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Welcome to my Digital in Aesthetics podcast

Digital in aesthetics with Rick O'Neill

Latest Episodes

Digital In Aesthetics. Ep4. Nathan Strom

With Nathan Strom, of The Revenue Doctors

https://instagram.com/therevenuedoctors
https://instagram.com/nathanstrom

Digital In Aesthetics. Ep3. Dr Sarah Tonks

With Dr Sarah Tonks, of The Lovely Clinic

Digital In Aesthetics. Ep2. Miss Sherina Balaratnam

With Miss Sherina Balaratnam, of S-thetics, in Beaconsfield

Click here for the Transcription

00:00:10,000 → 00:00:11,000
Rick O’Neill: [00:00:30] So here we are, [00:01:00] another episode of a Digital In Aesthetics with me, Rick O’Neill, and one of my awesome friends from the medical aesthetics sector. And I’m going to give this lady her full and proper intro because it’s, I think, impressive. And then, we’re going to have a nice chat about all things aesthetics and this person’s career.

Rick O’Neill: So I am joined by Miss Sherina Balaratnam, and I’m going to try and do all the letters [00:01:30] after your name, MBBS, MRCS, MSc (UCL), all of the letters, which as you know, as a Luddite, nonclinical, I’m just hugely impressed by all of that. And you’ve been practicing medicine for I think more than 23 years. You are one of the top five UK doctors for dermal filler treatment, according to the Tatler Beauty and Cosmetic Surgery Guide, selected as one of the world’s top 50 injectors by Mauricio [00:02:00] de Maio nonetheless, two years in a row I hear. As well as being renowned for advanced cosmetic injectable treatments, Miss Balaratnam places a strong focus on skin health and a patient’s aesthetics wellbeing.

Rick O’Neill: Treatments range from advanced cosmeceutical skin care, bespoke medical grade facials, radio frequency microneedling, laser skin resurfacing to treat acne and scarring, right through [00:02:30] to the world’s latest muscle building and body contouring technology with Emsculpt, SculpSure, laser fat reduction, Endymed radio frequency skin tightening. Wow.

Rick O’Neill: And your clinic, S-Thetics, is a multi-award winning clinic in Bakersfield, Buckinghamshire, led by surgeon cosmetic doctor, Miss Sherina Balaratnam, who spent the last nine years of your medical career specializing in the latest non-surgical innovations in cosmetic [00:03:00] treatment.

Rick O’Neill: Did I cover most of what you get up to on a day-to-day basis?

Miss Sherina Ba…: Yes, I think it’s a wrap, Rick. Well done.

Rick O’Neill: And Sherina and I have gotten to know each other through the industry, through industry events, and we’ve actually worked on a few campaigns together. And most recently, I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with you, as we were the two kind of keynote speakers at the Crown Aesthetics Global Symposium in London a few weeks ago.

Rick O’Neill: So [00:03:30] it is awesome that you are here, and thank you for accepting my invitation to my little podcast here. And I hear it’s your first ever podcast.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Happy birthday to us, Rick. This is fun. Yes, you’re my first.

Rick O’Neill: So that’s pretty cool.

Miss Sherina Ba…: I’m very honored.

Rick O’Neill: I was surprised to hear that. Well, I’m really pleased to have you on this, your first podcast.

Rick O’Neill: And this is a relatively free flowing conversation, but [00:04:00] we’ve spoken a bit before, and we’re going to go a little bit into your kind of background and how you got started. So why don’t we start at the beginning. How did you get into this crazy world of aesthetic treatments from where you started? And what appealed to you about it and what was your kind of transition into the world of aesthetics?

Miss Sherina Ba…: Oh, this is going to be a fun journey for me to share with you. First and [00:04:30] foremost, Rick, I just want to say a big thank you for your kind invitation to be a part of your podcast. Yes, it is my first and I’m very, very honored.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So my journey actually began a very, very long time ago in the world of aesthetics because I was always interested in skin. Having my own skin ailment, I guess gives you a very inside perception on a lack of confidence and feeling insecure maybe about certain characteristics about yourself, especially when you’re growing up. And that leads to [00:05:00] a sense of compassion and empathy in others who have very similar issues. So I guess the aesthetic of what I felt began at a very young age.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So all things aside, when I then came into university, I watched my parents growing up. I watched my parents run their own clinic in Malaysia. And although that was in neurology, they’d always instilled a sense of helping people to make them feel better neurologically. But also, there was a sense of aesthetic in that. My father in [00:05:30] particular would always say, “It’s not just about making people better, but you also want them to feel good and make them look good, and the whole thing goes full circle.” So those kind of principles always mattered in medicine, even in the world of medicine and not surgery. So that was instilled at a very young age, those beliefs, those purposes, those values.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So when I came into medical school, I’d always had this curiosity that perhaps I’d be a dermatologist. And that was the route I thought I’d go down, to make [00:06:00] people look better and feel better. And in 1999, post-graduation… Yes, I’ve been a doctor for 24 years this year. And after graduation I did a six month stint at Milton Keynes, so you have it, in accident in emergency. And you get stuck in things, you get stuck with suturing scalps in the middle of the night, and all the road traffic accidents, RTAs that come through. And I enjoyed it, stapling things and gluing things shut. And it got my hands busy and I thought, “You know what? I [00:06:30] think I’m interested in going down a surgical route because you needed to heal something, but there is certainly an aesthetic component irrespective of all ages, all skin type, top to bottom.” And I was curious to see what that could do.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So that took me into the surgical route and I covered all the specialties. And lo and behold, very interested in reconstructive plastic surgery. Again, top to toe, male to female, all ages, all skin types. And I spent most of my time, probably because of the mentors I was with and the inspiration [00:07:00] that I got from the people that I worked with, I got very drawn into the world of the oncological side of things, the skin reconstruction, post-cancers, also very much in love with the burns reconstruction.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And I started off with pediatric burns. And again, had the best mentorship. And if you’re treating a baby, you don’t have to treat them from that onset. You’ve got the rest of their lives to reconstruct or to consider in their reconstruction journey, “How are they going to heal? How are they going to function in later life [00:07:30] as their limbs evolve and so forth?” You’re constantly thinking about their function and their aesthetic.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And so, I guess those traits were always instilled at a very, very young age, throughout my career. It was about 2004, and I’d done about five years of plastic and reconstructive surgery, and I thought, “I’m loving this, but there’s something missing,” because we were treating a lot of skin grafts and burns at that time. But there was also a lot of research around that time, about how can you make these wounds look [00:08:00] better. Concepts like microneedling, energy based devices were coming into play. I knew nothing about those.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So I decided to take some time out and do some academic and some research, and I chose a specialty called PDT, photodynamic therapy, you might have heard of it now. We are aware about it in the field of dermatology, as well as aesthetics. And that was where I did my research in 2004. So that’s, again, going back quite a long time ago.

Miss Sherina Ba…: But that took me into this world, where I left the NHS, [00:08:30] and I was a research bot, I was a lab rat. We were working for the component called ALA, which is now known as medPICS, so that was at its infancy.

Miss Sherina Ba…: But I was watching surgeons use these medications in a research based approach to treat deep seated cancers as well as superficial BCCs. And that’s an aesthetic component. I then also did a lot of presentations on that particular research, which took me into laser dermatology, energy based devices again. [00:09:00] And I thought, “Wow, what is this space?” There was a natural curiosity about this space in laser dermatology, how you can wake up skin, how you can rejuvenate and revitalize skin using therapeutics like light and energy.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And in 2007, I then happened to stumble across my first FACE Conference in Region Park in London. And you remember that Rick, right?

Rick O’Neill: Yeah. Absolutely. I’m loving this pathway that you [00:09:30] are taking us on, and all the kind of elements that you came across and that you got drawn into and you’re interested in. And you’ve said quite a few things that really interest me already.

Rick O’Neill: First of all though, I think one of your mentors is a friend of mine as well, Vic Viege.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Wow. Birmingham. Yes.

Rick O’Neill: He was my first ever client in this world.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Wow. Okay.

Rick O’Neill: I’ve been working with him for 14 years. And Vic, as you [00:10:00] know, is a consultant plastic surgeon. He bases himself from Birmingham, but he attends to clients all over the place.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Absolutely. Yes.

Rick O’Neill: And I seem to remember at one of, I think it was one of the ACE Conferences, or maybe CCR, I was chatting with Vic, and you came along and then you two were getting on famously because you’d had this history.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Correct. So I worked with Mr. Viege. I probably worked for Mr. Viege actually. So hence, I always referred to my previous consultants as Mr. because they’re my seniors, they’re my consultants, [00:10:30] and I’ve been in clinic with him as well. Fantastic surgeon, great repertoire with all of his patients, and I learned a lot from him as well.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So again, time spent in Birmingham and in Bristol, North Bristol NHS, and then leaving the NHS to just dabble in a bit of research. But that was a curiosity.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Sitting at the back of that lecture theater, 2007, listening to Professor Tony Chu, whom you’d also know, acne specialist, acne immunologist. And again, looking at the comparisons between fractionated [00:11:00] laser and this original handheld microneedling device to revitalize skin, to treat acne scarring and skin of color. And he said, “This device can actually induce neogenesis and give you better functioning skin.”

Miss Sherina Ba…: And so, you go back to the NHS with that kind of knowledge, thinking, “Is there something else in my future? Is there something else that I can learn about? Is there something else that I can do to enhance my specialism?”

Miss Sherina Ba…: So I guess, that was it. So if you’re [00:11:30] asking me where my curiosity in aesthetic medicine is, it’s probably more regenerative side, that I probably was interested in. And the aesthetic component comes naturally with that, Rick.

Rick O’Neill: And you said a couple of other things, which I think probably play quite a key part in how you approach things, which was before these kind of technological discoveries and the clinical stuff, you talked about that empathy that you had for [00:12:00] people. And you also talked about, when you were talking about babies, treating a patient holistically and for decades to come. And I’m pretty sure that plays a part in how you kind of approach people now, when they walk into your clinic, right?

Miss Sherina Ba…: All the time, irrespective of age, irrespective of skin type, irrespective of demographic, where you’re from, whether it’s international, whether it’s local, it doesn’t actually matter. I think what matters [00:12:30] to me most is where have you come from, what are you presenting with, what is the history, what is the legacy behind that history. Meaning, what is the emotional that comes with that. It’s never just a one thing. I believe that every face, every skin has a story, and it’s our duty of care to find out about that.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So for me, it’s never that instant gratification of the result of the treatment. Sure, everybody wants a quick fix, and I certainly do. As they always say, “Nothing beats a good blow dryer.” It’s that instant gratification. [00:13:00] However, it’s our duty of care to actually unravel the mystery of that history. And that means a lot to me. So I spent a great degree of time in the consultation process.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And in fact, one of my patients yesterday, yes, it was the Sunday, I was in clinic, did actually ask me, “What treatment do you love the most?” And we were doing a full face facial filler treatment, long period. And I said, “I actually love the consultation process because I get the opportunity to find out everything I need to know about [00:13:30] you and who you are, where you’re from, what you do, where are you heading to, what is the company you’re around, what is your presence with the world, are you front facing, are you less. It doesn’t actually matter. What’s more important is that we really understand the you, and the why, and then how we’re going to get to what you are looking for.”

Miss Sherina Ba…: And so, yes, it is a longevity story with me. It doesn’t matter if somebody wants a quick fix, but I’m constantly thinking about the long term, you’re right.

Rick O’Neill: And if you were consulting on me and you wanted to know the history of my skin, it’s important [00:14:00] that you know I had a really tough paper round as a kid. Really hilly and very windy. So I’m still dealing with the after effects of that. And it’s aged me terribly.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Oh, not at all. Hilly and windy put hairs on your chest.

Rick O’Neill: It did that for sure.

Rick O’Neill: I’m interested to know, from where you kind of left us on that pathway, where you’re kind of discovering aesthetics and you leave the NHS, it’s not always an overnight [00:14:30] thing, is it? I’m leaving the NHS and then the next day I’ve got a successful clinic, There’s a gap there.

Rick O’Neill: So what was the transition? And did you transition in the way that I see a lot of people doing it, where they kind of reduce their days and then they build up a private practice? What was your experience of that kind of transition?

Miss Sherina Ba…: It was a painful transition. And I think for some of my colleagues out there who are in this transition phase, “Where do I go? Do I go? Do I not go? How do I do [00:15:00] it? Yes? No? Am I going to upset my parents and am I going to upset myself? Am I going to fail? Am I going to succeed?”

Rick O’Neill: There’s guilt involved as well, right?

Miss Sherina Ba…: Oh, a huge amount of guilt.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So in 2007, as I said, Rick, I was in that lecture theater, Professor Chu, listening to it thinking, “Wow, this stuff actually works.” And this is a very, very clever gentleman. He’s an academic. He’s a scientist. He’s a researcher and he’s done this vast amounts of work with these big scary looking lasers. [00:15:30] And he’s actually proven, using the science, that there is a potential for a future, and something is going to work in the future to actually help our patients.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So I went back to the NHS at Bristol and I was in this conundrum, “What do I do?” Because back then, in 2007, we probably didn’t have the number of training courses we do now. We didn’t have the knowledge that we do now. We didn’t have you, Rick. We didn’t have people to guide us and teacher us. It was this big exciting world of unknown and there [00:16:00] weren’t any big pathways. The amazing aesthetic doctors that there were out there, they were the first generation, and they were far and few. And they were doing a good job. They lead the way, but there was very few apart from that.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So I call it the grievance period or the bereavement period for me, that 2008 to ’10, because it took me about two years to make my mind up. I had lovely consultants in Bristol and then obviously this fear of failing my parents, which you never want to do.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And one [00:16:30] day it just got to a point in 2010 where I think I’d almost made up my mind yet, but I didn’t know what I was going to do in the aesthetic space. So I called my parents up after I finished going to the gym here in Eling. And I called them both up because I thought, “Right, this is it.” And so, picked up the phone, called them, sat outside the gym. And I said, “Papa,” and they were both on the phone in Malaysia, and I said, “Would you be upset if I gave this all up?” Because don’t forget, Rick, they sent [00:17:00] me from Malaysia to here, paid for a very, very amazing-

Rick O’Neill: A huge deal, a massive deal.

Miss Sherina Ba…: It’s a big deal. They paid for an amazing future for me to study medicine and all the rest. “Would it matter for you if I left all of that to pursue something new in this science space?” My dad has always loved research, so by this point I’m crying. I’m crying out of two things. Number one, the guilt and the fear. But number two, the happiness that I was 10,000 miles away and they couldn’t smack me across the face. [00:17:30] So there was a relief there as well.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And my dad laughed, because by this point my face is [inaudible 00:17:37] outside the gym, and he goes… He has a nickname for me, thangachi, which means little girl. And he says, “Tangachi, it doesn’t matter to us what you do, as long as you promise us one thing.” And I’m like, “What?” And he said, “As long as you promise to practice medicine every single day.”

