The Education Gap That’s Costing Aesthetic Practices Money (Part 2)

Announcer (00:06):
You're listening to the Aesthetically Speaking Podcast, presented by Nextech.

Robin (00:15):
I want to sidestep a little bit to the technology part because I live in that world all day long. I don't feel that people invest the right time in training for new people. I don't feel like people want to stay up with technology. I use the example of your cell phone. Everybody's got one. Everybody uses it for communication all day long. But do we all really take the time every time that update message comes up and really go in and read what the update was?

Kirstie (00:45):
Yeah.

Robin (00:45):
We have the time to do that, but yet we want technology to continuously improve and do more for us and make things more efficient. But that also means we've got to take the opportunity to figure out what it is it just did for us and that update. So a lot of practices leave that off the list, I think, when it comes down to the things of, I got to continuously learn and stay up with it. Technology's one of them. You're going to be left behind if you don't stay up with what technology is trying to bring to the table for you.

Kirstie (01:17):
This should be built into the fabric of your operating systems. Yes. And I think in a smaller practice, that often looks like one person, and this has been me, the one person who is the super user for the technology element of it. And I think if you have any kind of operational role, it's a non-negotiable. And then as I've grown in size of organizations, I said, I think it does give you a good opportunity to isolate areas of aptitude where you maybe see that one staff member that picks up things real quick and is really great at explaining and paying it forward. Use that. Maybe co-opt that person. And part of their growth plan is you're on track to be an operations assistant and you're now going to take some of these tasks. It's definitely an approach that I've had employees like that and they were invaluable to me because as your business grows, you often have more responsibilities elsewhere. I think this is, for me, my journey would be where our tech stack and need for leadership kind of almost divided.

(02:31):
And I was like, I can't do both right now. I can't be the super user of all the tech and I can't lead the team in the way that they deserve. So now I'm going to have to build up one of my team members and grow them into this role. But yeah, it should be built in. And going back to that monthly meeting, why don't you talk about those updates in your monthly meetings? Why don't you do a demo? If you're remote, you can do it virtually. It should be discussed. And I've even seen some companies do send out a little quiz afterwards and you can use web form, type form, Google tools just to do a pop quiz on the thing that you just learn. And I mean, it is an extra step, but it definitely highlights the people that didn't listen. But yeah, it should be woven in and make time for it.

Robin (03:32):
So on that note, I'm going to switch this to a different level of thinking about training in a practice. And that comes with a reaction. Training will come from a reaction to a bad outcome. And what I mean by that is let's delve into the world of security. And in the world of aesthetics, it's become a real problem. And we're seeing this ransomware and these attacks and these bad actors that are coming into practices and taking their data and they're ransoming it back to them for a lot of money. And it happens often. I got practice two weeks ago, a million dollars. And fortunately they were a NextTech customer and the practice did not end up getting any of their NextTech data because it was all secured in the cloud, but their photos of their patients were stored on their internal server. And the way that they actually approached the practice was, quite honestly, they called the practice and they wanted to submit their photos to be reviewed and asked for the email to submit those.

(04:41):
And the practice did that sometimes for patients who are a prospect, so it wasn't unusual. And lo and behold, that email that was sent back into the practice, the patient or the staff member clicked on it.

Kirstie (04:55):
Wow.

Robin (04:56):
As you think about that, and what they're doing these days in this environment is if the practice won't pay and practices don't all have cybersecurity insurance, should get it if you don't have it. A hundred percent. But they're not, and they're not teaching their staff what the risk looks like. And so they're not doing the training, they're not doing their diligence, and it happens. Now, a lot of times people think, "Oh, I'm too small. That'll never happen to me. " This was a small practice, and they're going to target practices, and especially practices where photos are in play, because what they're learning is that if the practice won't pay, then they're going to go get that money from the patient. And so now there's a risk that's inherently around that with the patient exposure. And so that right there is turning into training as a result of something that happened that was bad when people could be more proactive and use that as an opportunity to be diligent, get the training in front of your staff now because it's going to happen at some point to somebody, whether it's you or someone local or close to you, because it's definitely out there.

