Accountant Errors, Quiet Weeks & New Product FOMO

1:03Jake & DavidHey, guys. Welcome to another episode of Inside Aesthetics. How are you, mates? Good, buddy. Good, good, good. What's happening with you? Not too much. Just busy, busy, busy. Christmas is around the corner. It's that time of year. Well, it is around the corner. We're in November basically. It's crazy now. Yeah, and it's our birthday next week. Just to remind you. You're gonna be 46. Happy birthday to us. No, thank you. Anyway, let's get into this, podcast. So, we previously did one recently on are you a commodity? And before that on consultations. And we thought we'd do another episode on a similar slant. This time, well, you can introduce the actual topic, but it's something that you're encountering regularly with your business clients. Yeah, and some of the conversations that are coming up in our WhatsApp group. So of the items I wanted to talk today is just understanding who you should trust when it comes to setting up your business. The accounting side of things. I've been working with a number of clients lately that have got shamozzles when it comes to their numbers. Yeah. And, communication breakdowns with their accountants, and so just covering that a little bit. And, what are the numbers that underpin your business which will, lead into a cool new tool that we've recently added to our app, which is a margin calculator for you. So previously I've done some work on this, but we've revamped it, improved it.

2:10It's now sitting within the app, so you can basically put in what you buy a product for, what you sell it for, how much margin you're making. And it's really useful to understand how much money you're making on the products and services that you're selling, if you wanna compare products to each other, if you're weighing up a new toxin or a different filler or special deals that are coming up. Mm-hmm. And there's also something that helps you work out how much money you need to be bringing in every week in sales or revenue to meet all of your fixed costs, which most people aren't aware of. Yeah. So that's one of the topics. The next one that you wanted to talk about was new products, and we've spoken about a lot of new products on the podcast in the last few months. But I guess just grounding people back to some basic thinking around, well, if you are bringing a new product in, how should you be going about making that decision from a clinical perspective- ... from a business perspective? And then, lastly is the emotional rollercoaster. Again, a lot of conversations that I've been having recently with people that are feeling anxiety, stress about where their business is heading at the moment and the ups and downs. They'll have a couple of quiet weeks, and they're feeling stressed and panicked and potentially making bad decisions. And then two weeks later, things are good again. They're busy. Their books are full. So there's this, seems like there's a huge amount of uncertainty with the predictability of people's businesses and the consistency of their patient numbers.

3:23Yeah And just how do you stabilize yourself emotionally during those periods and remain on an even keel so you're not making panic decisions, and, just trying to roll with the punches a bit more? So there's some strategies that I've got that might help you with that. Cool. And before we get into the podcast, if you have engaged with our app, maybe a few months ago when we first launched, we've improved the navigation. It looks better. It looks nicer. It's easier to find content. And along with your business tools that now live under Learn where all of our educational content is, we've also added in some complications protocols, which is pretty cool actually, 'cause if you actually had one of these complications, you could click a starter and actually follow through the protocols step by step and actually feel like you're in control of that situation. We've also created a toxin reconstitution calculator. We had a, some chats going on in our- ... in our clinical chat that I got super confused with people talking about their dilutions of various products. so you can use that calculator for all of the major brands, I think there's eight brands on there, to understand exactly how many units are in your syringe.

4:27Yeah. Oh, sorry, one other topic that we wanted, that I wanted to talk about that I forgot to mention a few moments ago was a post that I saw on social media that was, had the heading, "Is this industry becoming a pyramid selling scheme?" And what they were talking about was everyone's trying to sell you something. And so I guess that was a post to well, who do you trust? How do you discern who's potentially got a quality product or has the credentials or the proven track record to, to give you advice? Yeah. And just m- maybe unpacking that a little bit as well. Don't trust anyone. Anyway, let's start with your first topic, , which was about who do you trust, but particularly with accountancy. Now- Yeah ... how this came about, I believe one of your clients, you were talking and doing a bit of simple investigating. Yeah. And it turned out that their record keeping, their profit and loss- Yeah ... their stuff that they had in their accountancy program, which was- Yeah ... Xero, was just not- Yeah ... good. Well, maybe just to wind it back even a step further, so when I start working- With clients, one of the first things that I like to do is just get an overview of their financial situation.

5:32So that would generally involve them sending me financial statements, or they might give me access to their accounting software basically have a look at their numbers. Obviously before people do that, I sign a non-disclosure agreement. So there's no s- know, I'm not sharing the- Yeah, you didn't tell me the numbers, by the way. Yeah, I'm not sharing particulars with anyone. But this is a good place to start because every decision that you make in your business, whether you buy a new device, change your pricing, give one of your staff members a pay increase, whatever it is, for me, it always comes back to, well, all that, you know, wanting to do it's always nice, but is it sensible to do it? Can your business afford it? What's the financial decision that's underpinning which way you wanna go with it? So I'll always start with this. So this client w- was a doctor here in Australia, and I went through their Xero profile and had a look at all their accounts, and there was just a lot of things that had either been done sloppily or had been done incorrectly, or there was just no care factor their accountant. And for me, that's a red flag straighta- straight away because I- Oh, this is from the accountant? Yeah. Not from the doctor. Well, their accountant was basically doing everything. Okay. And so for me it was s- a lot of red flags because a schmuck like me who doesn't have an accounting degree- be critiquing an accountant who's a, a qualified professional- Yeah ... with a, a university qualificati- fication. So if someone like me is picking up lots of basic errors, so you know, things that I noticed were, GST not recorded on treatments. So if anyone's not in Australia, that's like a tax- Mm-hmm

