sales support processes and supporting the aesthetic businesses that were buying our products. So like I said, I’ve kind of done the gamut of all sides of the industry. And earlier this year, decided to jump all in with my passion, which is practice management, and relaunch Aesthetic Practice Partners, which really isn’t your traditional consulting company. And I know that we’re going to talk about that a little bit.

Bill Fukui 4:21

You know, I’m so glad you kind of mentioned the, the industry or the corporate side of cosmetic and medicine because most consultants that I’ve dealt with, you know, and a lot of practices have, don’t have that. Right? They don’t have that aspect. They, some of them have worked in practices, had been consulting for many years. But I think that dynamic of being on the corporate side, doing the things whether it’s co-op marketing, how do you support those practices in ways that just consulting alone can’t. Right? So I love the fact that you kind of shared a little bit of that. So when we’re talking about APP, what, what is different? You’ve kind of shared that with me, delve a little bit into what’s the difference between just traditional consulting and some of the things that APP is now doing for practices?

Kara McClanahan 5:26

Well, let’s start by why I named APP Aesthetic Practice Partners. Um, I, when I relaunched, it was really important for me to identify us as a true partner to the practices we support. And while, as a consultant, I was always a partner to my practices, I found myself also being the one that, people joke, and they’re like, oh, you need someone called Kara, she knows someone for that, um, I’ve got a friend in marketing, I’ve got a friend over here with this device, oh, you need a skincare contact, um, or a bookkeeper. So I found myself kind of being the connector, which is great, right. But when you’re supporting a business, or a practice as a client, and you’re connecting them with all of these different resources, you’re kind of handing it off. Um, and you’re hoping that the resource you gave them is going to be able to support them the way you support them, you’re hoping that the practice grabs that support resource and partners with them or utilizes them or leverages that properly. But you’re really just hoping right. And so I found that there was so much support needed to run an aesthetic practice. And we all know this, there’s, you know, you need someone for everything. And your business should tie to your marketing should tie to your financial health assessments. And so often when you’re working with different partners, they’re not speaking. And so when I named Aesthetic Practice Partners, I really decided to relaunch as an end to end business advisory group that can support practices by pulling all of those services under our umbrella. So whether it’s giving strategy, walking alongside of you, or actually being responsible for the execution of many of these things that we know practices need, we get to own that with you walk alongside, like I said, make sure execution, and everything’s done to fully utilize all the support and resources. So from recruiting and onboarding, and marketing strategy, fractional CFO services, we’re getting ready to launch a group purchasing organization, so that our practices can get best pricing on everything from their clinical supplies, to their injectables and many other supplies that it takes to run their offices. So we’re doing a lot of really fun things, but we’re bringing it together. So when we partner with our practices, not only are we providing a resource, we are helping with the launch and execution of a lot of these different things to ensure maximum optimization and practice performance.

Bill Fukui 8:08

Yeah, I mean, I didn’t even think about kind of the basically leveraging the power of many, right, when it comes to, you know, because we’re all we all know about consolidation, and trying to compete in an industry now where corporate is, you know, let’s face it, it’s, it’s here.

Kara McClanahan 8:29

It’s a thing.

Bill Fukui 8:31

And our practices are having to compete with that, where we have a lot of solo practitioners or smaller practices, even with multiple locations, they’re competing with, you know, the buying power of these big entities, etc, negotiating, you know, less costs and overhead and expanded services that a smaller practice really can’t, can’t do. So,

Kara McClanahan 8:57

Absolutely.

Bill Fukui 8:59

[inaudible] thought about that.

Kara McClanahan 8:59

Yeah. And that was the thought actually behind what we were doing is we wanted to give practices, the power of the resources that you would get with, say, joining a private equity organization, or a corporate entity, but still maintaining full ownership of your practice and autonomy of your practice. But having all of the support and resources that those competitive partners have to run their organizations, as you said, consolidation’s here, it’s not going anywhere, it’s getting larger, there’s new private equity and franchise and corporate owned locations in metastatic is popping up every single day. And we wanted to partner with our practices to bring those resources to them, allowing them to keep full control of their practice 100% ownership, we don’t do revenue share and the autonomy but with the support and the expertise that we can provide.