Kirstie (06:04):
Yeah. I actually have a funny, Robin knows my funny stories, but I actually have a story about the time that I had to call the FBI on a related ... Has anyone ever had to call the ... I now can say that I have had to find the FBI and it was a cyber breach issue. And the issue was another practice locally, who will remain nameless, sent out an e-blast from their practice, and I personally had never been to that particular office, and yet they had my email address. And then suddenly, all of some of our patients, some other staff internally, some providers internally were telling me they got the same email. Now, what had happened was a departing provider had downloaded the email list from a database and taken it with them. And our database was over 50,000 patients. And when you get to a large number, everyone, that's when you have to get the FBI involved. And so I had to do my- Good to know. And there I was thinking, wait, I like to consider myself a pretty decent operator. We've got pretty robust policies on this. We've got cyber insurance. How did this happen? How? So I started going through all my audit report ports, and so I identified the issue was not my EMR software. It was not Nextech. And so then I had to start thinking, okay, well, where does this data live elsewhere?

(07:45):
And it turned out that it was a CRM software. And when I went back to the software provider and I said, right, I need basically an equivalent of an audit. I need to know which login, the IP address, I need all that information. And this was a healthcare software company that said they were HIPAA compliant and they were like, "We can't give you that, any of that. " And they ended up changing their entire software because I was like, "This is not acceptable. This does not protect us in any way. We can't fix what we don't know and you're not able to tell us that. I have audit reports from my other software." I knew exactly where the lapse was happening and the lapse wasn't us. So that escalated pretty quickly and they were responsive and they did make changes. But I think it comes back to the foundation building of it all. I would really hope that no one else found themselves in a similar situation. And that wasn't even anything where it was like a fishy email or ransomware. It was someone thinking, Well, I want to be able to take my patients with me.

(09:00):
So in that circumstance, you need to understand how that functions. When a provider leaves, what are you obliged and required to do and to support that transition and there are requirements that a lot of people don't know and are all my staff HIPAA trained? Have they done their annual training? Annual keyword. Yes, annual has to be annual. And then making sure that your software performs in the way that you need it to and everything is trackable because you could have the best foundation in the world. And we had a pretty decent foundation and something still happened that was a big oops, and we had to figure out and go back and make changes. And it potentially was leaving a software provider, but they ended up modifying to correct the issue. So the problem was solved, but I think one step beyond that is something that we used to do and we would do this annually. And it sounds so boring and unsexy, quite frankly, but we would have a medical malpractice person come out to the office and spend a morning doing medical malpractice education with the staff. You would think that this sounds so dull. They loved it. They loved it because it explained to them a lot of the whys, like, why do we handle things this way? How do you document when this issue or problem happens? How do I write this in the EMR to CYA for the practice? If I get a dodgy email that seems suspicious, what do I do with it? Who do I notify? They loved it. So I definitely could encourage that too.

Robin (10:54):
They also love the stories that come along with it too, because there's some really crazy things that have happened to people and it's like, you just don't think it's going to happen. And people want to understand the why, to your point. They don't want to just be told to do something without the reason. People aren't just blanketly just following anymore. They want to know the why. What's the mission? What's the end goal? Give me something that makes this interesting to me. So yeah, I think that that's why it'd be exciting. There's a why behind it.

Kirstie (11:23):
Yeah. Whenever I used to tell the staff, "Oh, our medical malpractice person is coming in next Monday," everyone would be like, "Yes." Okay.

Robin (11:32):
Okay, that's exciting.

Kirstie (11:33):
Yeah, they enjoyed it. They enjoyed learning about how to best keep the business safe and what their part in that could and should be. So yeah, I would honestly, just a suggestion, putting it out there for everyone, the answer to this question is obviously having a good foundation, creating SOPs in advance before the oops even happens, and then continuing the education and making sure that your software very much meets the needs of the business and maybe-

Robin (12:08):
And it's HIPAA compliance.

Kirstie (12:09):
And it's HIPAA compliant.