6:51that you need to charge on all goods and services here in Australia. Different countries have different taxation systems. But essentially, if you're selling a product or a device here in Australia, or a service that is not like fresh food or a genuine medical treatment, it needs to have this tax applied to it. So there was a huge discrepancy with products that should have, products and services that should have had GST applied to them that weren't. So essentially you collect tax on the behalf of the government, then give it back to them. And if you haven't accounted for that- Correct ... you're 10% down. You could have a huge tax bill. There could be interest, there could be a fine applied. You don't wanna get audited because even that process is stressful. It's disruptive to your business. You have to get your, professionals involved to help you depending on what questions the tax department asks you. So- ... this really is a basic 101 issue that shouldn't- Be, shouldn't be errors with this kind of stuff. It's pretty clear what we do. If you do a genuine medical treatment. Yeah. If you're like a neurologist giving someone toxin for migraines, that would be a GST-free treatment, because there's a genuine medical concern for it. But treating someone's frontalis with Botox is not. Yeah.

7:54Example, because- do you think this came about because of the accountant not understanding our industry? Yeah. Maybe they made that assumption. They did, but I, from my understanding, the client had to explain this to them a number of times, and for some reason it just wasn't done. There was weird stuff on how loans were being reported and the way they were being paid back. There are accounts that were not reconciled going back many months, which is just way too long. there were issues with costs being put in the wrong category, so their medical supplies were not being categorized correctly. So when we were trying to work out things like margins- ... it was not giving us accurate numbers. So there was just like a litany of nothing that was like- horrific. It couldn't be fixed, but there just shouldn't be these kinds of mistakes. And as someone that's a professional, you would expect that they would cover this kind of stuff. And I think that the underlying message is, from me, that you can't just trust p- people implicitly. You need to have a baseline level of understanding, be able to sanity check this stuff. And whilst you don't have to be an accountant, if you just are blindly signing your BAS, your your quarterly tax return for GST here in Australia, your annual company tax return without having any understanding of what it is that you're signing, then, you could be throwing away lots and lots of money.

9:12You could be unknowingly doing things that are non-compliant or against the tax regulations. Yeah. So you really need to understand this stuff, basically, because it can come back to bite you. the, the unfortunate reality is that most people get up and do their job every day and do the bare minimum to come home, and Yeah they don't go above and beyond. So that's not just for t- accountants. It's doctors, it's nurses, it's lawyers, it's barristers, it's pilots. Hopefully it's not pilots, but they Yes ... most people just they're average at what they do. And so I think we put way too much trust in, in, in- But it is concerning because, and I've definitely been in that situation before with bad accountancy advice or whatever. Yeah. We've said on the podcast many times you need to hire some people who are experts, whether it's a lawyer, accountant business coach, whatever that person is. And if you can't trust that person, but also you can't sanity check because you're not the expert to- Yeah ... to counter them it's very difficult. Well, it's if you get a diagnosis from a doctor, most people these days will seek out a second opinion. Or they should be, I would think, especially for serious things. Sure. If they say you need a knee replaced, you might get a second opinion, but like you said, none of this was emergency.

10:22Yeah. It was just wrong. Yeah, e- eventually it could lead to something significant down the track. Yeah. But I think you should have your situation, your numbers looked at by a second person at some point, another accountant, a business advisor, someone in your family that understands this stuff that can just run the ROI over it. Yeah. So if you don't know, definitely get secondary opinions and get other people to be checking this work. It's not uncommon. Generally a lot of these big businesses will get their accounts audited, so will get their accounting work done, and then they'll have it audited by a secondary accounting firm just to, double check these things. Yeah. So I guess the analogy is you put shit in, you get shit out. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So presumably this doctor of yours maybe doesn't really understand what they're earning. Yeah. Don't understand the tax they owe. exactly. This, this doctor that I'm working with, he's extremely switched on. He's got a really good business mind. He's got a great reputation, but he just doesn't have the mental bandwidth to be looking at all this stuff all the time. So I think he was just that the accountant was doing everything the right way. So I came back with a number of questions and said, "Can you just help me understand this," and, "Should this be here?"

11:29And, "I don't quite understand this." And they've come back and said, "Oh, yes, we've corrected all these things now." But what would've happened if it wouldn't have been picked up? Yeah. So and I guess that kind of leads us back to, some of the tools that we've created now, which are sitting on the app. You should know what your margins are. You should know how much money you need to make every week to keep your doors open. And you should have a basic understanding of how to read basic financial documents so that when you sit down with your accountant, you can at least have an informed discussion. You know what they're talking about, and you can sanity check. Because even the best accountant or the best financial advisor, the people make mistakes. Yeah. It's just part of being human. So you having just a basic rudimentary understanding of what it is that's going on is not gonna harm you at all. So what's the situation now with this person? They've changed everything. They're probably gonna have to pay some GST, obviously. Yeah there's probably gonna have to be some GST paid. Now that all ... I'm just waiting for all of the changes to be corrected. Then I can go through and do o- do another analysis on the numbers. And now that I've got things, we'll hopefully have things the way that they should be in terms of things being categorized and stuff being put in there that was missing, I'll then be able to have a proper understanding of the financial health of the business because as it was, I just wasn't able to get an accurate picture.