Bill Fukui 9:00

Yeah, no, I think that’s, that’s an advantage I didn’t even think about. And I love the fact that you guys can bring that to them. Because I think it in today’s in today’s world, in order for you to compete long term, and I don’t just mean today, I mean down the road, in order for you to compete, you’re gonna have to think, you know, bigger picture, and how can we leverage more assets, more things. Because it all comes down to, hate to say it, it comes down to money, we’ve got to be able to deliver, you know, goods and services at a at a better, you know, in terms of better delivery, and also a more competitive price. But in order to do that, we’ve got to leverage our, our overhead and other expenses. And I think that’s one aspect that I, again, traditional consulting can’t do.

Kara McClanahan 10:56

Absolutely, absolutely

Bill Fukui 10:57

You know, so the other part of that end to end that partnership that you talked about, you and I, we first got introduced, we started working together when you were with a practice, so you were kind of the main contact person for us, and held us accountable, to, you know, delivering the services, and ultimately, the results. You know, talk about that aspect of, of how you guys can help practices is, is because I know how you operate personally. Because I had you as a client, and we treated you like as such, right? You were, you became and then you became, you know, this, you know, worldly consultant. And even then, you know, you were, you still took control over, you know, the client successes and results. Talk a little bit more about that.

Kara McClanahan 12:03

Yeah, you know, one of the things that, again, I love is being able to really be in the trenches with my practices. And so, you know, I think it’s really important as consultants, you know, there’s a lot of consultants out there, they have varying degrees of experience. I’m friends with many, many great consultants out there. But I think the one thing that I know we at Aesthetic Practice Partners focus on with my consulting team and working with our practices is not just to give ideas, recommendations, you know, here’s a strategy that we know works. First off, we know, every single practice is different, you know, it doesn’t matter that you’re delivering some of the same services or even in similar geographies, or to patient demographics, but your individual practice is very different. So their needs are different. And a lot of our practice owners, as you know, are excellent providers, excellent surgeons, excellent dermatologists, but they rely on others to manage the business side of their business. And when you bring in a consultant, you don’t need lots of ideas. When I was managing a practice, I had a lot of ideas. And but what you need is you need extra hands. So you need how am I going to execute when I have this going on. And I have that going on. And I have staff turnover, and I have year end reviews, and I’ve got to meet with my accountant, you need a partner. And, really, that’s what we do. We help create strategy, identify opportunities in the practice. And then not only do we hold our practices, our clients accountable, but we also partner with all of their support partners, as well as the ones that we bring in as well. Because we know that execution and time are the themes that practice managers and business owners have very precious little of. And that’s what we’re there for. So being able to not just come up with strategy that we know is going to work for them that’s custom tailored for them. But then to walk it all the way through, see it through to execution and really hold all parties accountable, to be successful. I think, again, that’s what we’re dedicated to. And because all of the consultants that work for me have a unique background as well, They’ve been in the practice. And they’ve been on the industry side that’s actually requirement of mine for my consultants. So as you said a lot of consultants have worked in practices, but not, do not have the benefit of having also worked in industry, as well. A good portion of consultants out there have been sales reps, they sold you skincare, they sold you medical devices, but they’ve never had the privilege of working inside a practice. So it is a requirement for my entire team on the consulting side to have both worked in industry and in practice so that we know what we need to do to bring those things together to help deliver results and hold all parties accountable.

Bill Fukui 14:58

You know that, that’s amazing. Right, in order to develop a team of consultants where I know everybody that I’m going to be dealing with, understands the business of medicine, as well, as consumer facing. Consumer facing, you know, obviously that’s, that’s how we make our money. But it’s it’s now bringing that other corporate business side to the table and making it work for each individual practice you, you kind of mentioned. And one of the things that I thought you did, you started to do, were these business accelerator, training courses, events. Tell us a little bit about those, because I think those are things that, again, it’s relatively new, I don’t see consultants doing this kind of stuff. So, so share a little bit about what those are.