Robin (12:10):
People don't always understand what HIPAA compliance means. And people can say they're HIPAA compliant, but you need to know what HIPAA compliant means. And having the ability to audit is a key component of that.

Kirstie (12:21):
Yes. I needed to know ... I mean, this is just me because I am a bit of a nerd, but I needed to know everything from very granular touches to the system. And it's the same as if you have an employee who we probably all have a policy, I would hope if you have a high profile patient come in, staff shouldn't be in a medical chart of someone unless they are taking medical care of them, unless they're part of the care team. So how do you quantify that? How do you prevent those kind of mini internal breaches from happening, which are also not acceptable? It's like you have to be able to track everything from every touch in the system through to big things like reports being downloaded. If you have a departing employee or provider that's running some kind of big marketing report of all the contacts you have in the system, it's like, well, obviously that's not acceptable. You should have a software that helps you eliminate that.

Robin (13:23):
Well, I think that permissions is a key part of protection, but beyond the permissions, if you do have something that happens in incident, being able to go back and track and audit it does really give you that peace of mind. Gosh, we talked about this, Christie. We could actually write a book. Yeah. I mean, think about all the stories. I was just thinking about a story about years and years and years ago when I was consulting, an employee was fired from a hospital because they had looked at their ex- boyfriend's medical records

(13:54):
And they shouldn't have been, but they were able to because they had access and then they had to terminate them and they found out that they did it because of the audits and the flags that popped up that indicated that they were in a record and they shouldn't have been in the record. But these are things that we don't think about. In aesthetics, we kind of get gray about things and we forget that these rules are there for a reason. And it's generally when the rules are broken and something bad happens, then we go back and say, "Oh, that was supposed to be a rule," or, "I should have been better at enforcing that rule." And by then it's too late sometimes.

Kirstie (14:29):
Yeah. I've had to terminate people for staff members going in other staff members' charts, staff members going in people's charts that they should never have been in, staff who have shared medical information of other staff verbally out loud in a public space where it could occurred. And I am definitely not a rule with an eye and fist kind of manager. I prefer to educate and train to best endpoint, but there are some things where you have to uphold a standard within your team and lead by example, have very clear rules and definitions in how they're trained and educated and what the expectations of them in the job role are. And I've had some horrendous stories of physicians that have moved office locations and left files on driveways and someone's reported it because the files were just out and not in a locked cabinet somewhere or in an EMR system, like the old paper files, numerous issues with that.

(15:43):
And people just don't think, people are just like, they're like, "Oh, it's fine. It's fine." Well, it might sometimes be fine on a small scale, as in nothing bad happens, but it's still not okay Because if you do nothing about it, the big thing like the cybersecurity breaches and they're the really expensive ones and they cost millions and millions and millions of dollars.

Robin (16:08):
Yeah. Cybersecurity isn't necessarily choosing all the big practices. They're looking for there's opportunity and usually it's easier in the smaller practices, but they're going to charge the money the same or they're going to charge a lot of money.

Kirstie (16:24):
It's very unfortunate.

Robin (16:25):
It's crazy, isn't it? Let's transition. And let's move on to patient education. Near and dear to me. I love education. I love talking about it. I love thinking about formats and how you educate in different ways. And there's so many different ways that people can consume information today, not just on a piece of paper anymore. And I find that practice is still to the point of paper charts, which we've pretty much gotten away from that. A lot of practices are doing things electronically, but I find that patient education is still, I don't know, I'm going to say dark ages. I'm going to say dark ages. If I could say that, I'm not going to say it's global, but there's a lot of people out there that still either don't educate, maybe because their staff are not educated well, or they just don't really focus on what they should be doing to up the game.

(17:22):
Now, when I look at what the opportunity is, one of them is a practice that really digs in and does this well, they're probably going to differentiate in the business. They're going to stand out as being exceptional. I'm going to stop talking and let you share some of the things that you've seen, good, bad, and ugly, when you think about where patient education has opportunity and risk.