12:40Yeah. So I needed to get this corrected first. So if people are listening to this going, "Holy shit, I don't even know if I'm in that situation 'cause I'm not the expert and I can't sanity check," what should they be asking their accountant today? Pff. For me, a, a good accountant should want their clients to be informed. So I would basically s- you know, say, "Look, do you understand how my business works?" Can you explain to me, like, when you're, like, you explain to me how to read my profit and loss? Can you explain to me how to read my balance sheet? Can we look at my margins? Do they look healthy to you? Can we work out how much money I need to make every week to keep my doors open? How much money should I be putting aside for tax every quarter or every year? Is there anything from your perspective that I could be doing better? Do you need me to get information to you in different ways?" Especially when it comes to stock, 'cause in our industry- Stock can really impact the way that your profitability looks. Because, for example, if you get a deal to do a bulk order of a toxin, for example, and you drop, I don't know, let's pick a round number. You pick $50,000, and you buy all this stock that's gonna last you for the next few months. So if you were to look at your profit and loss for that month you p- made the purchase, your business is artificially gonna look a lot less profitable because that money has left your bank account.

13:52Yeah. And you've got the product sit- sitting on your shelf. But then, say, the two subsequent months, your business might artificially look more profitable because the stock you bought in the first month is now being used in the next two months. Yeah. But you're not, there's no money leaving the bank account. Yeah. So you can get this kind of up and down sort of profit numbers moving all across the place because your business is not accounting for stock moving in and out of your business. So generally, you should be providing your accountant or your bookkeeper with a stock report every month so that your profitability is reflecting what was actually used, not was a- not was actually bought. Because there's a difference between profitability and cashflow. So the money might have left your bank account, $50,000 has left your bank account. But now you've got $50,000 worth of stock sitting on your fridge, but maybe you only used 10,000 of dollars of that stock that month. Yeah. So really, the $10,000 should be applied to your profitability, not the money that's physically left the bank account. So it's a process called normalization- Mm-hmm ... where you work out what's actually been used, ignoring kind of money in, money out, because that's telling you what the true profitability of your business is. Does that make sense? Yeah, 100%. Basically, if you haven't used the stock yet, but you spent the money, you shouldn't take that- Yeah

15:01into account of your expenses. Yeah, exactly. And because business is moving s- the world just seems to be moving faster every year, you need to have up-to-date figures, and you need to know how profitable your business is month to month. So if you're having to wait a quarter for your accountant to normalize your figures, you might have had three, two or three months where you needed to maybe change something. For example, your margins weren't right, or your pricing was in a your pr- you, so your margins are out. Maybe your prices should have changed, or maybe you should have been buying your stock in a different way You might not know this until two, three, four months down the track. Yeah. Which is, for me, way too long. You should be able to sit down with an accurate set of numbers once a month look at the past month's performance. But if you don't have this stuff all in place, then you're playing catch-up all the time, and that might've been okay 10, 15, 20 years ago. Mm-hmm. But the pace at which things move now, and the uncertainty of the economy, and the high, the high- highly competitive space that this industry's now in, if you don't have up-to-date information at your fingertips, then you're kinda putting yourself at a disadvantage. Yeah. talking about the financial stress- and then we mentioned at the start, the emotional rollercoaster. Yeah. Let's talk about that topic. Yeah, a- again, all, all these sort of conversations come from clients and friends in the space. And, I'll often get messages with people asking me questions or stressing about something or just wanting to vent or get my opinion

16:18And I'm noticing a lot of people just saying "How do you cope with just the emotional ups and downs of busy weeks, quiet weeks? You feel on top of the world when the business is going really well, your books are full, your billing, great." But then, for some unknown reason, because we've got such an unpredictable flow now, people are feeling like just emotionally exhausted because they're going from feeling very positive about their business to them being stressed out of their mind because all of a sudden they've had a number of cancellations. school holidays is always stressful for businesses 'cause people tend to just put everything on hold because they've got their kids driving them mental and taking them everywhere. But obviously, that has an impact on your business. And so what I've found over the years, one of the most difficult disciplines that I needed to work on was how to c- stay evenly keeled, like trying to stay at some kind of, hemostasis, where I wasn't too excited when things are going great and I wasn't panicking when things were going bad, because it's exhausting- to to do that. And I know a lot of people are probably feeling that at the moment. Everything does feel uncertain, you feel almost just emotionally- S- I don't know. You just, y- you start to lose perspective. Yeah. So we were having a coffee downstairs and strategizing what people can do about this, and seemed logical to me or m- maybe some of these people don't know their numbers- so they don't know where they are. Yeah. That's one, obviously, that they can do today with our tool. But also just not having an overall plan. Mm-hmm. Like you say, one week's great, and maybe you spend too much 'cause you're celebrating. The next week, damn, it's school holidays, I haven't got enough booking.

17:52Yeah, fab and all phased kind of s- thing. Yeah. I guess it's different when you're opening a business. You probably have a business plan and so on. But for those people in established businesses where maybe their business plan has gone a bit awry, or it's changed, or it's evolved can they do now to double down on getting control of how they're feeling about things? Yeah. Well, as you said, the, the first step is just starting to become aware and then, and l- knowing what the numbers mean because that gives you a great sense of comfort because you c- all of a sudden, you're not wander... You're not wandering and sort of- Guessing ... as much. Yeah. Y- 'cause sometimes, you can have, you might have had three really good weeks, then you might have a really bad week, and you've got this, the concept of recency bias. Because the last week was bad you're gonna go, "Oh, the last month's been bad." Well, actually, maybe it hasn't. And so just being across the numbers and knowing what's happening from month to month can help you become a little bit more, I don't know, looking at things a bit more objectively rather than emotionally and falling victim to that recency bias situation. The big thing for me is also just having a plan for when things do get bad. So knowing where that red line is and how much money needs to be coming in every week, and then knowing, okay, well if I get below this point, like what's my plan? And coming up with that plan before you actually get into that situation.