Rick O’Neill: There you go.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And that was it.

Rick O’Neill: I love that. That’s incredible.

Miss Sherina Ba…: That was it. So I cried even more. So that was a two year grievance period. [00:18:00] I kind of said, “Okay, what am I going to do? Because I’m not quite sure what to do.”

Miss Sherina Ba…: So yes, Rick, I was the doctor in the bag for many years, and when I think about the hair salon salons out there and the chiropractic clinics and the medi-spas and all of that, I covered at least four of those. Going to Vistaprint, printing up. One day, I’ll have to show you my original business cards. They were so corny, but they were my [00:18:30] first.

Miss Sherina Ba…: The S-Thetics brand was always there, because after I listened to that lecture in 2007 with Professor Chu, I went off and created my brand. And I said, “One day when I open my clinic, I’m going to call it S-Thetics.” So that was back in 2007.

Rick O’Neill: I love that. One of the other questions that I always have in my mind, is you talked about that transition, and obviously it was a huge leap of faith and there was kind of fear [00:19:00] and guilt, and it sounds like your parents were amazing about it, so that really helped. But you hadn’t, up until that point, been an entrepreneur, a business owner. So that must have been another part of the leap of faith and the fear. Up until that point you hadn’t had to worry about how do you set up a company, how do you do the operational side of a business, how do you do the marketing side of a [00:19:30] business.

Rick O’Neill: Was there some way that you kind of educated yourself on that front? Or was there someone that helped you? Or was it kind of a feeling your way in the dark process? How did that side of it work?

Miss Sherina Ba…: That’s a great question because we don’t learn this in medical school. You dive your way into the NHS and you retire in the NHS, and that’s about it. Any marketing is not done because your patients come in sick and you need to look after them. So we didn’t have that marketing head on with us because we [00:20:00] were there to help and cure people and make them well, and that was it.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So my first experience with doing my own marketing, as I said, was in 2008, being in the chiropractic clinics and the hair salon salons, and being with the doctor with the bag safely, with my business card. And it was a terrible business card when I think about it. There was no feel, there was no texture, there was no touch, there was no density to it, there was no oomph to it.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Whereas now, when I look at my current business card, it’s got all of those textural fields. [00:20:30] It’s highly emotive, because you want to connect with the senses, you want to really connect with the person that you’re handing it out to. It means a lot to you. It resonates with everything. You know what I’m saying?

Rick O’Neill: Yeah, absolutely.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So that was my first sense of marketing, and it was atrocious. My first mock website, oh my gosh, it’s absolutely shocking. However, I always say, “#Begin Anywhere.” You’ve got to begin somewhere. So obviously, begin anywhere. And that’s where I began terribly.

Rick O’Neill: That’s what we say to people all the time, is, “Prolific [00:21:00] beats perfect.” And so, take an action, whatever it is.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Just do something, and make a lot of calls. So I tried it and you get suited and booted, you go somewhere, and nothing happens. And then I thought, “Actually, I’m going to have to start opening my mouth,” because if you depend on other people to fill your books or your space, then you’re just going to be wearing a nice suit and showing up to places and nothing’s going to happen. So that was my mission. And [00:21:30] I had to make calls, I had to find the right space, and that’s what I did. So I made calls and I found some spaces and I ended up in places, and I worked with some amazing aestheticians and therapists, and I watched what they did. And I was like, “What are they selling? And why are people buying skincare? And what is the skincare doing? And why are people walking out with this stuff?”

Miss Sherina Ba…: And I didn’t understand skin health and skincare wasn’t part of my remit. Generally speaking, the NHS, you don’t like something, you cut it out, you put some [00:22:00] stitches in, make sure you heal the patient in the dressing clinic, and send the rest off to the path lab. So that was your function.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Whereas here, people bought stuff and that was very unfamiliar to me. And I remember one of my lead aestheticians then was [inaudible 00:22:16] and I went in for clinic one day and I said, “Hey Shelly, what’s on my list today?” And she said, “Retail training, Dr.” And I said, “What’s that?” And she said, “Retail training Dr. We’re going to teach you how to sell.” And I just went, “Sell what?”

Rick O’Neill: [00:22:30] At that time, did selling sound like a kind of dirty word, almost, to you?

Miss Sherina Ba…: Yes, bad word. You don’t sell to people. You prescribe, you recommend. So we got along very well, my lead manager at the time, and I went, “I ain’t selling anything.” And I went upstairs. But I came downstairs because I was curious, “What are they learning? What was the product specialist? Who are these people coming in and teaching new things? What is lactic and mandelic and salicylic acid? What are these things?” So I sat there and I listened. And these girls were really clever [00:23:00] and they knew stuff. And I thought, “I want to learn too,” so I listened.

Rick O’Neill: The other thing that we often talk about with people that are just starting out and going through this kind of process of becoming an entrepreneur and a business owner is that actually you’re not selling, you’re solving problems, you’re providing solutions. And that’s essentially what good sales is. It’s providing a solution to a problem that somebody has. And [00:23:30] if they don’t have that problem or you don’t have the solution for the problem they have, then you’re not there to sell anything.

Miss Sherina Ba…: I’m going to find it. So fast forward many years, it took me about four years to figure that out. Again, because I was doing this in a ad hoc basis, before I’d fully left the NHS in 2010.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So to answer your question, I was doing it once a month, twice a month. Twice became four times. And then, I finally left the NHS 12 years ago, in 2010. And that was a complete cut the cord. I just said, “If [00:24:00] I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this right. I’m just going to go all in and I’m just going to learn, full stop. I’m going to learn it all.”

Miss Sherina Ba…: So that was 2010, and it took me a further two years from being a nonbeliever in skin health to really understanding the why it’s relevant and why it’s important and why it’s important to time it around certain types of skin treatments like radiofrequency or lasers or microneedling.

Miss Sherina Ba…: But the question is, how do you put it all together, really? So I think that takes time. And I allowed [00:24:30] myself the time. But I was in busy practices and I just kind of sponged it all in. But the main thing was also learning how to listen to people. And I think that was really important.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So understanding the entrepreneurship side of things, I think that probably didn’t come in my original first five years of my aesthetic career or regenerative career. Whereas, it’s certainly settled in now, in my new home, which is S-Thetics right here in Beaconsfield.

Miss Sherina Ba…: But going back to the how, I think the instinct [00:25:00] of it, the instinct or the gut feeling of it, again, comes from the legacy of my parents’ clinic. If you’re asking me, it just makes me think of that because I’ll be in papa’s clinic and he’s got a great team. In fact, he’s had most of his team for 35 to 40 years, same team. So they’re like blood and family to me. And I’d be sat on this swivel chair and I’d just be spinning around the clinic, as you do as a young girl, just listening to what happens [00:25:30] in the space. And they were like the clinic angels and they were around him and they moved around him, if I reflect on it now.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And they made it happen, to move his patients around the clinic, from consultation to X-ray, to diagnostics, to investigation, to back where he’d put the scan up and he’d interpret it, like my [inaudible 00:25:51], and then he’d formulate the treatment plan. And mine is pretty much the same thing.

Rick O’Neill: I love that.

Miss Sherina Ba…: You have the person who’s dispensing the medications, just like my team over there. [00:26:00] And then, he’s doing a follow-up and I’m no different. We’re doing a follow-up. And that’s really key. The follow-up is equally as important if not more important, to make sure you’re checking the result. That you can see, feel, track, measure, and celebrate. Make sure the patient’s happy and satisfied, and then you escalate onto other things.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So they’re two very similar scenarios in entrepreneurship, because you’re actually looking for people that you can help for as long as you can, as best as you can.

Rick O’Neill: So a lot of that was kind of [00:26:30] seeping in from a really early age. I should ask on behalf of the people who didn’t have that when they were growing up, what other ways do you think we can… When we’ve made that leap and it is day one in our first rented room or premises, and we are kind of like a rabbit in the headlights, where can we go? Who can we go to? It sounds like you had a mentor from an early [00:27:00] age, so maybe people need to find someone who’s a bit further along the road than them, to help them kind of shape this pathway.

Miss Sherina Ba…: 100%. So I feel I was lucky I had that memory and I still do, and I get a lot of inspiration, I get a lot of advice from my parents, and my dad, and I have a lot of inspiration from… I come from a massive family, 23 uncles and aunties. So I listen to them. I’ve watched them and I’ve seen my cousins and [00:27:30] I seek inspiration from them. How did they do it? How did they build new cities? How did they run multiple clinics? And although I may not ask them, I just watch them, and I see them on LinkedIn, and I listen to the kind of language and terminology. And I wish I had someone like you in my life 10 years ago, 12 years ago, when I was starting out, so that I could listen to your podcast and I could listen to the content that you’re putting out, because we didn’t have Rick O’Neill 12 years ago, to seek inspiration from.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And listen to how we’re communicating now, we’re on a digital source, where [00:28:00] you’re just Zooming in and we’re having this conversation together, and you’re making it easy for people to have access because you are being very agile in this space and you’re giving a lot of information, that you’re sharing. So I wish retrospectively, I had a Rick O’Neill in my life 12 years ago that I could listen to help shape and learn from.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So the guys of today and the doctors of today and healthcare professionals, they have access to the likes of you, that they can learn information from. And I’ve had the honor of being on stage with you probably just under [00:28:30] a month, and I also shared being in the audience when I listened to you a year ago at the Crown Aesthetic Skin Symposium. And I was there at the back of the room making notes, all the things that I wasn’t doing when I thought I was doing right. So I was making those notes and I still made a few notes at your lecture a month ago.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So I think we’re still constantly learning how to be better and better, but the new generation now have got this access that we didn’t have before. There’s webinars and podcasts and everything that they can get on [00:29:00] LinkedIn and social media. Such a huge, huge bonus.

Rick O’Neill: I’m going to, in a little while, come back to that idea of the access and the support that you guys have these days, and also some of how the brands and the manufacturers provide that, and which elements of that mean the most to you as a practitioner and a business owner.

Rick O’Neill: But continuing on the chronology that we were on, when [00:29:30] was the moment when you got your first premises that was yours and you walked through the door and it was day one of your own place?

Miss Sherina Ba…: When was it?

Rick O’Neill: Yeah, when was it? And talk us through what it felt like to be stood in that space on day one, when it first opened.

Miss Sherina Ba…: When it first opened, okay. So it took me about nine months to find this, to find S-Thetics in Beaconsfield. [00:30:00] So I was looking for a premise, and I remember saying to my other half, Jonathan, I said, “I want somewhere where you can find me but not find me. So I want to be so discreet that people can come and feel safe and feel secure and feel informed and educated and feel like they’re just going to be really looked after, without any distractions. And so, we’re going to be so constant in our approach and we’re going to take away all these variables and [00:30:30] we’re just going to bring the very latest and the very best and the things that make the most to our patients, and we’re all going to get buried in this den together and learn.” So there were a lot of things that I was looking for. And so, when we finally found where we are now… You need to come and visit, you’ve not visited me yet.

Rick O’Neill: I do. I need to come in.

Miss Sherina Ba…: You need to come and find the S-Thetics den. It’s lovely. So when you come in, you are in a very private space, you’re away from the high street, you could be going into anything at the back, so you won’t be found. And the whole [00:31:00] aspect of that was to blend all character of hundreds of years of legacy of Beaconsfield old town into the very high tech and the latest and the best tech and devices in this regenerative space, and just kind of integrate, infuse the whole thing together.

Miss Sherina Ba…: When you come in, you’ll understand that the S-Thetics logo is S, which is Sherina. It’s highly, highly personalized and it’s very, very me. So everything goes around here in a figure of eight. It’s very feng shui. [00:31:30] My branding goes around in a figure of eight. I guess, it’s a hidden language in there. Eight is very infinite, it goes on forever. So that’s the sign of the longevity. And my theme color here is copper. Copper is very healing, so that’s my regenerative background. So it has to be feng shuied in that direction.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So when I walked in here, it was a mess. The building was a mess, it hadn’t been touched for about 35 years, after one tenant. And I just walked in [00:32:00] and I just thought, “This is it. It’s a mess, but it’s my mess.” And-

Rick O’Neill: And you have the vision, don’t you? That’s part and parcel of the entrepreneurial part of you, that-

Miss Sherina Ba…: It felt right.

Rick O’Neill: You kind of know, when you have the vision and you can make it happen. It’s like a sculptor looking at her breeze block. They can see the beautiful sculpture within.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Yeah. And as they say, “Vision without execution is just hallucination.” [00:32:30] We kind of stood in here and I just thought, “Right, I think this is going to be my room and that’s going to be the entrance and that’s going to be one suite.” And to be fair, because we’d only just moved to Beaconsfield, where we knew no one but one person, we had no patients, no database, no demographic, we had nothing. So we were actually starting from an absolute ground zero with no reputation in the neighborhood. So I didn’t need to have this big space, and [00:33:00] as you say, have a whole plethora of treatments when I didn’t actually know what the local demographic needed of me.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So again, you’re coming in here with not a sales mindset, but, “How am I going to help a local community?” mindset. And so, that’s where I began, with very, very little. And for me, it was a great opportunity because I’ve learned a whole bunch of stuff in the five years that I’ve been in medical aesthetics. But now, I just want to kind of reset and find some new things to play with and get to learn. So there I was.

Rick O’Neill: [00:33:30] There’s a key, I think, lesson in what you said there as well, in terms of entrepreneurship. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with this gentleman, but he has nothing to do with aesthetics by the way, I follow a gentleman, Gary Vaynerchuk, have you ever heard of him?

Miss Sherina Ba…: Yes.

Rick O’Neill: I think we talked about him last time we were sat down having a drink. One of the things he talks about is that he will come off stage, he’s a very successful guy now, he will come off stage and people will say, “I [00:34:00] want to be a public speaker like you.” Or, “I want an agency like you have.” But they’re not necessarily willing to follow the same path that he did to get there.