Kirstie (17:46):
Yeah, I think it's also essential. First of all, the patient is getting smarter. So gone are the days where the patient sat in the doctor's chair and saying, or the provider's chair and saying, "What do you think? " I mean, that still does happen, but quite often now they're coming in saying, "I saw that Kim Kardashian is getting Softwave, and so I want that laser now. I want that energy-based device." So they're coming in more educated and they also demand the easiest downtime possible, and that bleeds into experience, like the experience within your practice, and we want everyone to have the best possible, the most comfortable experience. So that often means that there's going to be pre-treatment education and there's going to be post-treatment education. And I've seen businesses do this many different ways. Sometimes it can be the handouts, but to me, it's not just acceptable to have a handout, a piece of paper that you give to the patient.

(18:52):
I want to be able to publish that via their portal to them so they have it safely and they can read it in their downtime. I've seen-

Robin (19:00):
It also checks the box that says you actually gave the patient the information. Correct. They can't prove that you gave them a piece of paper, but if it's on the portal, then you can prove the point that you provided them that education.

Kirstie (19:13):
I've seen practices do QR codes and also using the idea of an intranet, but for videos for pre and post-care. So when you click a link and it'll take you to, "Hey, this is Dr. Jones, and thanks for choosing us for your CO2 laser resurfacing procedure. We are recommending that you start using a 4% hydroquinone product four weeks before your treatment because it's going to really help improve the pigmentation and results. You can buy that from our store. So here it is, pick this up and these are the other products I also want you to buy when you're there. I want you to buy your event thermal springwater because this is going to help keep your skin nice and cool and comfortable. I want you to buy a sunscreen that is good for sensitive skin. I want you to buy a moisturizer, and here's your shopping list.

(20:03):
And maybe here's a list of things from Amazon as well that some gauzes or..." There's lots of ways you can handle this, personalized videos from the doctor, handouts that you push out via a patient portal. I think that something that my last practice did incredibly well, and I see being modeled slowly but surely elsewhere is the concept of having a cosmetic coordinator or a patient coordinator. So you might have the person at your check-in desk that is, "Let me check you in and prepare you. " And you might have a medical assistant who is shadowing the doctor, but there is two areas of opportunity. It's usually the pre-rooming where you might be doing the photography of the patient, the pre-consult photography, and then the post-consult where you're talking about skincare and instructions. And so what we did was we made that a whole different job.

(21:06):
And in our role, that was a cosmetic coordinator. And so they were the expert on all the photography equipment. They were expert on all providing the quotes. They were expert on the finances, which meant the doctor wasn't doing those things. And they were also the knowledgeable, they had all the education and knowledge. So we knew that the patient was having the best possible experience with the right person.

Robin (21:31):
Think about the goodness that comes from good education though. You reduce risk because the patient is informed and you improve outcomes because the patient follows a protocol. You increase your revenue potentially if the products are sold that go along within and the treatments that support. And if the patient doesn't know and they only do the treatment, then don't buy the products that help get them through those tough times after the treatment or actually help facilitate a better outcome of that treatment. It's a lot of goodness there. There's a lot that ... And then you have potentially another great result is a super happy patient that then refers a bunch of people to you, and then you generate more income because you've now got that great referral base. All because you did a good job educating, it's kind of hard to believe that if you lean in and do it, you get so much goodness from it.

Kirstie (22:29):
Yeah. 82%, I think the statistic is 82% of patients that leave your practice will go and buy something from Walgreens or Sephora if you don't introduce a product to them. And I know a lot of traditional derm practices in particular, I've come across the physicians or the providers that are just very old school and they're like, "I am here for medical. I don't want to feel like I'm being salesy to my patient. I want to send things to the pharmacy. Maybe we don't carry them." But there are two very, I think, straightforward products, this is sunscreen. Even if your patient is coming to you for a full body skin check, isn't the best thing for your patient is that not only are they coming to your practice for the full body skin check, but you are then sending them away with a really great quality product that you believe in and you know works that is good for their skin type, that is going to protect them all through the maybe 365 days of the year that they're not in your business.