Kara McClanahan 15:57

Yeah, so we’ve launched a series of workshops. And, you know, you and I both speak at a lot of conferences, and we try and bring as much value as possible inside the amount of time, we’re allotted on podium to share pearls of wisdom. And we hope practices take that information back, and are able to use that to benefit their practice. But when you go to conference, there’s talk after talk after talk. And it’s in Las Vegas, it’s in Miami, there’s you know, things going on. And, you know, there’s an exhibit hall, everybody wants to get to and see all the new stuff that’s out. So it’s a lot of sensory and information overload. I know because again, not only have I participated on the practice side, but I speak at a lot of those conferences. And I always walk away from the podium feeling like, gosh, I wish I had 20 more minutes, so that I can not only share that, like highlights of what I was trying to get aross, but so that I could tell them how to take this back to their practice and apply it. And then they have like industry sales dinners and those kinds of things, right, the a lot of the industry partners, again, device, skincare, et cetera, they have their own workshops. But as you know, it’s very focused on their products as it should be. And they do bring a lot of value. But again, the business side always is lacking. So a Aesthetic Practice Partners has launched a series of three very different workshops, initiating with our Med Spa business accelerator, or MBA, which is geared for practice owners and managers. And it is a full day symposium. Starting with a lot of great motivational let’s get excited about being here and really talk about what defines success in a medical aesthetic practices. While it’s called Med Spa business accelerator. It’s for any medical aesthetic focus practice. And we dive into HR, building a high performing team incentivizing, motivating, training, onboarding, how do we set that team up for success? And we move into marketing, all things, branding, and differentiating yourselves, you know, creating that like upscale patient attraction, and you know, really defining your, your brand, and then a marketing workshop, which is led by you. And diving into all things digital marketing, and, you know, SEO, PPC, what is your website, and lots of other really great things on the marketing side, as well as we do have some industry partners joining us that talk about things like what does private equity and consolidation mean to every practice? Whether you’re considering it or whether you’re not considering but, but how does it affect you, we’re going to talk with skincare partners about the power of increasing your retail sales and optimizing outcomes by always leveraging skincare in your treatment plans and retail sales strategy. We also dive into, you know, how you set your providers up for success, what do you expect for them, you know, to help grow their patient population, to increase their retention to ensure optimal outcomes. So it’s really truly the business side of aesthetics. And of course, we always try and cap it off with a really fun networking event to give owners and managers an opportunity to network within peers as well as our industry experts. So it’s really a full day immersion in a business side of aesthetics. We’ve launched that workshop here in several different regions throughout the United States through the rest of this year. And then we’re going to be launching the second series, which is called conversion, which is focused on the sales and the patient relationship lifecycle. So think customer service, for your front desk, for your patient care coordinators. What do we need to do to make sure that we’re converting leads to consults, consults to treatment and keeping those patients coming back in the door, and then our third and final series of the workshop is called level up, which is for our clinical providers. It’s not going to be kind of clinical education, but it’s going to be, you know, perfecting the consultation process creating and leveraging long term comprehensive treatment plans. And really, again, that, that non clinical provider elevation and how they deliver services to our patients. And again, I think these series of workshops and staged the way they are, address all the needs of practices to allow them to really look inside, optimize what’s working already and learn things that they can really elevate their total office operation.

Bill Fukui 20:38

You know, the the two things that you just ment- two of the things that you mentioned, number one, was the collaboration with other providers, right, we’re, they’re similar, they’re, they’re attending these things, because they have a common goal, a common need, right? And they can absolutely, they could and should be learning from each other. Because you are, it’s more than just, you know, somebody up there presenting the content. It’s that interaction, the, when you walk away, it’s what do you walk away with, you know, from, from an event or from a training session, that, that, you know, you almost can hold each other accountable.

Kara McClanahan 21:23

It’s having a peer network, which we’re just not trained to do in the aesthetic community, or many industries, even outside of aesthetics. But the reality is, there’s enough faces for all of us, there’s enough skin to go around. And if we’re all elevating aesthetics together, the entire industry, and, you know, is is really being elevated, so I hate to overuse that term community over, you know, community over competition and collaboration, but that’s really what we need in the esthetics community today,

Bill Fukui 21:52

You know, the, you know, the old term, you know, rising tides lifts all ships, you know, at the end of the day that’s, that couldn’t be more true with, you know, in our industry.