Rick O’Neill: And so, where you talked there about, you listened to the community and you solved the problems. Whereas, I think these days, because the market is more mature and there’s more people in the space, there is perhaps not as much patience [00:34:30] to go through that process and to learn what it is that you can provide. I think there is a temptation sometimes these days for people starting out to look for the silver bullet, to look for the overnight model, “What’s the quick model that I can implement to bring people in?” And I think one of the lessons that I take from what you’ve just said is that actually there is no silver bullet and you need to find your [00:35:00] demographic or let them find you and then serve them.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Want to serve, that’s it. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with that one. Serve them. And we say this every day, I point out there, because my girls and my team are out there, and we’re here to serve our demographic, we’re here to serve our patients, and show them a great experience. So experience has to come into the mix now I feel in this new space. But essentially, we’re here to deliver treatments and results that patients can benefit from.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And it’s interesting, you talk about this silver bullet, and [00:35:30] I think it’s what each and every one of us wants for ourselves. I just want something very wholesome, that I can enjoy and I can appreciate and be appreciated for back. We all want to feel something in return. We want to feel that we’ve done good and we’ve been validated for that. We’ve done a good job. We’ve done a good day. And to be able to give back in some shape or form. So for me, I am looking for that long term. I’m not looking for that quick fix, [00:36:00] like that silver bullet, because I’m naturally curious about what else can happen.

Miss Sherina Ba…: I think the difficulty we can sometimes find ourselves in is we are in business and we do need the money to survive as well. And we have to always remember that be patient, it will come. But you have to, excuse me for saying, you have to suck it up sometimes and just remember to just keep the patience, and we did.

Miss Sherina Ba…: I remember, that first year, you [00:36:30] open with a bang, and then all of a sudden you get 81 people in to launch with you and you make a lot of noise, and then we finish and then nothing happened for two weeks. Nothing happens for two weeks. But there’s a lot to start; your language, your communication, your email etiquette, what you want to stand for, what do you believe in, what do you want to be known for, your mission, vision, values, your purpose, your culture, your legacy, your DNA, all of those kind of things. And you have to find a way to put it in to practice.

Miss Sherina Ba…: [00:37:00] And I’ve always had great team members, year in, year out. Those who have been with me before as well, they’ve just done selling jobs over here. So all of that forms part of who you are really. And funny, Rick, I’ve never outsourced anything because I never want to be packaged up. And say, “There you go, Sherina, this is what you stand for and this is your brand and this is your PR package,” so to speak. I didn’t want that so early on, because I wanted to try and get lost and figure it out the hard way and [00:37:30] knuckle in and write my own content and do my own social media for a while. And that’s been tough, but it’s been challenging and opportunistic.

Rick O’Neill: There’s so much to say for that, because-

Miss Sherina Ba…: Really? Why?

Rick O’Neill: Because, I think, again, I see a lot of silver bullets on sale in this sector. In terms of, “Go to this webinar and you’ll learn how to build a million pound clinic. [00:38:00] Buy this course or buy this package and your problems are solved.” But it’s a long process to discover what you stand for, who you serve best, your niche demographic, your niche whatever it might be, modalities or conditions that you treat for. That’s a process, not something you can kind of plug in overnight.

Rick O’Neill: And in terms of outsourcing social content, I think the raw material for social content should always come from the passionate [00:38:30] expert at the center of any practice. So I completely agree, you’ve done the right thing there. And I’ve got a couple of questions for you later about your content, your social content.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Uh-oh.

Rick O’Neill: All good. Also, I feel that it would be remiss of us not to call out Jonathan, because he’s always there, and he’s a top, top guy, and I know that he’s instrumental in the practice, and [00:39:00] he’s a great guy to know as well. Perhaps I’ll interview Jonathan next week. We’ll get part two of the story.

Rick O’Neill: So I wanted to know, you talked about, “We had a big launch,” and I think I’ve seen images of… You had the mayor, was it, cutting a… So I love all of that, the way you did that. And then, it was kind of tumbleweed for a couple of weeks. So from that point to now, what are some of the kind of [00:39:30] big challenges that you’ve had to overcome in terms of building a stable business? Because like you said, you’ve got a team around you, you’ve got bills to pay, got to bring in revenue whilst being there to serve.

Rick O’Neill: You also talked about the element of discretion, and I think there’s a lot to be said for that. But then, it can be a paradoxical conundrum [00:40:00] to be discreet, but market yourself. So what are some of the challenges that you’ve kind of faced in that regard, to build this kind of stable business over the years? And talk us through what they were like and how you overcame those hurdles.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Again, I don’t know if I wish someone gave me a manual for this, because there is no manual. And even now, coming up to year eight, we have to rewrite the manual again, Rick, [00:40:30] because what I did at day zero… And I’m finding myself literally rewriting the book again, because where I am right now is very different to where I was even three years ago. And goodness me, pandemic came, and that’s another rewrite of a book. So we’re constantly rewriting this book. So we’re constantly rewriting the manual.

Miss Sherina Ba…: But one of the first things, actually, I’m here on my right, looking at my certificates, and you’ll come and see them when you come and visit me, we launched the clinic, and the challenge then was [00:41:00] how much do we take? Because obviously, there’s this beautiful 200 year old gorgeous building here and you probably think, “Why don’t we just take the whole thing and have all these treatments and literally replicate what we did before?” And I suddenly thought, “Actually, I don’t want to do that. I want to go ground zero because we are ground zero, and listen to it.”

Miss Sherina Ba…: So I think that first challenge is listen to your gut instinct, go with what you’re saying, don’t go with what people tell you to do, like, “I think you should do that.” Go with your gut instinct and [00:41:30] go with your finances as well.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So I didn’t want to get money from elsewhere, I just wanted to go with what I had. So I just went at this very, very slowly, Jonathan and myself. And that was a challenge because there was only so much you could do and we had to be very mindful of that cash flow. So the first thing I invested in, and this was a challenge as well, was I invested in imaging. You probably think, “Why would you do that? It doesn’t generate you any revenue.” But I thought, “I [00:42:00] have to see if the new things that I was going to bring in, I got to make sure it works.” So in order for me to make sure it works, and I always take a great history, so that’s just a given, photography is really key in our profession. “So in order for me to make sure these new things are going to work, I’ve got to take great pictures,” so that was my first investment, which was a challenge for me, because I knew it wasn’t going to bring me any direct revenue. And I spent a lot of time in that room, Rick.

Miss Sherina Ba…: But now I can look back and say, “Thank goodness I did that [00:42:30] seven years ago, because I know that every single thing that I do works and I know how to put it together because I have personally done it myself obsessively.” So I have good conviction that things should work in a fairly strategic manner if people take out the variables and we go with it. So I can be fairly consistent in my predictability of the aging. Does that make sense?

Rick O’Neill: Yeah, 100%. And I think, again, [00:43:00] the way that you went through that decision making process, of what to invest in and when, it shows a very organic approach to things, a very organic growth path. Doing the right thing at each stage, rather than looking for the quick, “Oh, if I buy this machine and get myself in a bit of debt, then that’s going to solve all of our problems.”

Miss Sherina Ba…: Correct. Yes. So being mindful of those investments and getting my first hyper facial, I had to wait for the right time financially to get it. And same [00:43:30] again with, we brought MDMED in, but I couldn’t quite reach out to get the microneedling hand frees, which I really wanted because STAR therapy was my thing. So in 2016, I managed to get that handpiece in, and off I went with RF microneedling from 2016. So it’s great to see RF microneedling being so well known now, and we’ve got that legacy for that.

Miss Sherina Ba…: But one of the first things, I’m looking at my certificates, is my title actually. My title is Miss Sherina Balaratnam because I come from a surgical background. And everybody that advised me when [00:44:00] I was opening the clinic goes, “Don’t go with miss, go with doctor, because no one’s going to know what you do.” And I said, “Well, I’ve worked really hard for my title over there, so I want to keep it.”

Rick O’Neill: Absolutely. And it’s like you said, you still referred to Vic as Mr. Viege for the same reasons, because when you work in the NHS and someone has reached consultant level, that’s how they’re referred to. I think it’s because of the way that you run your practice and because you kind of stuck to that. I think the education [00:44:30] happens with your customers, your patients, your colleagues, people that learn to understand what’s the meaning of that.

Rick O’Neill: I’m a similar way actually. I have FRSA at the end of my name, and hardly anybody has a clue what that’s for, or what it means. But people do ask me and then I have a whole backstory that’s 25 years old, about how those letters came to be. And when I come on your podcast, I’ll tell you the story.

Miss Sherina Ba…: I get to interview you?

Rick O’Neill: Yeah, you can.

Miss Sherina Ba…: [00:45:00] So this is the whole point. So it’s all an education. And education is the core of everything that we do here, because the third challenge is then; what do we bring in?

Miss Sherina Ba…: Because I can walk into a conference and it’s a minefield. You’ve got 17 lasers, you’ve got 17 RFs, you’ve got X amount of skincare, and then now you’ve got all this stuff with the hair, and you’ve got X amount of LED. And you walk in and you think, “Which one am I going to go for?” Because it’s a minefield. So you’ve got to take all this, funnel it down to this, funnel it down to this, and then bang, you’ve got to go for [00:45:30] one, which is your investment. And it’s got to feel right, it’s got to do right, and you’ve got to make sure it hits what it says on the tins. So that is a huge challenge for anyone coming into this arena, even more now because we’re in a looming space and there’s so much and there’s more information.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So another one I always say is… Oh gosh, what is that really nice analogy about making choices? The paradox of choice. Suddenly you’ve got too much choice, how do you make that decision? And I go with feeling and I go with people [00:46:00] as well. So number one, show me the evidence, show me the data, peer review publication. So the science has just got to be one big fat tick.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And then, finally next, I always say, “If you’re going to sell to me, make sure you educate me and don’t leave me,” rule number two.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And then number three, we roll out massive patient education, because I need to know how it’s going to work and I need my patients to understand, we are going to go into this journey together. So a lot of what we do here in the clinic is we invest, we bring in, we go into this with the, “This [00:46:30] should work,” and then bang, we go into this together, and the patients actually go with us now, because we’ve got that legacy.

Rick O’Neill: That explains actually a lot about the way you kind of publish your social content and the emails that you put out and the content on your website, because you do take your patients with you. So a lot of your content, even though your clinic page, presumably the target audience is your [00:47:00] patients, you take them with you to your industry events, to the education that you’re going through, to the conferences that we all go to, and things like that.

Rick O’Neill: And I really like that, because you’re doing two things really. You are explaining to your patient base that, “This is everything that goes behind what we do for you. And so, that’s why we can charge what we charge. [00:47:30] And that’s why you know you’re in good hands, and all of those good things.” But you’re also kind of leading by example in the medicine side of it, so that they understand the difference.

Rick O’Neill: I meant to ask you about that, but you’ve explained it now. Because in some ways, you might assume that if you’re talking to patients, you wouldn’t give so much technical information or take them on [00:48:00] so many of the industry events or presentations that you get involved in. But I actually think the opposite. And the way that you do that, I think really, really works for you and for your patients. And my only other question is whether you hear that back from them when you’re talking to them.

Miss Sherina Ba…: I do. So I will come back to clinic… We’ve just done four weeks of conferencing and presenting, the one with you included. And then, I’ll do three days of that, and I’ll come back [00:48:30] and I’ll do a Sunday clinic or whatever. And then I’ll have a patient and she’ll go like, “Oh, so Croatia looked amazing.” And I’ll be like, “How do you know?” And she goes, “I’ve been following you for the last three days.” And I’ll be like, “Okay.” So sometimes it’s so organic now. And it’s so organic I sometimes don’t realize it because it has just become an integrated part of my life that I never, I have to say, I never ever thought I would do.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And it’s fascinating actually, because that was a challenge. And you [00:49:00] go back to the other challenging things, and when I first launched the clinic, I didn’t think I’d have to be on stage and I didn’t think I’d have to be doing videos. And being a shy introvert, I didn’t think I’d have to do that much of it as well.

Miss Sherina Ba…: It’s like in med school, when someone says, “Right, we’re going to interview you now and watch your interviewing consult process,” you kind of freeze. Whereas now, I think we all have to get used to it. 10 years ago, we were all told we need to get used to being on a website or something like that, and that was [00:49:30] freakish enough.

Miss Sherina Ba…: However, my first thing that we launched was a Facebook page, because most of us have a Facebook page to keep in touch with our family and our cousins and our friends. But we used to maybe do one post once in a while, whereas no one told us we have to measure our social media strategies and look at the metrics and the analyses, which are all the amazing things that you do. And all of a sudden, we have to know and we have to learn when to post and what time to post and what’s going to give you the most likes and hits, and all of those kind of things that you and your team will focus [00:50:00] on very heavily when you’re consulting practitioners like ourselves. So we didn’t know we had to do all of these.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So when I launched S-Thetics, I didn’t launch with an Instagram page because I didn’t personally have one myself. And I told myself I wasn’t going to have one because enough is enough, for my personal space. Facebook is enough and I’ve got enough things to do, go to the gym, and run a clinic, and be healthy.

Miss Sherina Ba…: But all of a sudden, you realize two years into the clinic in 2017 that, “I think I need to be in this space.” And I [00:50:30] was fighting it, Rick, because I thought, “I don’t want to do what everyone’s telling me to do.” And I remember my first Instagram post. And you’re procrastinating and thinking, “What do I say for the first one? What’s the first one going to be?” And I know one of my other colleagues, and she’ll always say to me, “Sherina, you were my first tweet.”

Rick O’Neill: I love that, But again, almost instinctively, where you’ve gone with your content is where I always [00:51:00] tell people to go, is the education and to make sure that your content answers the common questions about each problem you solve and to keep going around that process.

Rick O’Neill: And the other way that you’ve kind of baked it into your daily routine is also, whether you did it on purpose or not, is the highest engagement technique out there, which is to document and not create. [00:51:30] So what I mean by that is to… It is part of your daily routine. I see you when you’re driving into the clinic. It’s, “Good morning, Beaconsfield.” That’s becoming kind of one of your kind of catchphrases. It’s just documenting what you do every day anyway. So it’s no additional time, it’s not like you need book a studio and create perfect content. You’re documenting what’s happening anyway.

Rick O’Neill: And that’s another thing that we always talk to people about, [00:52:00] is don’t make more work for yourself, just document what you’re doing anyway. You’re having these conversations every day, you’re answering these questions all day, every day. So just document that and put it out there. And it doesn’t have to be perfect. And prolific beats perfect every time. Just getting something out there, just documenting, answering those key questions.

Rick O’Neill: And as you probably saw from that last talk, where you were in the audience a year ago, [00:52:30] there’s rich sources of what all those questions are that people have, that you can then document your answers to them, and then that draws people to you as the authority on that topic.