19:00Because when you start panicking, that's when we make bad decisions. Frontal cortex shuts down, you go to flight or fight. You're not thinking logically, you're just going off emotion, and can sometimes run from, jump, as my mom used to say, out of the f- out of the fire and into the frying pan. You can make things worse. Or you're just not thinking clearly. So if you reach below that red line every week, okay, well, are there other sources of income that you can pull in? Do you have a situation set up where you can do, I don't know, locum shifts for example, if you need a bit of extra money? Do you have the capacity to rent out other rooms within your space if you've got surplus surplus rooms in your clinic? Do you know what it looks like if you have to move to a product that's gonna give you a better margin? Do you know how to go through that process of analyzing your prices and maybe where you can buy your stock better? Do you have a network of support people around you? Do you have a good business advisor? Do you have like a, a group of other nurses or doctors who you can vent to, who you can ask for advice? You can share, some of the burden that you've got and see if anyone's, got any other ideas that they're happy to share with you, or things that are working for them in their business at the moment.

20:04so just having contingency plans in place. So thinking about, well, what's the worst case scenario? If I start losing money every week, are the tools I've thought about or the steps that I can take beforehand that I don't have to think about when I'm panicking 'cause I've already thought them about them ahead of time when I was calm. And you just m- move through them systematically, and you've got these all ready to rock and roll rather than just to think of them in the moment when you're panicking. Yeah. And one of the big ones we've again discussed many times, is just looking at your database. Yeah. If you've got empty spots in your week, well, reach out to the patients, who haven't come. If it's skin, maybe you can do a deal. If it's injectables, obviously you can't. But just re-engage those people. Yeah. This is the cheapest way of marketing rather than trying to find new people. Obviously some of those things you mentioned like, looking at deals on products, maybe that's more of a longer term- Yeah strategy, but i- it's all relevant for sure. Yeah. It's always the f- the situations that you aren't prepared for- That are the most stressful and the ones that cause you the most damage. So you can get through tough times if you've prepared for them. That's why the term contingency plan exists.

21:04You've got a plan B, a bl- a plan C, a plan D. not just on the fly that's it's impossible. No one can think clearly when they're panicked. Yeah. So I think, just thinking about these things now, if you're not in a panic situation, start thinking about, well, if things did get to a situation where I'm falling below that red line I need to get to every week. What can I do to supplement the business to get through this period? How can I save money? How can I improve my margin? And I guess as well I find people have overcomplicated their businesses a lot with, lots of different products. They've bought devices they don't need. They're spending money on marketing that's not really getting the return on their investment. They think that it is, but they haven't really analyzed the numbers well enough. We had this chat with Rick O'Neill weeks ago, and I've been doing a recent series of talks for Hugel around the country, and one of the things that I was speaking about, which a lot of it was based on Rick's information, so thanks, Rick was website traffic. It's down. not because your website's not important anymore. It's just because AI's ki- kind of hijacked that process, and it's th- it's now lots of different, sources of sort of relevance and trying to legitimize your business and work out where it's gonna rank it. So your website, you might be paying a lot of money for ads and for SEO, but that how people are finding you?

22:17Do you actually know where your new business is coming from? Are you spending money on marketing that's not really actually driving the source of your new business? Are you wasting money? So analyzing your numbers and understanding where your marketing dollars are being spent, 'cause that's where I feel a lot of people, I wouldn't say waste, but they spend a lot of money. haphazardly. Yeah, they don't really ... So you know, and a l- a lot of these companies were very clever in the way that they're saying, "Well, you had this many people on your website, this many people converted." Okay, but actually coming in the door? Are you tracking the people as they come into your clinic and asking you, asking them how they found out about you, or- Yeah What did they type in, if they can remember. And again, I know there's no silver bullet. Someone might see a website, then they'll hear about you from a friend, then they might see you on social media. There's normally lots of different touchpoints that people will come into contact with before they make that connection. But just going through your numbers your profit and loss and seeing, like, where are you spending all your money? Yeah. 'Cause there's generally lots of things that people aren't using, or they're wasting money on things that aren't giving them the return on what they need. Yeah. So right now we're, we have financial stress, at least here in Australia.

23:18Yeah. I'm sure it's happening elsewhere, but w- we had particular change with the interest rates. People are on about their mortgages and just their fixed costs have gone up suddenly. Yeah. Is that the main reason why this has come up as a, I guess a trend for your clients now? Like, why now? Well, it's like that that that Venn diagram. You've got lots of things intersecting all at the same time. Yeah, the economy. Yeah, the geopolitical situation. Yes, regulation. Yes to increased competition. Yes, economic uncertainty and difficult times. A lot of people with interest rates and inflation. So you've got a lot of these things all happening at the same time. Yeah. And so I don't think it's just one thing in particular. I think it's just a combination of things that are increasing- The difficulty and competitive nature of running a business, any business. It's not just aesthetics. This is like every business is feeling the pinch- Yeah at the moment. And it's all collided all at around the same time. And the, the more concerning thing from my perspective is that we're now in the business end of the season So this is when people are normally, making a lot of money from here till the end of, till Christmas time.