Kara McClanahan 22:04

Absolutely.

Bill Fukui 22:05

The other part that that you kind of mentioned, was separating out some of these other practice areas, and not just trying to squeeze everything into this one thing, the conversion part. When you’re talking about conversion, I, as you know, being in medical marketing for, you know, 30 plus years, even before there was an internet, we were doing TV, radio, you know, print, Billboard yellow page, we were doing all that kind of stuff. And the, the issues of conversions are still here, right, the challenges that we deal with conversions hasn’t changed, it’s maybe gotten better.

Kara McClanahan 22:45

Right.

Bill Fukui 22:46

But there’s still a huge void, of a vacuum that I think I love the fact that you’ve kind of segmented that into its own thing, because I see so much value and importance in that.

Kara McClanahan 23:01

Yeah, absolutely.

Bill Fukui 23:03

So no, that sounds great. Tell, tell the audience how can they learn more about the, the training sessions that you guys are scheduling? What’s the best way to start learning about those, and if it makes sense for their practice, to reach out and start engaging with you guys?

Kara McClanahan 23:22

Absolutely. So first and foremost, visit our website, it’s aestheticpracticepartners.com. And if you scroll down to the bottom of the homepage, there’s an events banner that has all of our upcoming events. And it has dates, locations, links to register links to learn more, you can contact us as well, either through our website, or even our social media platforms, everything is Aesthetic Practice Partners. And we can definitely let you know when there’s an event or workshop near you, as well as talk a little bit more about how someone can get involved in either partnering with APP or leveraging the resources that we bring to the esthetics community.

Bill Fukui 23:22

That sounds great. I’m going to end this with just one one request a question.

Kara McClanahan 24:13

Yeah.

Bill Fukui 24:14

Because you, and it and it’s an unfair question. What would you say would be if somebody is leaving this this program? What is the one takeaway when it comes to the business of medicine? That you would say, keep this in mind? This was the one pearl I would pass along. What would that be?

Kara McClanahan 24:36

Oh. So I think that gosh, again, it is an unfair question because there’s so many things that, that but I’m gonna say optimization. So much we focus on revenue, we focus on new patients in the door, we focus on things that we don’t really realize if we just make small adjustments in the way we do quite literally like almost everything in our practice, if we can optimize what we’re doing, we will see an increase in productivity, patient increase, revenue. And that’s like, really what we’re focusing on is optimizing all areas of practices, so that you can take what you’re doing well and do even better, and recognize where there’s opportunity to grow your practice. So I think that the key takeaway for practices should be, I need to optimize. I just and I think that that’s the word I’ve been living by this year is we don’t need to change. We don’t need to restructure, we just need to optimize what we already have or optimize the systems in our practices so that we can really elevate and scale.

Bill Fukui 25:43

I love that. I think if you make incremental improvements, you not only increase the revenue, the the systems within the practice, the end of the day, it boils down to a quality of life. Right? If you do that, you will you will you and your team, as well as your patients will have an improved quality of life. Great advice. Great advice. Well, Kara, thank you for joining us today. I do want to probably invite you to a subsequent insider interview again, as we do more of the you know, accelerator courses and conversion courses, those types of things, kind of where the industry is going, kinda with corporate, etc. I’d like to maybe do a an update in in maybe six months.

Kara McClanahan 26:39

Absolutley I’d be honored to join you again.

Bill Fukui 26:41

That sounds great. I appreciate your time today, Kara.

Kara McClanahan 26:44

Thank you Bill.

Bill Fukui 26:46

Okay, super.

Kara McClanahan 26:47

Bye Bye.

MSD Insider 26:48

Thanks for joining us for the MedShark Insider with Bill Fukui join us next week for another dive into all things medical marketing. All episodes can be streamed at www.medsharkdigital.com/medshark/insider

Transcribed by https://otter.ai