Rick O’Neill: And it actually doesn’t matter what the channel is, so you talked about resisting Instagram. And actually, as I talked about a few weeks ago, Instagram’s becoming really hard work in terms of organic reach. Channels will come and go. But that strategy of, and I can say that because I’ve been doing digital for two or three [00:53:00] decades, other people will pin all their hopes on Instagram, and one day Instagram won’t exist anymore. But the channels will come and go. But that strategy of educating your target demographic in the conditions that you know they struggle with, showing your expertise in the way that you do, and just documenting rather than making loads of more work for yourself to create content, I think, will never go out of fashion.

Rick O’Neill: So a [00:53:30] big tick for me on that one, Sherina. I’d love to see the way it plays out. And it is great to hear that your patients resonate with it, and they get value from it, and it’s one of the reasons that they keep coming back, I would imagine.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Yeah, it is. And I think it’s important that we do it for them. Again, I see it now as part of duty of care. So I think a lot of it is mindset approach. And it was my closed mindset. My, “Oh gosh, do I have to do it? Do I really want to? Can someone else do it?” [00:54:00] But then you realize, “No, hang on this S-Thetics is me. This is my version. This is my thing. This is my story and I’m bringing this in for our patients. And it is my duty of care to actually do that.”

Miss Sherina Ba…: So challenge number three is, I always say, “#GetOverIt.” Just put it out there, don’t overthink it. And I say that to my colleagues sometimes, “Just do what you love and love what you do, and just maybe record it. And if you don’t want to do it, get someone to record you doing what you love and loving what you do. And sometimes that takes the onus away from [00:54:30] you, because you’re not holding the phone, you’re just doing what you love and loving what you do.”

Miss Sherina Ba…: So maybe that’s another top tip too there, but I really appreciate your comment on the driving to work, because I find my work a lot of psychotherapy to myself as well. So if I psych myself up in the morning, which I love the drive to work, it sets me up for success. I have a good day. I walk in with my team and we’re all setting ourselves up for success.

Rick O’Neill: I think it’s great. That kind of thing is a model that I think anybody could follow and aspire to for educating [00:55:00] people and making it part of your daily routine.

Rick O’Neill: And one of our mutual friends, Richard Crawford-Small, he has a fantastic phrase that he uses when he’s telling people to get over it in terms of content. Which is “Shy kids don’t get sweets.” It’s so true because you can moan about it and you can be embarrassed about it, but if you’re not out there, then you lose because somebody else will be there, [00:55:30] and they’ll be talking to the patient that could have been your patient.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And I think there’s so much opportunity. You said time and time again, be omnipresent, and no one told me that 10 years ago and eight years ago. And you learn the hard way, so to speak. So with Facebook and with Instagram, and I was on Twitter right from the start as well, so not quite sure why I thought that. I think just thought it was a good idea at the time. So no strategic thinking there, I just thought it was something to do, and I just went through it for [00:56:00] years.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And one day I happened to be on LinkedIn, probably about four years ago, and I don’t know why, Rick, I just felt comfortable in that space. It was professional, it was business. I don’t use it to market as such, because I don’t see that as my space there. I see that space to connect with my suppliers and to connect with my corporate audience as well, because my corporate audience spend a lot of time researching their investments. And I see all of this being an investment for my patient’s future, [00:56:30] so that they can lead better quality lives for as long as they can. So there is an investment strategy to what we do in regenerative medicine. So my corporate patients will now, four years down the line, engage with me on LinkedIn. And I love using LinkedIn to connect with yourself, Crown Aesthetics, to share what we do in that space with the bigger, broader world. And I think it’s just a wonderful space. So LinkedIn has really been a huge value for me, if you’re asking me personally. And I really enjoy being in that [00:57:00] space, as well as all the others.

Rick O’Neill: Yeah, I agree. LinkedIn, it’s had its struggles over the years, to find an algorithm that works, and for people to find their kind of groove with it. But certainly in the space that we work in, I think it is finding its groove at the moment. And for the reasons that you talked about, I think practitioners and clinic owners should be there and should network for the reasons that you’ve [00:57:30] outlined.

Rick O’Neill: And you mentioned your suppliers and the manufacturers and the pharmaceutical companies. I wanted to talk to you about the support that they do offer or can offer and how can they differentiate themselves these days. Because as you said, when you go to the conferences now, there’s so much new everything; technology, products, devices, substances, [00:58:00] whatever it might be. So therefore, in my nonclinical brain, and you’d have to forgive me for this, but when technology, there’s marginal differences between them, then surely the biggest difference is the support that they give you, the education they provide you with. And you said yourself, “If you’re going to sell to me, then you better educate me and don’t leave me.” And I really like that. So how can they [00:58:30] kind of differentiate? And what’s the support that they provide that matters most to you?

Miss Sherina Ba…: Great points actually. And I think they can influence us practitioners and the consumers and the whole space in a very, very significant way. Very empowering actually, because the more information you give to anybody, they’re just going to make better informed choices. So I look at it like informed consent in the NHS. You’re both going into a buy together, whether it’s buy for surgery, [00:59:00] buy into whatever it is we do here, buy into a procedure that you’re going to invest in. So the main thing for me is, apart from the science and the efficacy and the data peer review publication, that for me is just a big tick. It’s a compulsory. I won’t buy a beauty device.

Miss Sherina Ba…: The next of it is the education. So I think what we have gone with before is, “Will you educate me?” And that’s gone well for me in most of the time here in the clinic, maybe all but one. So I feel like I’ve made some [00:59:30] good choices in most of the things that I’ve brought in. And the companies have come in, they’ve trained my team, they’ve trained myself, telephone answering, call handling, therapy training, and then that follow through. I think follow through is equally as important, because you don’t just want a one hit shot, you want that follow through for continuity. And then, as a result, I feel it’s important for someone like me to give feedback to that organization, so they can learn how is this big scary box of a laser, how is it actually working in [01:00:00] a clinical space. Because you need to know this, you need to understand what kind of level of result or non-result someone like me is getting. So I think that two way relationship is really, really important.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So I actually buy from people, and I think that’s really important. I want to know who you are. I want to get a good idea of who your team is as well. I want to know who your boss is as well. And I want to know what the legacy of your company is as well. That’s really important for me to know, what level of investment, who am I doing business with. And that’s really, really key for me.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So my patients, likewise, [01:00:30] they always say to me, “Hey, Dr. Sherina, do you live around the corner?” And I guess, they’re also wanting to know where am I from. And I think it’s a two way thing.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So take it even a step further. I think companies do really well when they start thinking about educating the consumer. But they’re the end user. I’m not the end user, I’m just 50% of the way through. So what I try and bring into my space is patient education being at the core of what I do. So I will educate all of my patients on a micro level here at the clinic. So [01:01:00] I have always promised patient education at the core of what we do.

Miss Sherina Ba…: On our yearly clinic anniversaries I love to throw a party. So I immerse the party with science and bring all of our suppliers in, and it’s just gone from strength to strength every year. 81 guests, 75, and then when we hit 99, we have to take it out to places that mean a lot to me. So I wouldn’t just source a venue just for the sake of it. It would be a very purposeful space for me, that means a lot to me. And I will take our audience, i.e. our [01:01:30] patients, and I’ll invite them to this patient education party, and I would set it up in the way that I see fit in my patient journey. And every year, we have just brought in new suppliers and new people, and even people that we were probably going to go into business with, just so that we’re starting to educate that there is more to come in the regenerative space.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So these are what I call macro events. So I think it’s important to, again, be omnipresent in different avenues, so that you can look after your loyal, but also just to invite the new, so that people [01:02:00] can learn and understand our profession a little bit more. Because there is a lot of odd things that do happen in our profession, and I won’t go into regulations and all of that, because you and I know we can probably do another podcast on that. But people need to understand there is a lot of light in this space, and there is a lot of excitement, and there is a lot of fantastic journalists out there, Alice Hart-Davis, and you’ve got Francesca Ogiermann-White, and these are people that really represent wanting to share the educational side of things.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So I do spend a lot of time on that macro [01:02:30] space, and I spend a lot of time on YouTube and videos as well, and engagement post-lockdown, because lockdown brought us Zoom. And all of a sudden, I could interview Clint Cornell and Ron Borsheim from BTL to say, “How do your technologies work? Because I can’t get to my patients, but I can spend a lot of time educating them in the comfort of my own space right now.”

Miss Sherina Ba…: So patient education has to be at the core, and I think the good companies that have understood that and who have really said, “Yeah, we’re going to go with that,” they have really educated [01:03:00] their consumer level well, either directly or via your healthcare professionals. And they will continue to do really, really well.

Rick O’Neill: I love that. And so, as we talk about the educated consumer, and that kind of brings me neatly onto the question around where you think this is all headed over the next few years. So what’s your kind of view on the medical aesthetic market and the dynamics [01:03:30] at play over the next kind of naught to five years? And with what’s going on at the moment in terms of the economic fun and games that’s playing out, do you see that impacting it in any way or do you feel that to some extent aesthetics at some level is a protected spend?

Miss Sherina Ba…: Gosh, how much time do we have, Rick?

Rick O’Neill: Let’s summarize.

Miss Sherina Ba…: [01:04:00] I’m going to put multiple hats on for that one.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Number one, ethical hat. So again, I will touch on regulation, but I won’t go into that. And I think we are seeing a lot more happen with JCCP and all of those bodies, to try and bring a higher and more stringent level of regulation. And I’m all for that. And I think each and every one of us healthcare physicians will do what we need to do. We just will because General Medical Council, we are born and bred. So we are going to do [01:04:30] everything that we need to do to take our standards to the next level. So I think it’ll be interesting to see where that comes, and I think it will come fast now. So I’m going to cover that and just flip that to the side.

Miss Sherina Ba…: The next is going to be, it is a highly exciting space. And every year I say to myself, “I’m going to stop now and I’m not going to bring anything else because I’m going to play with what I have.” Something else suddenly comes in really, really quickly. Take for example the Emsculpt Neo, and I point there because it’s upstairs in [01:05:00] my room. And I thought, “Wow, you’ve gone from two FDA clearances to five, to nine, and the 10th one has just appeared really, really quickly.” And we’ve got that really fast. And something else is coming. So these companies are moving in a really fast pace in terms of their R&D and they’re producing technologies to serve the betterment of our patients. And if you have patients requesting now and they’re on that escalated ladder of wanting, sometimes you feel, “Gosh, I need to serve them and I got [01:05:30] to give it to them.”

Miss Sherina Ba…: So keeping up with that financially and the desire to serve to your patients, that in itself is a challenge, and you need to be very real with your cash flows and stuff. So again, you have to put your business hat on and do the right thing for all parties, because you can’t do everything and you can’t bring everything in. So learning how to juggle the where and when and how is very important. So I think it is a really, really exciting space and learning how to juggle through and weed out the stuff that’s [01:06:00] really not very good, unless you want stuff that’s not very good, to the stuff that really, really means a lot to you. So I think that will always be exciting.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And for me, I think the main thing… I’ve always been interested in regeneration and I’ve always been interested in the wellness space as well. And sometimes that might make me sound a bit holistic, but I talk about it big in a much more dynamic way. So we are looking at a much more nutritional and supplementation. The companies out there that talk about NAD, et cetera. So I think [01:06:30] there is a lot to be said about that space and bringing it into our aesthetic space. So again, I think we’re going to see a lot of shift in that direction.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And then, you’ve got things even like hair restoration. That is a new space that is booming at the moment. Transplantation is definitely there, but there’s a lot that can be done in and around that procedure, that a clinic like ourselves can supplement a patient going for a hair transplant. So I think that’s going to be a whole new avenue, both in clinic and [01:07:00] at home as well. So these devices are going to be much more high quality. They’re going to be FDA cleared.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So I think for that cohort of patient, men and women… See, everybody thinks hair transplantation and hair regenerative treatments are for men, but most of my patients are female. And then, most of my patients are younger. So where our aesthetic patients used to be in their sixties and then they went to their fifties, a lot of our patients are struggling with accelerated aging as early as their late twenties and early thirties, because they’re high [01:07:30] performance, they’re going through a lot right now in their careers, and they’re wanting to push through. So I see that shift in trend from the aesthetic patient, just moving across all of the different age demographics, which is really, really fascinating.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And we need to be ready for it. We need to be ready for our patients, we need to know how to communicate effectively with them. We need to understand if it’s not us communicating effectively, who are we going to bring into our practices to meet that requirement? Because there is only one Sherina and Sherina [01:08:00] may not be able to be everywhere, but they’ve got to be the right chemistry as an organization to fit into that space.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So I think it’s going to be a really exciting time for the profession, for us, for our patients. And I think the more educated and informed and more excited we are as a group, that’s going to be great. So I always say to myself, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” but my God, I seem to be sprinting year on year.

Rick O’Neill: You look like you’re sprinting to me, so much going on. I guess, related [01:08:30] to everything you just said, and we should appreciate that within the medical aesthetic landscape, people will target different geographical and demographic groups, or end up serving different geographies and demographies. So with the current economic climate that we’re in, do you see that affecting the growth of the aesthetic space or [01:09:00] affecting it in any way? Or do you feel like aesthetics, because of all the reasons you just talked about, where people are more educated, there’s less stigma, there’s a journey that people can go on, that the age group is changing, do you see that not having any effect on the growth of the market as a whole?

Miss Sherina Ba…: You’ve heard of the lipstick effects, haven’t you?

Rick O’Neill: Mm-hmm.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So even in a time of economic recession, the war, the crash of the stock market, [01:09:30] there’s some industries that actually continue to do well, some professions. And I feel that this is one sector that can withstand the test of time.

Miss Sherina Ba…: However, we do need to be aware, number one, of the surroundings and the micro and macro environment. So the macro environment is what is out there. The micro environment is how does that influence and affect your environment, i.e. your patients. And so, that’s why if you know more about your patients and who they are and what they do and what they come from, then [01:10:00] you are able to be agile with them. Because I do respect the fact that our patients may want certain treatments and they may need to fall short on some others. So we need to think of other things. Can we give them memberships? Can we do the more loyalty program? Because I love my patients, and for me, them coming to see me is my own form of psychotherapy. So I enjoy having them here. I really, really do. So how do I keep them able and agile? So finding ways to think laterally, to be able to accommodate [01:10:30] them during this time and help them prioritize is really, really important, “Let’s do this and let’s do less of this.”

Miss Sherina Ba…: One thing I will say as well is, to be in a circuit, in a profession where your colleagues and your profession don’t discount and don’t fall short of just suddenly saying, “Oh my gosh, something’s going on. Let’s half the price of everything,” and I see that happening in the summertime. And I’m like, “Why are we doing this? Let’s not do that.” Because you are actually devaluing the premiumness of what we’ve invested [01:11:00] in, in the technology and the premiumness of those brands. And all you’re going to do is bring them crashing down. And I won’t go into that too much.