24:22Yeah. And so if people are feeling the pinch now in, let's call it November. Yeah, especially that January period where we know that it's not gonna be as busy. Yeah. a bit concerning. Yeah. So are, are people noticing, yes, maybe less bookings, but also less spend? Yeah. Push back on certain products? Yeah, of course. People trying to work out exactly what they can get away with for the least amount of money. And again, this is why it comes back to being really good at the basics and not overcomplicating your business and not buying things that you n- don't absolutely need. So we were talking about this again before we went on air, like what does a aesthetic clinic actually need in their clinic? What do they need? They need a good toxin. Do they need three or four toxins? Probably not. One, two maybe. A good filler. A basic range of, a, a basic filler with like a range of different products that you're gonna use. And not with nine brands. Not with nine brands. Do you need, probably a bio stim or bio remodeler, like something like that. If you need a device, you probably only need one device to treat most of the indications that you're gonna see in your clinic. You don't need three or four devices. Does it need to be a $200,000 device? Probably not. So just not overcomplicating your business with wanting to do every single product, have every single procedure under the sun.

25:36Yeah. What are 80% of people gonna need? Yeah. I was talking to a doctor just last week actually, and opened his second clinic recently. I dunno how recently. But he said the first one was going gangbusters, hence- Yeah ... opening the second one. And he said the second one is just difficult. It's just not- Are they here in Australia? the same. Yeah, in Australia. Yeah. In Melbourne. and then yeah, to your point I just asked him, well, what do you have in the cupboard? And know, obviously he's got different doctors in his clinic, and they stock multiple things. And it's like just well, doubling down on, well, why do you need so many things in the cupboard? Especially if you're not doing as well. Just make it simple. Yeah. And I guess this kind of comes back to that conversation of patients dictating what's actually being provided in our clinics, like jumping on trends or things that patients are talking about on TikTok or social media, and they're driving the decision-making of what products and services people are putting into their clinics. And I, obviously we need to listen to our patients, and we're there to service them and all that kind of stuff. But most of the treatments that your patients need are gonna give them the greatest return for th- for their money and time are the basics. Yeah. Well, that kind of leads onto the topic that we flagged.

26:47It's more of a clinical topic- why do you need to add a new service or a new product or a new bio stimulator, a new whatever that thing is. Well, we're consumers. Why do you need an iPhone 18? I've held off Yeah, but like we just constantly- Yeah ... we're constantly being sold to. We're, we're- Yeah ... we're just like, we're con- we're consumers. Yeah. We always want the latest, the newest, the most cool, the thing that's trending on social media. Like, why? Yeah. Well, you just said it's a... it tends to be our patients who maybe stimulate that question of, "Hey, do you stock this now? I've seen it on- Yeah wherever, Instagram." And a lot of injectors do react to that. And I can't speak for everyone obviously, they carry too much stock, or they carry three or four toxins, more than one skin booster. Let's just call them skin boosters. And I feel like they don't really understand the why. Yeah. They understand the demand 'cause someone asked for it, but they don't understand the why, so just rationalizing some of these decisions. And was stimulated by a conversation we were having in our WhatsApp chats about those PDO threads that were super trendy two or three years ago, here in Australia at least.

27:53You go on Instagram and hundreds of photos of patients with, little threads coming out of their face, and it was all very trendy. And patients no doubt asked for it 'cause it looked very dramatic, and they probably said, "Well, I would like that as well." Whereas now I don't know anyone who does these threads. It seems like a trend that has just done its course. And so now we have exosomes biostimulators, PDRN or PN so many different categories that have come on in the last two or three years. And yet to Steve Harris' point when he came on the podcast a few weeks ago, it's like, well, what's the why? Mm-hmm. Do you actually understand the science? What's the purpose of that new thing that you've introduced? We've done the deep dive into why would you introduce a device into your clinic, and your answer was, "Well, what's, what are your patients asking for? What's your demographic? How is this actually gonna change your profit margin or your results that you're giving your patients?" Mm-hmm. And I'm not fully clear that injectors always answer that before- Yeah ... they introduce a new injectable or a new product. And the other thing to think about as well is even if this product does suit some indications that you're seeing and you do see a use for it in your business, is it overlapping with something else that does something similar?

28:59Is it gonna cannibalize? So when the sales reps are coming in and selling you on why you should buy this product or- ... or device, and they're saying, "Well, you only need to do this many treatments per week, and you've paid it back, and this is how much money you're gonna make." But okay, well, is it gonna cannibalize something else- Yeah that I'm doing? Yeah. the c- the classic one is crepey under eyes, and there's been so many products that have come out in the last few years. We've had, let's name some brands. Sunekos . Rejuran. Obviously lasers. Lenisna or Juvelook. Exosomes. Exosome. Yeah, like there's just so many things that are thrown at one indication. if your patients are complaining of crepey skin and you've already got a product that you're relatively happy with, why would you need to just continually change and stock four or five things? We've had Byryzyn as well. It's another one. Mm-hmm. so- and all these products are good. I'm not knocking any of them. Correct. Yeah. I'm not saying... I'm not choosing a camp. I'm just saying you can't stock nine. Yeah. Or you probably shouldn't. Yeah. So which one are you gonna choose and why? Yeah. Is it because it's affordable? Is it 'cause your patients are actually happy? Are you actually seeing results?