(23:36):
If you're promoting skin health at that point, and the other one would be a retinol, it improves cell turnover. So whether it's aging or pigment or acne or skin tone texture, and we know that there are so many clinical studies on the efficacy of vitamin A products topically on our skin. These are the two very, for me, obvious options that we can carry in our practice that improves our revenue margin and it's educating the patient. It's teaching them we don't go to the dental hygienist twice a year and then forget to brush our teeth every other day of the year. We don't do that. So why are we telling our patients that that potentially is something that they are allowed to do by not educating them?

Robin (24:34):
Yeah, no, it's a strong area of opportunity for businesses. And if they do it well, they're going to differentiate and stand out because not everybody does it, nor do they do it well. Let's think about it from another lens though. How do patients consume it? So you've talked about QBR codes, talked about a piece of paper, you talked about video is another medium that people can use from this. People remember the stats are out there about 10% of what you tell them in the room and they're overwhelmed and there's a lot that you want them to take away from this. And we want to educate them. We can't just tell them we've got to give them a way to consume it and we've got to give them an opportunity to consume it at their convenience. I think of it a lot of times as consumable convenience and a lot of people don't think about that because it takes work.

(25:24):
It takes work. And one of the reasons NextTech acquire TouchMD is it's not just a great photo capture tool and storage system. It's a phenomenal patient education tool because you can use that to actually provide the opportunity to put all of those educational formats out there, and then you make it available to the patient to consume at their convenience, which I think are two really important things. So I look at consumption as key to this, how they consume it. All the different generations, you and I've talked about this, and there's all these different people in different ways they want to consume it. Is it a piece of paper?

(26:09):
Is that the best way for them? Or do they want to go watch a video? And one of the things that I love about video is that I've got aging parents. They might go to the doctor and then come home and say, "I've got to have this procedure." And be like, "Whoa, what's going on here?" And then I'm going to pick up the phone and then I turn into an inconvenience to a practice because now I want to be educated about what's going on. Why are you doing this procedure? What's the downtime? What's going to happen? Because I'm concerned. I've got parents that I want to make sure that they're getting the right care from the right person. But if it was in a video that perhaps the physician or provider created and talks about that, so much goodness. Another great way is it becomes staff education. What you educate your patients on and a lot is what you need to educate your staff on. You also make it very, I wouldn't say static is a word, but consistent, meaning that it doesn't lose the details that are important and critical through translation.

Kirstie (27:13):
And you can also, this is another great area of opportunity for what the umbrella term AI, but can be a system or a software, like a customer relationship management software. A lot of them, you can program from the scheduling level. So say someone schedules for a treatment, which is a laser resurfacing treatment, that's how it's going into your schedule, right? And the CRM will see that. So when the visit gets marked out, that can prompt a trigger to your CRM to then push out a text, maybe at 24 hours, 48 hours, three days, seven days, two weeks. And that text could maybe be the link to the video and be like, "Hey, you are now 48 hours post your laser resurfacing treatment. Please watch the post-care video here and there's the link." Or, "You had Sculptra with provider X yesterday, don't forget to massage for five minutes, five times a day for five days, and maybe you set it up to send that text every day." And so there are ways that these are the labor intensive components that yes, you can also assign these tasks to a cosmetic coordinator type role, and maybe they are making phone calls to these people, and that's part of your process.

(28:41):
But you can use technology to push out some of these little reminders or links to videos or links to patient portal or links to handouts. There's so many fun ways you can make the system work for you in that respect. And I think they can be very useful and reduce some of the labor, especially on a smaller team. You might want to, as a smaller practice, deliver that really high-end service, be like, "We don't have the bandwidth to do this. We don't actually have the people power to execute it. " It's a perfect use case for some kind of software to help you.

Robin (29:18):
Well, the consent's also part of the education to the patient as well. That's why they call it an important consent.

Kirstie (29:23):
Yes.