Miss Sherina Ba…: However, we should actually respect the values of our investment, the values of our practice, and also the values of our time, and how much we do for our patients. Because once you go down, there’s never any up again, and you’re just devouring everything.

Rick O’Neill: 100% agree. There’s a big problem with a race to the bottom, and that is you might win. [01:11:30] If you’re discounting, then there’s only one way you can keep going.

Rick O’Neill: And actually, conversely to what people might assume, and I assume this is what they’re assuming when they start discounting, if you go down the premium, discreet, high education, high quality medical model route, you’re more likely to attract those patients that will stay [01:12:00] with you for the right reasons. Whereas, the discount route only can end one way, really. So I completely agree with that.

Rick O’Neill: I have a final question for you, Sherina, and it would be; if you could go back and speak to yourself back in the early 2000s, before you made this leap, what one piece of advice would you whisper in your young Sherina’s ear before you embarked, [01:12:30] which would help you going forward, knowing what you know now?

Miss Sherina Ba…: I would’ve started my own regenerative treatments 10 years ago. All the treatments that I love having now, I would’ve started those 10 years ago, but it’s never too late. As I said, begin anywhere.

Miss Sherina Ba…: But in terms of what I would’ve said to myself 10 years ago, “Be prepared. Be prepared that it is a marathon and not a sprint.” And I would’ve probably told myself, “You’re [01:13:00] going to be sprinting a lot, hun. So make sure you keep your health up. Make sure you keep exercising. Don’t cancel that exercise class just because you want to work a little bit harder. Make sure you fit that in.” My parents always said that.

Rick O’Neill: That’s so true.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So for those of you starting out in your new clinics and for those out there thinking it’s good to work late, because I do work late, and I love it, I love seeing my patients late, and I love being accessible, but don’t forget to fit that in. I think your [01:13:30] health is wealth. And I’m just going to say that, number one.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And then, the third thing I’m going to say is, “Be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself because we’re going to take a lot of knocks in this journey in whatever shape or form.” And for those of us, and I speak to many colleagues, and a lot of people say the same thing, they just want to do good, they just want to do right, they just want to be the best, and to produce great work [01:14:00] and make it look good, as well to the profession. And, “You shouldn’t knock yourself and beat yourself down so much.” I probably don’t say that often to myself. But, “It’s okay to be not okay sometimes as well. So just remember that as well. And talk to your right colleagues. Find some good colleagues that you can depend on.”

Miss Sherina Ba…: I’m not alone. I’ve got a great [01:14:30] team whom I love and I love spending time with them, I really, really do. But I do think it is really important to get to know some of your colleagues in the profession well. I have some wonderful colleagues; Dr. David Eccleston, Dr. Sabrina, and Dr. Tapan, and Dr. Rajan. They’re close to my heart. They’re really close to my heart and I know if I ever need anything I could just pick up the phone and they will be there with me in a heartbeat.

Miss Sherina Ba…: So don’t feel you need to do this alone, [01:15:00] although you have to do this alone as an independent person, et cetera. Find people out there that you’re not asking anything from, but just to get to know. It doesn’t have to be someone mature or senior in this space. That would help, because it’s great to have someone that you can aspire with, and someone to learn the mistakes from as well. But just form a network. This is what our conferences are for, this is what our webinars are for. And you can even chat on the webinars and you can find out who you can connect with. Connect with [01:15:30] people like yourselves, Rick. You can learn so much from attending your podcast and your webinars, following you on LinkedIn, following your social media, all those little nuggets of information coming up to you.

Miss Sherina Ba…: And then, finally, I’m going to go back to what I should have told myself 10 years ago, “Don’t be so shy. Go up and talk to people and say hello.” And I’m a lot better at that now, but it just gets stuck in. It’s a lovely industry. It’s a lovely profession. There’s some wonderful people in our S-Thetic space and you-

Rick O’Neill: [01:16:00] That last piece of advice, I think is golden because-

Miss Sherina Ba…: Which one?

Rick O’Neill: About not being shy and getting over that as quickly as you can, because I can remember before I first started my first agency, which was in 2000, going to manufactured networking events, where you are supposed to go up to people. [01:16:30] It always felt to me for the first few weeks, going to those events, that everyone had someone to talk to, but I was in the corner and I had to break into a group or interrupt people to talk into them. And I hated it. I did not like it. And I will be honest, the first once or twice, I left without speaking to anyone.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Did you?

Rick O’Neill: Yep. Couldn’t handle it. It didn’t feel comfortable. It didn’t feel right. It felt embarrassing, awkward.

Rick O’Neill: But on the third or fourth one, I made a good friend with [01:17:00] one of the guys that ran the group. And he just took me around and he went, “Let me introduce you to so and so. Let me introduce you to so and so.” And then, I really got into it.

Rick O’Neill: Now, you can’t shut me up.

Miss Sherina Ba…: You can’t.

Rick O’Neill: But I think that piece of advice is really key, because actually in that business and even in this one, some of those conversations that I was sort of brave enough to go and have, have unlocked millions of pounds worth of projects and revenue and-

Miss Sherina Ba…: [01:17:30] Opportunities.

Rick O’Neill: Yeah, opportunities, and friendships as well, and mentors, and you name it. It all comes from having the guts to go and start a conversation.

Miss Sherina Ba…: That next person is actually in the same boat. You don’t need to walk into a group and try and take over the whole group, but it all starts with one. Begin anywhere, the power of one. So that would be my advice to myself, “Just find one person. And one becomes two, two becomes four.” And you’re probably wondering why [01:18:00] I’m looking to the right, because I seek a lot of inspiration from this one.

Rick O’Neill: Oh, yes, top man. Well, in the Aesthetic Entrepreneurs we have Winning Wednesdays, and we always have a picture of The rock because Richard loves him. I think I share a lot of common traits with The Rock personally, I’d like to think that. He’s an incredible guy and what he’s achieved… Even with his latest film, he’s fought for about 15 years to get that produced. [01:18:30] So he does practice what he preaches.

Rick O’Neill: But let me just say, I’ve absolutely loved this conversation, Sherina, and thank you so much for taking the time out of what an incredibly busy clinic, to come and talk to me about your background and all of these incredible bits of advice. And hopefully, it was in some way cathartic for you to go back a little bit and talk about what’s come before, up until this point, and to [01:19:00] give a little bit of thought to what’s coming next. But I, for one, predict massive things for you and S-Thetics. And I’m very, very proud to have got to know you and to have worked with you. And I’m looking forward to doing that much more.

Miss Sherina Ba…: I’m very humbled to hear that, Rick, and right back at you. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I loved this. My first one, you’ve made it nice for me. I’ve absolutely enjoyed it. And you’re right, you’ve made me think about my past. And [01:19:30] it’s funny, when we are the rebellious teenager, we are just probably swiveling around in your parents’ chair like this. But now, I feel lucky that I had the opportunity to swivel around the chair, and I get to share that story with you 30 years down the line. Thank you.

Rick O’Neill: Many more to come, I’m sure. So, Sherina, thank you very much for being here and I look forward to seeing you soon.

Miss Sherina Ba…: You too, Rick. Have a super day.

Rick O’Neill: Take care.

Miss Sherina Ba…: Bye now.

Digital In Aesthetics. Ep1. Askari Townshend

With clinic owner and software entrepreneur Dr Askari Townshend

Click here for the Transcription

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Rick O’Neill: Today I’m going to be joined by Askari Townshend, who is founder and chief entrepreneur at Collums, and also ASKINOLOGY, very successful aesthetic clinic and delighted to have him with me on my first ever podcast episode. Askari, thanks for coming. Nice to see you, and thanks for agreeing to be my first guest and yeah, here we are on Zoom again. Spent a lot of time on here in the last couple years, haven’t we?

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Askari Townshen…: Hi, thank you for having me, Rick. Yes. Yeah, it’s been a year or two of Zoom, hasn’t it?

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Rick O’Neill: Yeah, absolutely, and the part of the driver for this podcast venture, if you like, is the bringing together of the aesthetics market and digital stuff, which have crashed together, unceremoniously, over the last couple of years. All sorts of lessons have been learned, all sorts of fallout, all sorts of realizations as to number one, “Oh, it is actually really useful.”, and number two, “Oh, my God. I’m clueless about it, and the tools that I’ve got are rubbish.”, et cetera. Or “I haven’t got the right partners around me.”, all of that stuff.

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So that’s why I’ve got you in as my first guest, because you are the perfect mix, I think, of successful medical aesthetic clinician practitioner, business owner, and, now, having crossed the chasm into a digital entrepreneur, because you’ve built a product which we’ll talk about.

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Askari Townshen…: And I suspect you’ve sneaked to look at my socials and seen how bad they are as well.

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Rick O’Neill: I’m saying nothing. I’m not here to coach you today. It’s not a digital academy call. You’re not being assessed. But, despite what you may think about your Instagram, you’ve obviously done well. For anyone who doesn’t know you or how you got going, I just wanted to give people a bit of background on where you came from and what’s kind of led you up to now, and then we’ll talk a bit about what you’re up to at the moment.

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Askari Townshen…: Sure.

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Rick O’Neill: I was going to sort of start with just what’s your background in aesthetics? How did it all start? How did you get started?

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Askari Townshen…: Sure, okay. Thanks, Rick. I qualified in 2002 up in Nottingham and I spent the next six years in the NHS on a surgical training scheme and there was a lot of changes in surgical training and I was one of the few who was true to my word. We all grumbled and said we were going to leave the NHS if it all happened, and I actually did. I’d already started doing Botox and filler treatments for friends and family, having done a short course. It was the days where you’d just rock up, you did an afternoon course or in-a-day course and off you went and I decided to set up a clinic. So off I went to Northampton. I can’t really remember why I chose Northampton, but I found a nice spot, set up, but it was tough because the year was 2008 and people were queuing up outside banks to get their money out and there was a big crash.

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Rick O’Neill: I remember it well.

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Askari Townshen…: And some…

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Rick O’Neill: Yeah. Right.

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Askari Townshen…: Baptism of fire, and, there I was, naive arrogant surgeon who thought he was going to take over the world and kind of had a rude awakening. Probably the rudest bit of it was going down to the local council to see if I could sign on for benefits because I’d spent all my cash setting up the clinic and I literally had no money-

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Rick O’Neill: Wow.

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Askari Townshen…:… And then they said, no, I can’t sign on for benefits because I had a house in Nottingham that I was renting out, which was in negative equity. The house was costing me more money than I was getting, but because of that, I wasn’t eligible for benefits.

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Rick O’Neill: Wow.

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Askari Townshen…: So yeah, that’s where I was at in 2008.

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Rick O’Neill: That’s amazing.

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So really been there in terms of crashing into the bottom and having to fight your way back up again.

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Askari Townshen…: Yeah, but the great news is that I plodded on and stuck at it, and despite the crash, kind of 12 months, 18 months into it, actually, the business started doing okay, and a couple of years into it, we were making some money, which was fantastic. Making enough money that I made the decision to sell the business to sk:n. I don’t think there’s a problem saying that now. They were the UK’s largest chain of aesthetic clinics and I went to work for sk:n for five years. During that time, I became the Director of Medical Services and it was probably the best thing that I’ve ever done, in terms of my aesthetics and business career, because I knew nothing about business and those guys, they’re on it. They’re not the biggest for no reason. Now, you can question how they do stuff, but there’s no doubt they know what they’re doing and I got to learn some of that.

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Rick O’Neill: What were the big things that you learned from that time with that business?

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Askari Townshen…: The thing that I think stands out is processes and numbers, just a ruthless focus on what are you doing, how are you doing it, how do you measure it and was it worthwhile doing, and that’s it.

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Rick O’Neill: Which is pretty alien to your average clinician coming out of the National Health Service, right?

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Askari Townshen…: Right. But what’s interesting though, is that I’ve started talking again, I’ve done a few business talks about processes, and you’re right, it is alien but, if we switch the word process for protocol or audit or clinical audit? Actually, everybody feels a little bit happier about that because they get clinical audit.

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Rick O’Neill: Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…: It’s the same thing, you know? So you need to apply the principles of clinical audit that you do with your treatments, apply that to your business-

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Rick O’Neill: Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…: … And actually you’re going to build a strong business and I think that’s what really got into my mind with my time there.

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Rick O’Neill: Absolutely. There’s so many analogies between the clinical side and the business side and the marketing side.

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Askari Townshen…: Right.

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Rick O’Neill: They all require the same basic approach. Holding yourself to account on certain metrics and-

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Askari Townshen…: Right.

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Rick O’Neill: … Protocols, as you say, and being consistent with it all the way through as well.

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Askari Townshen…: And being willing to learn and questioning yourself and being honest when things aren’t good enough and making them better.

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Rick O’Neill: Absolutely. So you talked about trying to sign on, at one point, and getting turned away and then things turned around. You skipped quite a bit, I reckon, in between one minute, “I’m signing on.”, and the next minute, “I’m selling my clinic.”, right? I’m not going to let you get away with skipping that bit so how did you manage that and what sort of challenges did you face along the way, and at what point did you think “I could sell this.”? Or, were you just approached, out of the blue, or how did that happen? Because that’s, for me as an entrepreneur, that when you get to a point with a business where there’s some sort of exit in sight, oh, it’s really-

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Askari Townshen…: Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill: It’s exciting, but it’s also super stressful and it’s much harder than you think and it takes longer than you think. Was that your-

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Askari Townshen…: Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:… Experience as well?

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Askari Townshen…:It certainly was. So if I rewind then, I got my clinic. I decked it all out. I did all the exciting bits. I chose the color of the walls and the carpet got a nice desk and then, when I’d done that and spent all that money and everyone had patted me on the back, which I always think is strange. It’s like, “Oh, well done. You’ve spent loads of money.” Well, yeah, spending money is kind of easy. It’s the making the money back that’s the difficult thing.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:So I was there, in this building, with no staff and some fancy kit that I’d spent a lot of money on and then it dawned on me that I needed to get people in through the door. This was before social media really was a big tool. I’m sure some trailblazers were on it, but, in 2008, we had websites.

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So I got a grant actually, in the days when you could get business grants and your local chamber of commerce and people like that would help out. So, I got a grant, I got a website going, I got a business mentor. That was actually really valuable. It’s a very lonely period when you are a sole founder and you don’t really know what you’re doing.

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Rick O’Neill:Absolutely.

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Askari Townshen…:So to have somebody that can come see you once a month and you can just offload to, and they can help guide you. A little tip, actually, to people out there who maybe are looking for mentors, it doesn’t have to be from the same industry. In fact, I’d probably recommend, that if you go find a mentor, that it isn’t someone from your industry. It’s someone who knows about business and their business knowledge can be applied to any industry and they can do it in a way that isn’t biased or unduly affected by being too close to what you’re doing.