29:59Was it just the science that swayed you? You've gotta- Be really clear on that as a business decision as well as a clinical decision So how do you make the right clinical decision? So when someone approaches you about a new product, what's your, I don't know what's your sort of that you go through? Do you have some kind of system that you "Okay, well, let me assess this and work out whether it's worth me stocking or not"? Well, I'm super cynical. Not, not- No, really? ... not just to be like a dick or just to be, obstructive, but I think you have to be. Yeah. You, you really do. We're doctors or nurses or whoever we are. You can't just be sold because someone said it's cool. Or they showed you some before and afters. That's a starting point, for sure. Yeah, I wanna ask for the clinical papers, and I don't just want a paper. I'm gonna do my own critical analysis suss out is it weak science? Is it good science? What competitors are out there. Does their science match up? Does the science even make sense? Some claims are very dramatic, I think your starting point does have to be, "I'm not gonna say yes. I'm gonna do my due diligence. I'm not gonna rush into buying anything." Mm-hmm "Gonna ask colleagues. I'm gonna see was it launched elsewhere. How's it gone in the UK or America or wherever, wherever it was launched?"

31:09Profhilo, that's a good example. The, the UK had it for about 10 years before we had it here. Yeah So we had a rich history of asking my colleagues- Mm-hmm ... "how do you use this? Is it good? Is it profitable? Any side effects?" You can just ask people. Whereas if something is completely new I don't know, a new like exosomes was a year or two ago, really have anything to base it on. You're just like, "Oh, wow, that sounds cool, but I just don't know. just have to believe what you're telling me from a marketing perspective." So I haven't rushed in with some of those things, but also it's because of the services that I do in my room in my clinic. I wouldn't have a modality to get exosomes in someone's face. So it's just not really on my radar versus a lot of the injectable things that I've been offered in the past. I've just watched and waited. I don't need to be a trendsetter or I don't need to use my patients as a guinea pig. I just wanna- go slowly, would be a more sensible way of approaching it. What are your thoughts? Well, I've made the mistake of being really excited about new devices. I went and bought 10 CoolSculpting machines.

32:13And then the whole stuff with Linda Evangelista came out, and it was like, "Oh, no." It's like, not good. There wasn't a... Well, you know- ... it was like it was something me getting really excited about it, and we thought, "Yeah, I'll take 10." It was just like it wasn't a m- my most sensible business decision in retrospect. The other thing as well is if you don't know how to read a study, I don't know how to read a study, it's very hard. I struggle. Well, you have AI. But we have other tools. Yeah. Yeah. So you can, we've got a, a library in our app, and it's, we've got some critical analysis in there. But you can plug this stuff into AI yourself and say- Yeah ... "Tell me about this study. What's good about it? What's weak? What would you be questioning more from the company to get, additional information on?" Yeah. You can use all these tools now help you assess the strength of a study and what questions to ask. Yeah. There, there are a lot of injectors who go, "Ah, they've got papers." Well, so what? Are the papers good? Are they garbage? Just publishing a paper is not good enough. I've published papers that, looking back on, I think they're pretty weak, but I published them. Doesn't mean that they're good. And tell me, what do you think about papers that are published by the company that's selling the product? Like, how do you Because this is not a criticism of any particular company, and I'm not here saying that they're not worth the paper they're written on. Obviously, we need a starting point.

33:25But, something is better than nothing. Absolutely. But how... When you know that how studies can be manipulated, how certain f- findings or discoveries can be omitted if, if said company runs a study and they don't like the findings, that stuff will never see the light of day. Yeah. They start with the outcome in mind, and d- design the study to lead them to the outcome that they want. So there's a lot of there's a lot of trickery, there's a lot of ways and strategies that these companies can use to get favorable studies or favorable outcomes. How do you value the studies that's done by the company that's selling the product? It's very hard. And the reality is that.. Any company that releases a new toxin, for example- Mm-hmm is gonna pour their heart and soul and resources to get that on the market and make sure that it is successful, obviously. 'Cause a lot of these things take 10 years in the pipeline tens of millions of dollars in research and development. So heavily invested to, to, like you say, make it work and make it sound wonderful. Who is gonna fund that apart from the company who made the toxin? So that's the obvious counterargument, right? An independent person or body just is not gonna have the resources or motivation to do it any other way. So I understand why companies do it. If you really launch something so incredible that you backed it to, to sell- Mm-hmm

34:43itself in a study or a trial, I don't know whether you could somehow design that study to be as independent as possible, but, obviously still fund it. I don't know if that would be possible. But that, that would be a really cool thing to see. You get independent doctors who've got nothing to do with your company. I don't know how you'd pay those doctors. You'd still have to pay them. It's their time and you need to recruit patients, et cetera. this is why the whole, "Oh, it's pharma sponsored, I don't believe it," it's a bit silly 'cause someone's gotta sponsor it. Mm-hmm. But yeah. But then you read some papers and you're like, okay, every author is a paid consultant for that company, some of those authors are actually I don't know, the chief medical officer and the CEO or the CMO or whoever. Now they're not just paid consultants, they're actually gonna financially benefit fr- probably from shares and, this product actually selling well on the market. So there, there's levels to bias- Mm-hmm ... or there's levels to incentives. Mm-hmm. And if I was a company designing that study, I would try to make it as independent as possible, but you gotta pay some money to do a study, of course. Yeah. Sure. So I, not so much a criticism of the company, but or any of these companies, but so if you're a practitioner, do you wait? Do you not be an early adopter of these new products until there's been- Some time on the market, time to see things that potentially are going to be problematic or get feedback from colleagues.