Robin (29:24):
And critical, you have to have them. Practices don't always do that. Practices will go back to the concept of, "I'm going to have them sign it once a year." Venture to guess that your malpractice company would disagree with you and say that you'd need to protect yourself and do it every time, just like updating your medical history should be part of that conversation at almost every visit. But if you think about that consent, and you know what? AMSPA coordinated and works with NextTech where we have provided those consents inside of TouchMD as part of What you've made available as a licensing agreement between the two systems, which I think is exciting. So if they've purchased them through you, then they can just utilize them through our system, which immediately makes them electronic. We've done all the heavy lifting, made them available, but it's information that's important and it's making sure the patient has that awareness.

(30:21):
But I really do think that there's an opportunity for practices to do much better here and focus on how they can get that information in the hands of their patients more readily.

Kirstie (30:34):
Yeah. I think if you are trying to stand apart in that area, and honestly, everyone should be because why are we all here? We're here to take the best care of the patient that we can. And by treating them safely, compliantly, with a very educated team, the providers themselves, they're not going to perform treatments that they're not highly educated on. And that shouldn't be a punctuated full stop just at the clinical team. So if we are going to stand on this platform, if we deliver the best possible care, you have to think of the pre and post care element of the patient journey as being imperative. That's how I've always thought of it. I've always just been like, "This is a non-negotiable for me. If we cannot prove that we are doing this exceptionally well, our patients are not getting the best care and treatment possible, and they're not going to get the best outcomes possible." And that for me is all part of, we do a talk on this at Amsva Bootcamp where patient experience is everything because to me it is.

(31:47):
And this is from the moment that they walk in the door and they see director of first impressions, front desk person, or that they've called the office and the person picks up the phone and they sound sunny and smiling through to what is their treatment outcome. It's everything. It's everything.

Robin (32:07):
And a lot of people are probably out there listening thinking, "Okay, yeah, this is great, but Rob and Kirsty, how do I actually execute on something that sounds insurmountable?" You know what? That's where software should also help and lead the way. A CRM is meant to provide education early in the patient journey so that it's consumable and not too much all at once. It's not designed so that your staff have to do that. Once it's built, you basically start, as they call it, dripping a drip campaign. You start feeding that information in increments. It's consumable, but it's automatic. Your staff aren't doing it. It's getting that patient to a level of understanding before they walk in the door based upon what you want them to know, the way that your practice operates, the way that you do treatments, and not the way that Dr. Google says to do it.

Kirstie (32:59):
Yeah.

Robin (32:59):
Because you're having to sometimes retrain your patients, set the right expectations, and that education doesn't have to wait until they walk in the door, nor does it have to be done by a staff member always. Put it in your CRM.

Kirstie (33:11):
Yeah. I mean, I've heard you speak about this before too, where if you ever want to know the experience that other people just schedule an appointment at a practice that you respect, I've done that where there are local practices, aesthetic practices I've either frequented or I've scheduled an appointment to test the operational processes and see what they do. And some of those have given me really great ideas. Some systems, when you schedule a new patient neuromodulator appointment, you'll immediately get an email from that business saying, "We're so thrilled to take care of your neuromodulator journey and in the run up to your treatment." While it's not imperative that you get treated same day, but should you want to, these are the things that you need to do prior to your visit, avoid blood thinning agents and et cetera, et cetera. And they really go, and here's what you can expect post-treatment.

(34:11):
You might look like you have little bee stings at the site of injection, which will dissipate within typically 30 minutes to an hour after treatment. And you shouldn't be going to do an inversion class at a yoga studio afterwards or having facial massage. And it just gives you all this information. And then all of a sudden as a patient you feel, "Oh, I would never have known any of this. And now my pre-treatment instructions are simply a part of me scheduling this appointment with this practice."

Robin (34:49):
Yes, most definitely. But it goes back to, is it at the cost of the practice because they're doing it or not doing it well or not doing it at all? Or are you going to invest in something that let your patients and your staff members really meet where they have to meet, which is generally face-to-face in the practice and let the software do the rest of it for you. Let the systems that are out there do it, just got to lean into it and actually facilitate. People think of CRM as a way to collect leads. It's meant to manage the relationship. That's why they call it a customer relationship management tool. And you're meant to help manage it, not just before they come in, but also after they leave. And so these are the ideal ways to really help these practices do it. They just got to lean in and do it.