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So I plugged away, I contacted local gyms. I gave talks at their little open days. Gosh, I was everywhere. I was flyering cars in Morrisons car park, and I remember getting an angry phone call from a lady who was really upset that I’d left this flyer under her windscreen wiper and declared that she might have come to see me, but she definitely wouldn’t now.

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So, you know, I’ve seen it all. Open days. We got a stand one time at the local shopping center. Adverts in magazines. You know those local glossy, local magazines, like Northamptonshire Life?

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Rick O’Neill:I do know [crosstalk 00:09:49].

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Askari Townshen…:[crosstalk 00:09:49] On the back.

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Rick O’Neill:I live in Northamptonshire so I’m familiar with it. My question is, right, Henry Ford used to say, “I know for sure I’m wasting 50% of my ad spend, but I don’t know which 50%.”

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:So which of all those things worked, and did you know? Were you tracking it? Because a lot of that stuff was real world, quite hard to track. Which-

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah, it was-

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Rick O’Neill:… Really kind of filled up the clinic for you?

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Askari Townshen…:I tried my best to track it. I knew I needed to track it, and I really tried hard. Print advertising, in my mind, was a waste of money.

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Rick O’Neill:Right.

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Askari Townshen…:There was a lot of money spent on print advertising and it just didn’t work for me. I tried different things, different types of adverts, the local magazines. I even put something in the local paper. Things where people would have to give you the code to get access to some kind of discount. It was super slow.

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Rick O’Neill:Right.

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Askari Townshen…:Really slow, and I think the website, even in those days, probably provided me with the majority of my customers.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:I think what really happens is that you imagine there’s this Eureka moment and suddenly everything comes together, but it’s truly that analogy of the snowball and it starts slow, and the thing is it’s slow and small for ages.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:People try and kid you that it’s a really steep hill and after five minutes, you’ve got a huge snowman and you don’t. It’s small and it’s slow for nine months, 12 months, and then you wake up one day and, almost without you realizing it, you’ve got something going and that’s a special time. Once you’ve got the momentum, actually, things can start moving quite quickly.

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Rick O’Neill:That’s right.

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Askari Townshen…:I think that’s what happened in Northampton. You had all these little things going on, a bit of print advertising, the website, people started hearing about me, the word spread slowly, slowly. Then I woke up one day and the snowball was rolling and then you kind of don’t look back.

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Rick O’Neill:Plugging away at all of those things, whether each thing in its own right worked or not, all of it contributed to-

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:… The awareness. The momentum, the drive to keep going, the brand positioning, all of that stuff, because it may be someone read something or they caught a glimpse or they got your Morrison’s flyer. Then when they Google something, because Google was still a thing in 2008 and before, then they make that sort of brand connection. “Oh, okay. Yeah. I’ve heard of these guys.”

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:You know, but that-

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Askari Townshen…:You said awareness. I think awareness is a really important word because I don’t know how many times people… People talk about the number of times they need to see your logo or hear your name before they become familiar with it and they see it in Morrison’s car park and then it’s in the newspaper and then maybe it’s the website and then you do a talk at the local David Lloyd and all of a sudden somebody clicks and says, “Oh. Oh, yeah.” Then they walk passed one day and they’re, “Oh, you know what? I’ll just nip in.”, because they’re comfortable now. They know what you’re about.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah. I think the established wisdom used to be seven touch points, right?

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Askari Townshen…:Mm.

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Rick O’Neill:And it’s really just because of the sheer volume of stuff that you get thrown at, on a day to day basis, that it’s going to take six or seven times before you really clock and make a connection between having seen or heard about something and knowing what it’s for or whether it relates to you or it might be useful for you.

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Askari Townshen…:Exactly.

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Rick O’Neill:The same applies in digital marketing as it does in print and Morrison flyering techniques, which I think they should bring back personally. I’d love to know what the flyer said under the windscreen. Did it say “Blimey,”-

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Askari Townshen…:I don’t even remember.

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Rick O’Neill:… “You’re looking a bit rough, love. You’ve just done your weekly shop. You need to…”

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Askari Townshen…:I think she just had a bad day. She’d had a bad day. And, do you know what, actually, just as a segue from that or to go left field a moment… As I’ve got older and as I’ve run my business for longer and looked at customer service more and more and more, I give people a lot more leeway these days. There’s a lot of people out there having a lot of bad days.

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Rick O’Neill:True.

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Askari Townshen…:It doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to be rude or mean, or violent or any of those things, but it helps me understand and it helps me be calmer and less upset about humanity. When I think to myself “Actually, you know what, somebody probably just had some really bad news.”, or maybe their parents unwell, maybe they’re getting divorced, maybe their kids sick?

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:But, you know what, sometimes we just need to be a bit kinder to each other and give each other a little bit of leeway.

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Rick O’Neill:Amen to that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, and you’re going to get me off on a right tangent about stoicism, because I’m a big advocate of stoicism.

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:I don’t know how much you’ve looked into it or not, but that’s a big part of it, is the things that people are going through, that’s that’s on them. That’s about them, right?

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:Someone’s reacting to you or being a certain way to you or near you is always 99% of the time is a projection of what they’re dealing with, and just knowing that and remembering that really, really helps if someone-

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:… Is being a bit of a dick to you and that’ll be why, usually.

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Askari Townshen…:It helps both ways. It helps them because you respond to them differently and it actually helps yourself, and do you know what? I do like stoicism, but I’m also kind of selfish. I partly do it for myself.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah. Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:Because I can go home and I feel less grumpy and less angry about the world and people.

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Rick O’Neill:Absolutely, because you can take it all on and take it home, if you’re not careful. And all of these things, although tangents, they may seem, are super relevant, because they’re always things that are going to help you in the running of a business because when I first got started, I had an agency before LTF and also LTF is now 14 years old.

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Askari Townshen…:Wow. Congratulations.

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Rick O’Neill:Thanks. Actually, today it’s our 14th birthday.

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Askari Townshen…:Oh, wow.

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Rick O’Neill:I incorporated the company when my wife was two weeks from due date for my first son and we just bought a house and she thought I was completely insane, starting a business and leaving the previous business behind. But that’s just that I’m not averse to risk, I like to jump out of the plane and then design a parachute on the way down. But yeah, that whole thing around how to deal with it and how to detach yourself from certain things is really helpful. I used to feel emotionally connected to my P&L reports and was up and down like a yo-yo, in terms of my mood, if we were doing well or not doing well. When you’ve been doing it for much longer and you know, that’s just how it is, the ups and downs, you can cut a line across the middle of it and feel a bit more stable and just start your day in a certain way, that kind of levels you. But that takes a while.

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Going back to where we forked off of our path, in terms of marketing and what works and what doesn’t and stuff, all of it is about marginal gain. You talked about the snowball, getting back to that analogy. It is small for a long time, but, if you don’t keep pushing it, it stays small-

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:… and it’s marginal gain. One of the things that does get my goat, with my tongue in cheek, most of the time, is the amount of content, if you like, out there that suggests there may be some sort of magic formula or magic pill or super neat trick that unlocks you from a hundred grand to 10 million in a very short space of time, and you and I know it is not that easy. There’s no such thing as an overnight success. Most overnight successes take 20 years.

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:That’s one thing that I think applies in business and the marketing side is the marginal gain of relentless consistency and not leaving a stone unturned.

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Askari Townshen…:Sure.

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Rick O’Neill:A lot of people want to go for the quick fix and find, “Oh, there must be some way of avoiding this hard work.”, or “There must be some way of avoiding the next three years of trial and error.”, but there just isn’t.

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There’s a lot of things you can learn. There’s a lot of processes you can put in place to make things more efficient and slightly easier, and that’s the sort of thing we’re going to be talking about on this chat. But I think it’s important that people just own that, and as you said it was, and that’s why I didn’t want to let you get away with short cutting from signing on to selling to sk:n Clinic. That’s quite a leap that. In between that, you had to be relentlessly consistent, you had to push on every angle. You had to deal with lots of knock backs and, no doubt, nights of sitting there thinking, “Crap, where’s the next”-

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Askari Townshen…:I’ve got a nice story, actually, even before the clinic. I was in Nottingham, I was working as a junior doctor and I’d started doing Botox and fillers and I was getting pretty good at it. I thought that this could be something for me to do on the side or could be perhaps a future career and guess what? I was right, but I remember getting my first kind of partnership with a local hair salon and they seemed to be doing pretty well.

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They were big. They were well known and they seemed to take a liking to me and I thought I can have access to this big database of customers. Had my very first booking, I was super excited and got all my stuff together in my bag. I got my Botox and I premixed my Botox up so it was all ready to go. I wouldn’t waste any time. I turned up at the hair salon and I waited and I waited and you probably know how this story ends. It ends with a no-show.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:And there I was with my bottle of Botox that I’d pre-mixed now and I don’t know how much I’ve paid for my Botox in those days, 150 or 180 pounds. It was a lot of money to me. It was a huge amount of money, and we learned a good lesson there, straight off, about human behavior, about what you should do first. Should you make mix up your Botox before your patient is in front of you? Absolutely not. Even today I learned that lesson. Even today. I was in clinic on Tuesday. I did a full syringe treatment of filler.

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Somebody that I’ve treated in the past. I know they have no problems with the treatment, with the same product. I opened up my first syringe of filler as I was setting up and I was about to open up filler number two and three and unwrap the package and I stopped myself. “Hold on, ‘Skari, what if she has a funny turn? What if she has some strange reaction to it? I don’t want to open up syringe number 2, 3, 4, because then it’s wasted.”-

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:… No, open up one syringe. What I’m saying, I guess, is that you learn stuff and you got to keep learning from your mistakes. Don’t forget the lessons you learn 15 years ago.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah. There’s nothing more soul destroying than making the same mistake twice.

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Askari Townshen…:Right. But people do it still though.

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Rick O’Neill:We all do it, and you think, “Oh, not again.”

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:”I’m definitely going to remember that next time. Oh, I didn’t.”

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah, totally. When we were talking about the sale of the business, I said to you that, in my experience, that is a mix of excitement and also stress and also it’s usually harder and takes longer than you think. When did you know that was an option? Were you approached at random or is it something you were looking for? How did that all work and how did it pan out?

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Askari Townshen…:It wasn’t planned at all. Things were going quite well for me and when I had opened my clinic, a large sk:n Clinic had opened, literally, a few meters away from me and had I known this, I don’t think I would’ve set up my business there. I think it was coming up to a two year mark or three year mark and I knew that Lisa’s often had breaks at two or three years. I’d heard on the grapevine that the sk:n Clinic wasn’t doing very well and I always used to drive past it really slowly to see if there was anyone inside. I’d often loiter just to check, and I just had this hunch. So I went into the clinic one day and spoke to the manager and said, “Hey, my clinic’s around the corner. Not sure if you guys are doing as well as you’d hoped. Who would I speak to about buying your stuff when you go?”

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Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:Wow.

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Askari Townshen…:I did say I was arrogant, didn’t I?

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Rick O’Neill:I love that.

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Askari Townshen…:So she passed on my email address and, lo and behold, Darren, who’s now the CEO of sk:n, got in touch with me and we started talking. I don’t know, I think he just liked the size of my balls and was like, “Wow.” I remember him saying to me, very specifically, “Listen, Askari, people don’t buy us. We buy other people.”, and that’s where it started. I think really what they were looking for… Let’s be honest, they weren’t looking to buy my clinic because it was so amazing and so successful. They were looking to buy me out of the market and they were looking to acquire Dr. Askari, who they thought was going to be an asset for sk:n, and it helped us both. It was great for me to learn what I learned in my first clinic and then move to sk:n, and it was great for sk:n to have somebody who turned out to be a phenomenally successful injector for them and I made a lot of clinics in their group a lot of money.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah. It’s usually the way they want to remove a bit of competition. So, you’ve become successful enough that you’re a pain in their arse.

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:And because you’ve been good at doing that, you will be a great asset to them so that’s when the golden handshake comes into it and the golden handcuffs and all of that. At what point, just prior to that, and, I guess, also since then with ASKINOLOGY, when do you think, or is there a point that you feel like you’ve unlocked the key to this particular business or this clinic? Is there a moment?

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Askari Townshen…:I don’t know there was a single moment, but I’d been with sk:n for, I don’t know, maybe three years. At that time they had, I think, 36 or 38 clinics, and I’d been, what I call, the Botox monkey that went around all these different clinics, not all of the 36, but, in my time there, I probably went around 15 different clinics. Different clinic managers, getting to know other practitioners and I could just get a sense now of how these different clinics were working. Some of them were massive, the big flagship on Oxford street, and some of them were tiny little ones that had been bought as little fairly scrappy clinics.

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And I just started to get it and I’d go into clinics and think to myself, “Hmm. If I was in charge, I’d be changing that over there and that over there. I bet you, if you did that, everything would be better.”, and it just got to the point where I’d been exposed to so many different clinics in different parts of the country, in different setups, I just knew what worked and what didn’t work.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:That probably was the most valuable lesson for me, so after the five years, I came out of sk:n and I just knew I was ready to go. With what I knew from a big business and what I knew from having set something up in a small way, on my own at the start, there was the perfect kind of coming together of those two experiences. still tough.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah. I was going to say. So ASKINOLOGY, you came out of sk:n, you’d had the experience of growing your original clinic. Then your five years that you’ve just described, you would think then that you’ve got the perfect blueprint to fast track any clinic that you then start. So was it as simple as that to get ASKINOLOGY to where it is now or what’s that been like?

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Askari Townshen…:Well, it was tough. I think setting up a business is always tough, as we’ve already alluded to, and it almost ended before it started because the contractors, who were fitting out my clinic, messed up. Messed up in a huge way and it was just a terrible, terrible chapter of my life that nearly ended in a nervous breakdown. We ended up going to court. I hired some really expensive lawyers because it was make or break and it all came down to this one court hearing, which I ended up winning. If I’d lost it, I would’ve lost absolutely everything and they were looking.

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There was a loophole in this contract that had been exploited and hadn’t been covered by my team. Not my legal team, but my design team, at the start, and it basically meant that the contractors would be able to sue me for the entire value of the contract. In other words, they were going to do me for, I think, 270 grand-

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:… Which I didn’t have. I’d spent all of my money. I had nothing, and there I was talking to lawyers about bankruptcy. What would happen to my house? Would I need to sell my house? I was thinking about what’s going to happen to the kids and stuff like that.

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Rick O’Neill:Right.