36:09Yeah. And just sit back and wait for maybe independent studies to follow at some point later. So is that the message? , Why rush? Yeah. What, apart from trying to be a trendsetter what is the need to rush? I mean- FOMO. But- we've mentioned all these negatives to it. Yeah. So apart from feeling like you're somehow being left behind, and you're happy with your current portfolio already, like really it's not gonna make any difference to you. I can't think of a single product where every single patient's demanding that you do it. I just, the odd patient might come in and mention a brand name or say, "Oh, hey, I saw something. What do you think about that?" But really gonna go further than that where you feel compelled to go and buy said new product. Sure. Or- I wonder if some of this is being driven by people who think that they need this product to be successful or to re-excite their database of patients. Is that maybe what's driving it, is the need to, "Hey, here's something new"? Maybe. But that to me suggests they don't understand their business, they're not successful or solid in, in their other revenues. I mean- ... we've said many times most practices will probably be doing 70% toxin and 30% of other stuff.

37:20So if your toxin that you're currently using is good and your patients are happy and they've not got longevity issues. Yeah. Cool. Well, then 70 of percent of your business is already covered regardless. Mm-hmm. So to to have to worry about all these sort of niche side quests because of FOMO- Yeah just seems a bit like you don't really understand what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting what you're saying about the toxin because, again, recently some conversations I've had with, with various clients is, they've been approached. They've got a toxin they've been loyal to for a long time. Yeah. then all of a sudden another company comes along and says, "Hey we'd love to get your business. We're gonna do this amazing deal for you." You know why? those companies aren't doing well, so they need to do deals. For sure. and the client will go, "Well, this looks really compelling. This is how much difference it's gonna make to my business." then my pushback is, "Okay, well, maybe. Sure. I'm all about trying to maximize a margin for your business. But have you thought about this rollout process is gonna look like?" Yeah. If you've got a number of injectors working for you, all of a sudden you're gonna have to retrain them on a different protocol because as we've discussed, like to the point where I feel like we can't say it anymore, like all toxins behave differently.

38:31There is an adjustment. There's a learning period. Yeah. So all these patients that are gonna all of a sudden walk in and have a different toxin, they're basically your guinea pigs. You're gonna have to re-treat them potentially. There's gonna be some unhappiness. Yeah. There's gonna be potentially reconstitution mistakes. Have you actually thought through, okay, if we've made the serious decision to switch toxins, have we actually put a plan in place? Yeah. For how we're gonna roll this out in the least disruptive way to our business so that we're not pissing off our patients, we're not having to do retreats? Well, we're gonna touch on that topic- Yeah in a few weeks. Yeah. With Dr. Lucas de Sequeira. Yes. And how he has evolved his practice using one of the brands. Yeah. And maybe some of his learnings on what he did. Yeah, because I'm, I think that this is something that's not, on this particular topic, it's not something that's peculiar to any particular company. But a lot of new toxins have come onto the market, and I don't think they've had their protocols dialed in absolutely the correct way. They're learning as well, but- Yeah ... it's well, we've been in a rush to get this product to the market, and it's here now, and this is how you do it. But oh, hold on a second, 12 months later, actually, we think you should do this.

39:40This is the new protocol. So that brings us into our last topic, which was something that you came across- Yeah ... on Instagram. Yeah, I saw a post that went, I don't know, viral. It had a hu- For the number of followers that they a huge amount of engagement, hundreds and hundreds or thousands of comments and likes, and it wasn't a big account. Basically that the statement was, "Our industry has become a pyramid selling scheme." And what they were referring to was, everyone's a business coach now. Join my Patreon, come to my workshop buy my tool, buy my online training course. People just feel like bombarded with everyone trying to sell them something, and this is not just peculiar to our industry. Anywhere you go, someone's trying to sell you something. So- You know what I came across the other day? I didn't even know this was a thing on Instagram. I don't know if it's available to everyone. Mm-hmm. But I noticed on s- some injectors' accounts, you can subscribe to their Instagram and get exclusive stories and- Oh, okay behind the scenes just stuff, and I was like, "Okay, this has been taken too far now." Just like- Yeah. People don't want our behind the scenes on the Yeah ... go. They want education, not- Yeah ... seeing how you do your makeup or whatever. Yeah. A- and just to preface this, yeah, I, we have a, well, we had a Patreon.

40:46We've got our own app. We have subscription, to our content. I do a lot of business consulting, so I guess we're in that category too. But I guess the question is, well, how do you sort out the wheat from the chaff? How do you actually know this worthwhile for me? Is this person credible? Like what are their credentials? How do you work out where you're gonna spend your money or who you're gonna trust? Well, hopefully, if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, whether you're new and you've listened to a handful of episodes, or you've been there since the start, you'll presumably be dialing in 'cause you like these conversations, you feel like they're educational, and even if you don't- Agree agree with me or David you're getting something from this. And so we've tried to make the app the extension of the podcast in a way. It's giving you more tools, more education, more conversations, et cetera. So that would be my argument to- ... our validation of are we worth it or not. Yeah. Ab- but sure. Y- y- you've said that some people have popped up almost overnight claiming, "I'm a aesthetic business guru." Yeah. "Come and do my course." So going back to the accountant question, how do you suss out a good business consultant? Oh, again, and I...