Kirstie (35:39):
Yeah. It is one of the easier ways to work smarter, not harder just by harnessing some of those. You can even talk about this from your NextTech software perspective of capturing an online history. We can think of that very one-dimensionally as the medical history. The required nuts and bolts of, is my patient healthy? Oh, how about we go one step further and actually ask them, "Have you ever had neuromodular? Have you ever had filler? Have you ever had laser before?" And ask them, "Were you happy with the outcome?" And now you have a different set of data metrics that you know about your patient before coming in and you can start a conversation with them and be like, "Hey, we see that you've had experiences with X, Y, and Z. Is that something that you ever might have an interest in doing again? Are you interested in learning more about these services today?" And maybe the patient just does, "No, I'm not today." But you are now an informed provider.

(36:46):
You have more information. I would say nine times out of 10, the patient will say something like, "Wow, I didn't know you offered that. " So I think it's something that from any size of business, you will hear that, but you can put the breadcrumbs in your software and capture information and then the information becomes a conversation and the conversation becomes education, but you have to do it. You have to start somewhere.

Robin (37:14):
Well, practices, like I said, will think that it's more manual work for them and they can't put anything else on their staff, nor should they. There's opportunity. But if you go back and step back and just map out the patient journey and think about that, that journey should start long before they darken your doors and it should continue long after they leave. And where do you have opportunity to continuously educate, which is upselling, cross-selling, setting good expectations, all of those components can happen many, many ways in a digital format and they don't have to become a burden on the staff.

Kirstie (37:48):
Upselling is essentially a combination of education and building trust.

Robin (37:56):
It is.

Kirstie (37:56):
And if you do both well, you will capture that patient and they will continue to return and they will probably do more with you. And it is going to be a potential patient for life and you just have to be able to do both things. And ironically, the trust component tends to come when you educate them.

Robin (38:21):
Yeah, it does. It does.

Kirstie (38:23):
It's like at the heart of everything.

Robin (38:25):
I want to close out this session by saying, first of all, this is always so good and great to talk with you. We could talk for a long time. We've been talking for a long time. Oh, yeah. But I will say that I want to challenge our listeners. Reach out to us, tell us what you're doing that's unique and different. I'm always fascinated, but let's revisit this in a year. Yeah, that would be- Let's revisit and see who took the opportunity and ran with it. Where do we see some rising stars that said, "I'm going to go after this. I'm going to put the challenge out there. Let's see who can do it. "

Kirstie (39:01):
Yeah. Well, if that's you guys out there.

Robin (39:04):
Yeah. Let's do that. Let us know. We want to know. I want to hear it. I do. I want to think about how we capture this, but I want to see this and I want to really focus on it because I love the concept and just don't think people do it and nor do they find the reason to do it. And I'm saying, "Do it. "

Kirstie (39:21):
Yeah. It's like the pay it forward thing too. We both work in for organizations where we get asked a lot, "Well, what is everyone else doing?" And so if there is feedback from anyone in the audience, you're coming to two of the right people because for me, it's like I would share that with all the MedStars and aesthetic practices and you can share it the same thing, but also everyone who is a case user for your software, the softwares that are under the umbrella of NextTech, people want to know. So if we're doing something great, let us know.

Robin (39:56):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Kirstie, it was a fabulous pleasure. It is always so much fun to talk to you and thank you for sharing your time with us today.

Kirstie (40:04):
Thank you.

Robin (40:05):
Thank you, everyone.

Announcer (40:08):
Thanks for listening to Aesthetically Speaking, the podcast where beauty meets business, presented by Nextech. Follow and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Links to the resources mentioned on this podcast are available in your show notes. For more information about Nextech, visit nextech.com or to learn more about TouchMD, go to touchmd.com. Aesthetically speaking is a production of The Axis, T-H-E-A-X-I-S.io.