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Askari Townshen…:But, fortunately, we won the case. I didn’t get any huge payout or anything, but I got enough money to pay my legal fees and then I could start. Even thinking about it, now, kind of upsets me. You know, it was a very traumatic time.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah. Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:But we got through that and then I was ready for the next battle, which was getting my business running.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:But, you know what? At the time it felt like that first stage of rolling the snowball was very long time, excruciating, but when I look back at it now? I did actually, I did a talk a few weeks ago at a conference and I promised to share some of my numbers and I put up a graph of my monthly sales from the day we first opened-

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Rick O’Neill:Right.

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Askari Townshen…:… And it was quite cathartic. You know, that’s six and a half years ago.

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Rick O’Neill:What does that look like? A hockey stick?

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Askari Townshen…:Not quite, no. Doesn’t look like a hockey stick. Oh gosh, I wish it did. I’d be on like 10 million, or something, right now. But what was really interesting was that the first six months was almost nothing and I was pointing out to the audience that I was losing a lot of money. We were losing, at one point, 20, 30 grand a month.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:And then just there’s this point and you can see the snowball suddenly gets traction and just at month nine, suddenly something starts to happen. We start to cover our costs and then we start making money and, within six months, we’re making okay money. All of a sudden, I can pay back all of my startup debts and by year three, we are in good money and I’m like, “Oh my Gods, how did we get here so quickly?” So when you’re in that first stage, it feels slow and it is, and it’s painful, but when you look back? Actually, you have a different perspective on things.

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Rick O’Neill:Absolutely.

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Askari Townshen…:But that was my experience though. That was my what did I learn to get me going quicker?

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:If it wasn’t for my experiences, that wouldn’t have happened so quickly.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah. Do you think that if you’ve got good processes and you’re doing sort of the right things, that period of time and that sort of lag, if you like, when you’re maybe losing a bit or it’s taking longer to get to profit than you would hope, is that period of time and the phasing of it predictable, do you think? Like if you went and started again tomorrow, do you think it would be the same or does it matter? Does it depend on where you are or what you are offering or your brand positioning or is it predictable, by and large, for a business in this market?

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Askari Townshen…:I think almost by definition, it’s not predictable because there are so many factors and you just listed a whole load of them and you don’t know what each of those things are going to do. Is there going to be another crash? Inflation is going up. You just don’t know, but is it predictable, for me personally? Yeah, because I’ve done this now, twice before and I’ve had all my experiences I’ve described. If I was setting up a new clinic tomorrow, I know what I’m going to do. I know how big a hit all those different things are going to be on my business. I know the things I need to do first. And here’s the biggest word for me that I love is efficiency.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:Everything’s about efficiency. You can’t control how long it’s going to take to get your business going, but you can do everything possible to be as efficient as you can, so that whatever that time is going to be shorter because the difference between success and failure is, do you have enough money, stamina, and energy to keep going until you get the momentum?

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Rick O’Neill:That’s it.

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Askari Townshen…:If you run out of any of those things, you lose. You lose everything but if you can hold on?

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Then you win.

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Rick O’Neill:Our good friend, Richard Crawford-Small says to all of the clients and members in Aesthetic Entrepreneurs, “You’ve got three things, time, energy, and money.”

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Askari Townshen…:Right. Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:And he talks a great process for his clients on how to use those effectively, and, like you said, being more efficient means that you’ve got more time and more energy.

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:And it buys you more time. Time is money. They all work together, don’t they?

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah, I love that. Speaking of efficiency, it gives us a nice segue, I think, into the more digital area of being an entrepreneur, being a business owner. What over the years of all of the businesses, but particularly the current business, because of where we’re at now with tech and digital, what’s been your digital experience through the process of running and building ASKINOLOGY, and how has it helped? How has it hindered? What sort of frustrations have you had? And that’s both for obtaining patients, the marketing side of digital and also the operational side of digital, like onboarding patients, keeping good records, all of that stuff. Tell us a bit about how that’s evolved.

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Askari Townshen…:The digital marketing side of things, I have always struggled with, and have always approached with a huge amount of suspicion. A bit like the print advertising I talked about and I think the problem is that anyone can just turn up and say that they’re a digital marketer. I’m sure we’ve all had it. You know, people ping us through Instagram, “Hey, I’m so-and-so. I’m an influencer and I’m going to do this for your business.” Like every man and their dog and every woman and her dog. I’ve just never found someone who really made it work for us.

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So I’ve spent a lot of money, even back in the days in 2008, nine, in my first clinic. Pay-per-click was a thing and we invested in that. I just never really found anything that worked for me. It could have been that I didn’t have the flows correct. It could be that my websites weren’t good enough. My landing pages weren’t right.

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So I’m not saying it’s anyone else’s fault necessarily, but just I never managed to get it to click and even more recently. Before COVID, we tried again with a group of people and it just didn’t work.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:I’m actually going to speak to you at some point because maybe you guys can help. I think you just have to do it properly. It’s the same with everything in life. If you do stuff properly, it works, and if you cut corners and you don’t have the right team, guess what? You spend money and nothing comes back.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah, absolutely. It’s a lot harder than people realize-

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:… And I go back to that thing about, there’s no magic pill, it’s marginal gain. But the one thing, that we’ve been talking to people until we’re blue in the face, about for a few years now, people are starting to catch up is before any of the stuff that you are talking about, this sort of demand generating activity around pay-per-click and things like that, you got to have your content strategy right-

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:… You’ve got to have your user experience right, and we’re going to talk about that as well.

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:… And you need to be ‘The clinic’ locally, on Google, because those people are at their highest point of intent and they are in your catchment area for your business. So, if you get that singing and then you put them into a user experience which is optimal and will convert them, and qualify people out who you don’t want, then, later, you can pour petrol on that by doing pay-per-click marketing.

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:Automation and the rest of it but you got to get the basics right and have that foundation in place, I think, and that’s where some people try to sort of… It’s very attractive, isn’t it? The thought that you can turn on a Facebook ad and have some patients tomorrow, but it’s really not that simple and it’s building a bit of a house of cards for the future.

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah. This is something that has worked for us then. Let’s talk about Google, so our thing are Google reviews. As of today, I’m extremely proud and I don’t boast that often actually, we’ve got 499 reviews. Waiting for our 500th and we’ve got a score of 4.8. They are all genuine reviews and we do not select out of them. I know that some booking softwares have functionality where they collect reviews, and then you can check that they’re okay and then you encourage that person to post them online. I just don’t think that’s going to work in the long term because people are savvy. They get it and when I look at anything, if I’m on Amazon or whatever, I ignore the one star reviews, because they’re often just crazy because they bought the wrong product. The two stars, not much different. The three stars I’m interested in because often these are people who have genuine gripes and complaints. I’m not interested in the five stars. It’s just, “Oh, great. You’ve got loads of five stars. Well, fantastic.”

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So, when you come onto our site? Yeah, we’ve got some one star reviews and you know what? They kind of look a bit crazy and we’ve got some two stars, but then we’ve got three stars and whenever I get a three star review, that’s when I really come into action. Like, “Well, hold on. What’s going on here?”

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:And it’s the way you reply to those reviews-

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:… So, as a consumer, I’m looking at those reviews and I’m thinking, “How does this business deal with complaints?” Are they defensive? Are they coming out swinging? Are they insulting, even, some of them?

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:Or, actually, are they kind and considered? I’d like to think that our strength is in getting great reviews, but then dealing thoughtfully and considerately to the ones that aren’t five star, and that, I think, is what really wins it for us.

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Rick O’Neill:Absolutely, and, whether you realize it or not, algorithmically, that’s also the best strategy-

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:… Because responding to every review tells Google that you are active and responsive and it increases your rank. Also, if you’re smart about how you write the responses, you’re including additional keywords and key terms as well, which get-

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:… And further improve your rank, and, as you said, for people coming along and checking you out, you’re getting your side of events across in a nice professional manner. That’s actually in some ways more powerful than the original review because-

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:… I always think that in any sort of line of business or service related business, anyway, what matters is not so much what happened or what cockup occurred, it’s how it was dealt with.

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Askari Townshen…:Exactly.

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Rick O’Neill:So yeah, I totally agree that’s a huge factor and within Google Local, and if you’re not sure what I’m talking about, I’m talking about when you search for something on your laptop or on your phone and results appear next to a map that’s Google Local. And, by and large, for a clinic, most of which are one business, in one location, they are everything in terms of getting yourself into the mix against competitors and against non-medical practitioners that are rocking up across the road from you, who sometimes are, frankly, better than you at digital marketing and that’s something you have to face up to. Google Local is everything, and, as I said earlier, the people that use that are at their point of intent, they’ve done some research into aesthetic treatments, and now they’re looking for “Clinics that provide X, Y, or Z near me.” And that-

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:… The review part is a huge factor in it.

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Askari Townshen…:I think, in a world of lies and I don’t want to be too kind of gratuitous with that word. We are sold lies every day, aren’t we? We get pictures on Instagram that have kind of been tweaked and filtered in the best lighting and we don’t trust a lot of stuff in this day and age so being genuine and authentic, I think, is so, so important.

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Now we went out on a strategy, which some people might think was crazy or just brave, but if you go into our website, which has not been changed in seven years or nearly seven years, since we started ASKINOLOGY. It’s definitely overdue so I’m not trying to boast or say that you shouldn’t update your website, but it’s still the same site. There are no sexy pictures on there. There’s no sort of super luscious lips and the like, and I just felt that I wanted to go down a route that didn’t have, “Hey, you could look like this” because you know what? You can’t look like this because that’s a different woman that’s been touched up from this stock image or whatever.

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So I deliberately went fairly plain and tried to get this middle path between kind of academic library type content and they’re super sexy and “Hey, we treat the most beautiful stars in the world. We can make you look like them.” We just do something straight down the middle, and when my customers come to see me, and they’re new, I always ask, “Hey, how did you hear about us?” and often they say, “Well, I did some research on Google.” And then I say, “Well, why did you pick us?”

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:Because there’s loads of clinics, especially where I am and they say things like, “Well, do you know what? I just liked your website.”-

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:… And they don’t say too much more. “I just like the tone of it.”, and there’s just something comforting. It’s not too hard-sell. It’s not too sexy. It’s just… John Lewis, you know?

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:I always say that we want to be John Lewis. We’re not the trendiest or the sexiest or the most expensive, we’re just dependable, good value for money. You’re going to get a great service and you know what you’re paying for

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Rick O’Neill:Never knowingly undersold.

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah, so that’s how we do it and it’s worked.

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Rick O’Neill:Your website, for me, is a good analogy of medical aesthetics in general, because it is that sort of meeting of science and sort of beauty. It’s halfway between it’s educational, it’s not too far down the glamor route. I’ve spent more time than you might realize looking at it, because all of that stuff interests me and, obviously, I’ve seen so many websites. We build a lot and it’s always a challenge. One of the things we’ve been pushing for, quite recently, is to more of a focus on the outcome and the conditions that patients are presenting with rather than the scientific treatments or the device names-

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:… Because a lot of websites are structured around so-and-so machine or so-and-so thingy or this needle, and, actually, a lot of patients wouldn’t have a clue what any of that stuff is-

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:… Or whether it solves their problem.

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Askari Townshen…:If you look at our website, I like to use normal language, and I pride myself in my clinic room. Back in the days, I thought I had something to prove and lots of long medical terms. I never speak medical, and if I’m ever treating a GP, I apologize in advance and say, “Hey, I’m not going to speak to you as if you’re a doctor. I’m just going to do my normal day to day talk” and they thank me, “Oh no, please do because then we all know what we’re talking about.”

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:So on the website we have Fat Freezing, not cryolipolysis or anything like that. Fat freezing, we all know what that means. We get it. “Oh, I’ll click on that and have a look.” Everyone knows the word, Botox, all these euphemisms that we use, and, like you say, device names and the like, unless it’s really going to be a pull for some SEO reason. Or everyone knows HydraFacial now, for example, so we’ll definitely use the word HydraFacial, that’s an important term. But I think it’s just important to go back to basics and let’s just tell people in clear language what it is we’re doing.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah. You’re right about HydraFacial, by the way. That’s a tap you can turn on, if there’s not one near you.

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Askari Townshen…:We’ve got two machines now.

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Rick O’Neill:They did a good job with that. It’s interesting.

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So we’ve been talking about digital, been talking about your journey in business. We sort of touched on user experience and that side of things. What’s been your experience with onboarding patients, keeping patient records, good documentation, reminding people about their appointment, that kind of thing, over the years? And I’m leading somewhere with that, as you know, because you’ve now built your own platform for it so how did you get to that point? Like what led you there?

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Askari Townshen…:Okay. I started in 2008, as I said, and I did invest in some clinic software and it was great software, actually. I don’t even mind saying it was called Clinic Office and they’re still around today. It was good software and it got me thinking about how to maximize what these different platforms can do for you. But at that time, that particular package wasn’t cloud based, it didn’t have anything specific to aesthetics, consent forms, digital note keeping and that type of thing, so I moved.

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Then over the next few years, obviously, I’d gone to sk:n and saw what they were using, which was really old school, really antiquated. I don’t think anyone’s going to be upset by me saying that, we all know it’s the case. Then I came out of sk:n and went to ASKINOLOGY and things had changed. Seven years had passed and there was cloud based systems and the like, so I started using different systems.

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I think in that time I used another five systems and I just struggled with each one. Two of the systems I bought, opened the box and just sent it back because the moment I logged in, I just knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t understand how it worked, where everything was. So I struggled and I’m not IT illiterate. I don’t want to talk names particularly, but I used a very popular package, 2016 to 2018 and it promised a lot and it didn’t deliver for me, personally.

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We really struggled and we struggled with reliability issues and I think this is when I started getting really upset because I’d gone through a really hard time building on my business, as you’ve heard and I very nearly had a breakdown, I think, as a result of it all. So this feeling that I was paying for a platform that was meant to support my business and help my business, but, actually, a lot of the time was holding my business back and actually costing me money, I got really upset about that. Like really upset and it felt to me that that business wasn’t as interested in fixing stuff and helping me as I was expecting and, I think, at that moment, I just thought, “No, I can’t do this.”.

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And I kind of said to myself that I am going to do something like this myself, and it will be better and it will help businesses grow as it should and, if we make mistakes, we’ll fix them quickly. We will tell people what’s going on, we’ll communicate. We will train. We would do all the things that I wished was happening to me, but it wasn’t.

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And, that was it, that was the day I decided that I was going to set Collums up and a couple years later, we were up and we were building.