41:52it's a difficult conversation to navigate because I don't want to put anyone down or claim that I'm the be all and end all, 'cause I'm certainly not. And, one of the things that has become really obvious to me since, Well, I guess the older you get, the more mature you become, the more you learn the more you realize that like- You have to learn. I f- I ... the more I learn, the more I realize how stupid I am. Like, that, it's very humble, it's very humbling. so I certainly don't have all the answers. And something I like to preface a lot of my discussions or presentations with is that I'm learning, too. If you disagree with me, if you've got something to add, let's talk about it. If you want to challenge me or you think I'm wrong on something, I'm, not, not embarrassed to say I was wrong or I don't know, or, "Wow, that's interesting. Thank you. I'm, I'm ... You're educating me as well." So I think that's c- I think that's important. But I guess in terms of how you work out who's quality and who's not, I guess just to do some homework and background information. Who is this person? What have they done? What are their credentials? Who have they worked with before? What's their track record like? Well, that sounds ridiculous. Have you actually ran a business? No. If you're telling people how to run a clinic, have you done that? Yeah. It sounds so obvious.

42:56It would be like me teaching to inject, and I've never done it. Yeah. I ... It'd be ridiculous. Yeah. But there are definitely people out there who are doing that. Yeah. I've s- I've seen that. And so I don't know on what basis you're providing knowledge and information if you haven't walked in those shoes. But I guess, sometimes people can from reading or if they've got general business skills but haven't owned a business, perhaps there's some transferable abilities and things that they've learned along the way. For sure, it's not to say there's no value in that. But I guess it's just part of- Your information gathering phase is just working out what has this person done? they been down a similar road to where I am right now? Can I talk to any of their other clients? What do they say about them? Asking them the questions around, "Well, what are you gonna do for me? And, what are the tangible things that I'll get out of working with you, or your course, or your workshop," or whatever the case may be. Yeah. not just trusting someone that's good at marketing. Yeah. 'Cause I, I find there's a lot of people that do marketing. It's like everything. It's like the patients looking for injectors. Some- sometimes the best injectors aren't always the ones with the most successful marketing campaigns. Quite often, it's the opposite. They're so focused on, clinical education, and they're with their patients, they don't have the time to do a lot of good marketing, or they just don't have that type of brain.

44:07Yeah. So I think just as patients are hopefully becoming more discerning with who they choose as their cosmetic provider, or their doctor, or their nurse, if you're looking for someone to help you in your business, and no matter what it is, or help you with clinical training don't always go with the person that's the best at marketing. Yeah. So why do you think someone listening to this podcast should join our app? What, are they gonna get from that? Oh, gosh. I think, one of the favorite tools I've got is, or the, one of the, my favorite things about, what we do is just, I guess the WhatsApp chats where you can connect in real time and ask questions, and it's not just you or I providing the information. I guess that's what I feel is most valuable, is you get in the brains of hundreds and hundreds of other people who've got different clinical backgrounds, different business experiences- Yeah ... different insights, different personalities, different sensibilities. So it's about, for me, like almost like a hive mind- Yeah o- of lots of different, years and years of clinical and business experience that's being shared within a central place. So I think the fact that it's not just you and me is the selling point, because otherwise, you know- Agreed ... it's just my opinion and your opinion, and I'm wrong about shit all the time, and so are you.

45:12Yeah. Like- I don't want it to be an echo chamber. It should be- I think so. I think the echo chamber is really dangerous. You just fall into this trap of only speaking to people that agree with you or that have had similar experiences to you. And yes, it's nice to have sort of camaraderie and people that you can share things with, but it's almost g- good to get those fresh perspectives or people that don't agree with you, 'cause that's kinda how you learn. You learn from mistakes, and you learn from people that have got different experiences and are happy to give you a different perspective, I think. For me, that's what I think is most valuable. What, what do you think? Y- yeah, exactly. A lot of the you know- Patreons and so on they're wonderful, but they're provider-led from that person's perspective, their technique their way of doing it, which is cool. But we've done the opposite. I don't really want everyone to learn the Jake Sloane way of injecting. I want that hive mind- Yeah ... of just exposing people to lots of different types of stuff. Yeah. So yeah, totally agree. Yeah, and it's not to say those people aren't good. There's lots of great online educators who've got, big personalities and, they do a great job. I guess, we do that's a little bit different is relying on the community at large rather than just us as, the oracles, which we're certainly not, or I'm certainly not, cool. Well, that's the end of this week's podcast. Yeah. Hopefully you guys got something out of that.

46:22It's a bit of a mixed bag today. Just the sort of stuff that is coming up in conversations I'm having, stuff that's coming up within our groups, stuff that we're seeing online. So they're not always gonna be super deep dives on technical bits and pieces of new products or devices. Sometimes it's just a chat about what we're observing, shooting the breeze, and hopefully you guys still get something out of those discussions. Yeah. Coming up on future podcasts, we're gonna be talking about a skincare range called UltraCeuticals and their founder. Yeah. And then we're also gonna be talking to a couple of CRM systems and their teams to find out, well, why should invest in a new CRM and is it more than just a booking and note system? Yeah. And that's, again, conversations that I'm having at the moment, and I'm sure, they're coming up in our chat groups as well, is get in a head around the fact that moving from a basic system which might cost you a few hundred dollars a month to something that's costing you 1,000, $2,000 a month, which is exponentially more expensive, and rightly going, "Wow, that's a big difference. This is just a CRM system." I think these, these episodes will help people Go through that paradigm shift of understanding that these CRM systems, these software systems are not just CRM systems. They're almost like having another staff member in your clinic because of what they can do. So I think that's what I'm looking forward to, is really opening people's eyes as to what's possible in 2026 and beyond with these systems, and helping them understand why these things are so much more expensive, and maybe just having a different thought on where you allocate your money.

47:47So I think there's some powerful paradigm shifts to go on there with those discussions. Cool. Sorry. Sorry. No. We'll wrap it up now. Shut up. see you guys in the next podcast. Take care. See you guys. Bye.