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Rick O’Neill:So that’s quite a thing, and, as you’ve described, you’re a busy guy, busy practitioner, busy clinic. Did you know when you made that decision that “I think I could do this in a way that would work better for me and for other practitioners.”? Did you know, and that you would be able to commit to that somehow and make it happen? Or did you think it was an impossible mountain or did you think you’d have to get other people to do it and you’d be the visionary or how did you think it would pan out when you first had that thought and how did you get from that to where you’re at now?

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Askari Townshen…:Okay. I left that system and went to another system for a kind of final throw of the dice. I went with a system that’s globally known. It’s a unicorn now, and so valued over a billion dollars, and they promised me even more than the previous people and literally within the first couple of weeks, I just thought, “Oh, my goodness, I’ve been sold a pop again.”, and that was it for me. So I reached out to someone who had built other big software systems and we started chatting. I set up the business and it was just low key, starting to have some initial conversations and the like, and, at that time, I was actually saving to open up a new site. We were going to open a huge flagship clinic in Holborn. Four and a half thousand square feet, and my plan was to open the biggest and best and most talked about aesthetic clinic in the UK and it was just going to be phenomenal.

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I signed the deal. It took me two years, I think, to set this all up and I signed the deal two weeks before the first COVID lockdown and I had 750K set aside for this deal. Not all my own money, but from a variety of kind of ways of robbing banks and the like. I had this money, the lockdown happened and I just said to myself, “Do you know what, mate, bricks and mortar clinic right now is ridiculous. There is no way on earth. You can spend every penny that you’ve ever had in your life on this project.”

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At that moment, I basically switched and I called up my software guy and said, “Hey, you know those conversations we’ve been having and what we’ve been doing so far? We’re going to turbocharge this.” By then, actually, we had already started building and spending quite a lot of money, which I thought was a lot of money at that time. Then we went full pelt and my goal was to have something up and running so that when we came out of COVID, my clinic would be able to use my software because I knew we were going to be closed for some time. Lo and behold, by the time we got round to the next January, we were just coming out of the lockdowns and I had a framework of Collums working in ASKINOLOGY and the rest is history, I guess.

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Kind of forgotten what your question was, to be honest, but that’s… I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I didn’t have big plans, other than I was going to make it work.

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Rick O’Neill:You have answered the question, but I’m going to give you another one. You talked about what drove you to do that in the first place, so it was born out of frustration with the existing solutions around you and how they didn’t work for you. I was going to say, when you kept jumping around, maybe it’s you, but I don’t think it is.

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Askari Townshen…:It could be.

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Rick O’Neill:But, in building it, how have you approached it differently? What is Collums and for those that haven’t heard of it, I’ll let you do a 30 second elevator pitch and how is it different? What’s it offering to aesthetic clinics?

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Askari Townshen…:Okay. So, to answer it in reverse order, I’m not going to go down the line of people saying, “Oh, this product is completely different to anything else you’ve ever seen before.” It’s not. Collums is a cloud based system to help run your aesthetic practice. You’ll do your bookings. It’ll ping out emails and reminders, aftercare, pre-care. You can keep all your patients there. You can keep all your consent forms. You can get people signing consent forms at home, on their iPads, and it’ll update to your system. Online booking, digital notes, marking all your Botox injections and the like, running reports, looking after your staff.

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Basically everything that Askari would’ve needed when he first opened his clinic and it’s big enough and powerful enough that, as you grow, you’ll be able to continue using it. So you could be a one man band, like I was when I turned up at that hairdressers in Nottingham in 2006, all the way to clinics that have multiple locations. We are talking to international clinic chains to try and support them. That’s what Collums is.

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How is it different? So let me answer this in a slightly different way. I’ve been exposed to seven different softwares over the years, and I’ve used some of the newer ones where you can do free trials. So I’ve poked around the Freshers, the Treatwells, of [inaudible 00:52:05], Aesthetic Nurse Software, Clever Clinic… All these ones that you can dip into and, what I did was, to be honest with you, is I pinched all the best bits from everything I’d ever seen and rolled it up together and all the things I knew were really annoying and made my life harder, rather than easier, I left out.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:Then I’ve put them all together, always from a position of being a practitioner and saying to myself, “Okay. If I was sitting in my room and somebody came in, what was the thing I want to do first? Oh, okay. I’d want to see what their previous treatment was. And then what would I want to do? Oh, I’d want to do that.” and I built a journey around myself and how I treat in my room.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:Then we built it and then we tested it and I started using it in my clinic and I kind of went, “Oh, do you know what? That journey isn’t working how I thought it would work.”, and then I’d go back and we would change it and then I would use it again in my clinic.

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Rick O’Neill:Surely that’s unique in itself.

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Askari Townshen…:It is. Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:I don’t know for certain, but I can’t think of another tech platform, in this space, that’s devised and run and optimized by a practitioner.

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Askari Townshen…:Well, there’s some software out there that has been built by practitioners or part built by practitioners, but I believe that we can make some pretty kind of bold claims as to saying things like I think we’re the only software that has been built and developed in a true commercial space. ASKINOLOGY tested Collums and continues to test Collums to this day. We are the most tested aesthetic software, I believe, because nothing gets sent to anyone else until it’s in ASKINOLOGY. We test Collums, we make changes, we test it. We then put it live in ASKINOLOGY, and then my amazing staff there suffer whatever problems there might be, but they’re a great team and they deal with it in their stride. Then when we are happy and we know that everything’s working as good as it can, I give the nod, and that then gets pushed out to the other customers. What that means is it reduces the chance of people feeling like they’re guinea pigs, which is how I always felt. Something would be updated and this thing wouldn’t work and then something else wouldn’t work or something that previously was working, would, now, not work and I get that.

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It’s not that anybody was doing anything badly. That’s the nature of software, but I wasn’t paying to be someone else’s test, and nobody who signs up to Collums is going to pay to be a tester. My clinic, in ASKINOLOGY, we are the testers, and then you can get a product, that may not be a hundred percent perfect because there will always be small little niggles that we miss, but I’ll tell you what? When you find the niggle and you tell us about it, depending on how important it is, that’s going to get fixed because that niggle will affect me and my staff in ASKINOLOGY too, so we’re all in it together.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:I’m very kind of… What’s the word? Evangelical about this. I truly, truly believe that this is a product that is being designed in a way that it’s going to help other businesses become stronger and make more money.

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Rick O’Neill:I guess it’s fair to say, as well, that some solutions are not really built for aesthetic clinics. They’re more for salons or all different types of businesses and they’ve been kind of bent and shaped to try and service an aesthetic clinic, right?

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Askari Townshen…:This is true. I mentioned a few names already for the big global ones or the multinational ones where you can kind of just sign up and get going, and I’m not here to talk bad about them. Some of them are really good actually, and if you are early in your journey and you are fairly simple in your setup, they can probably look after you. But for those people who are thinking about that, I would say this, and I would also say this to naive Askari from many years ago, is think big, set yourself up for the future. Don’t set yourself up for today because all you’re doing is putting yourself in handcuffs, because when you do get bigger and you do need support for consent forms, or digital notes, or whatever, well, by then, you’ve now got 500 patients and all that data stuck in another system or in bits of paper and how are you going to get all of that into your new system so that you can grow more quickly now?

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It’s going to be a barrier and then you’re going to go, “Oh, well I don’t know if I’ll bother moving just now because I haven’t got time to type up these 500 notes and put them into Collums.”, or whoever it’s going to be. Just start proper at the start. Okay, it might be a few more quid, but you and I, off-air, talked about this beforehand, what is the value of great software that is going to run your business successfully with minimal downtime and minimal problems?

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:The value of that is massive and the idea that we’re going to skimp on like 10 quid or 20, 30 quid. In fact, I’ve got a story for myself, which is that we’ve got a fiber broadband available in our clinic now. I didn’t take it and we’ve had a load of problems over the last year or so and my manager finally said, “‘Skari, this… We can’t keep on with this. Because Collums is cloud based, we need great internet.” So I said, “Well, okay, do you know what? It’s a small building with big thick walls. We don’t get good wifi.” So I looked up the fiber broadband price, which my memory told me was really expensive, which is why I didn’t go for it, when it first came out two years ago.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:What was it? 80 quid a month. Are you joking? And right now, I’m paying 60 quid because I’ve had to buy a… What’s it? A dongle thing for in case the internet goes down, then the dongle kicks in.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:So it’s like, what was I thinking? What am I even thinking now? Pay the 80 quid, Askari.

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Rick O’Neill:We also talked before we hit record, as well… In fact, I might even throw it back in the edit, but we talked about medical practitioners and, obviously, I understand medicine is important. Get that, but there’s no question about the amount that you guys will spend on clinical training, right?

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:But when it comes to your businesses and software and providing a great experience from that side of things to your patients, you count in pence not pounds or thousands of pounds. You count in pence and it’s always seemed strange to me, that one. But you did say, if you could go back and talk to yourself in the early days, you would say set up for the future, invest now. How do we all get around that and have those conversations?

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Because I have lots of conversations with people that are not ready to hear that in-

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:In coaching and things like that, you know, straight away, “Oh, we can’t afford things like that.”, but they’re already treating hundreds of patients-

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Askari Townshen…:I know.

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Rick O’Neill:… Who are all having a really crappy experience because of the Wix website and the string and cello-tape onboarding process that they have.

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Askari Townshen…:I think the answer to that is a sad one, which is that we learn from our mistakes and the more painful the mistake, the more we learn from it. So, how have I learned about my broadband? Well, I’ve had a lot of pain and, my God, is all of that pain has been far more than the 80 quid a month that I’ve been not paying over the last few months and now I just feel a bit foolish. I’ve just told the whole the world who’s listening or anyone who’s listening to this podcast, that we all do it. But what I can say on a positive note, though, is that the feedback that we’ve been getting from the demonstrations of Collums has really been about price. We’ve had very few people say, “I think that’s too much money.”

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It’s a bit like Apple. Oh gosh, I don’t want to compare myself to Apple, but you know-

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Rick O’Neill:Not? Why not? Go for it.

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Askari Townshen…:It’s amazing stuff, yeah. If you want great stuff, you’re going to have to pay that bit extra. Well, a lot extra, but you know when you get that Apple device, that, actually, it works really well, it’s not going to go down. It’s worth paying the extra money for it and we have a very similar mindset here at Collums, which is that to build great software, in that kind of detail, takes a huge amount of investment-

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:… And I will tell the world this as well. This has cost, so far, over a million pounds. Straight up, without a shadow of doubt, and I’m not a millionaire. I didn’t have a million pounds, and if I knew how much it was going to cost, I wouldn’t have done it. Without a shadow of a doubt, I would never have done it. But here we are, we spent it, but we have a product that reflects the investment and the investment isn’t just the million pounds, it’s over a year and a half of day to day testing in ASKINOLOGY. This is something different we’ve ever seen, I think, in this country and, you know what, on the planet. I think we have one of the best systems that you can get.

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Rick O’Neill:I’ve had several demos of it. I’ve played with it. I’ve also seen all of the others. I am inclined to agree with you, as you know-

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Askari Townshen…:But let me say this, I’m going to interrupt you. Let me just say this though, before I run and someone starts chucking stuff at their phone or radio, is that I’m not saying that it’s perfect.

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Rick O’Neill:No.

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Askari Townshen…:No software system is perfect and it might be that you look at it and it’s not for you, but what I’m saying is that the ethos behind it, and the journey behind it, is purely about creating something that works as well as we can get it working and we will continually change. If I sit here in a year’s time talking to you, Rick, I’ll be even more evangelical about what we’ve got, so I don’t want anyone to say “Yeah, but you know what, Askari? I was using it yesterday and I clicked this thing and it didn’t work a hundred percent.” Yeah, that might be the case. Tell me about it and we’ll fix it.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah, absolutely. So last thing on Collums, and then I want to talk to you, just before we close, just a few general questions about the aesthetics market and some things that, I think, will be useful takeaways for people, but what’s the vision? What’s the future for the Collums platform?

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Askari Townshen…:Okay. This is quite simple, really. In the first instance, we’re just building up our user base in the UK. I want to be the name that everyone thinks of when they’re thinking about software. I’m extremely confident that over the next 12 to 24 months, you’ll see Collums… I don’t know if I can say in that time frame, we’ll be the number one in the UK, but we will have people extremely worried if they are holding that number one position. That’s the first thing, we are set up and ready to be international and I expect that to be happening sooner rather than later, and the third part of it is the clinic chains. We are already built, in a way, the clinic chains are looking at us as serious contenders of running their businesses.

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Rick O’Neill:That’s great. Well, I wish you all the luck in the world with it, as you know.

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Askari Townshen…:Thank you.

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Rick O’Neill:I highly respect your entrepreneurial side and the way you’ve invested in it. I also completely agree, from my own ventures in business and also property renovation, that if you know, on day one, what it’s going to cost, you won’t start.

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:I’ve been there, for sure and I’ve no doubt that you’ll be successful with it.

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Askari Townshen…:Thank you.

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Rick O’Neill:So I wanted to close by just asking a few questions about the aesthetics market in general, really. What is your view on the medical aesthetic market as it stands in the UK? Today, we are recording this on June the 10th, 2022. We are just coming out the back of the pandemic. We are facing, supposedly, a cost of living crisis. Costs a lot of money to fill up your car, et cetera, et cetera, inflation’s gone nuts. Does that bother the aesthetic market or it seems to be growing regardless? Does it bother you? What’s your view of the market from an economic perspective and also a growth and trend perspective? Over to you, Askari.

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah. Well, I think the market is strong and I think there’s a positive outlook. I think the market has been growing for some time and I don’t really see that changing, although I’m not an economist. I think how it’s going to affect clinics and practitioners will depend on where they are and what part of the market they’re focused on. So I’m in the city, I’m opposite the Lloyd’s building. There’s a lot of wealth around where I am and those people aren’t getting hit by the cost of living crisis. That’s not going to affect them in any way whatsoever. If they all start losing their jobs and their bonuses? Well, maybe, but I don’t see that that’s on the horizon so I’m very happy. We’ve had a great bounce back, coming out of COVID, and we’ve just had our first positive quarter so I really feel like, “Wow, come on. We can start moving forwards now.”

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:If you are a solo practitioner or you have a clinic that’s still trying to find its place and you are at the lower end of the market, where your customers are people who are worried about the cost of living and so might be cutting back on their aesthetic treatments, I think those clinics will find a difficult year or two ahead.

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And, that word, efficiency, we spoke about earlier? This is the time to start getting efficient, get your processes down to a T.

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Rick O’Neill:Absolutely.

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Askari Townshen…:Get decent software, get all your processes running because you’re going to need to be as sleek as possible to enough through the next period of time.

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Rick O’Neill:That’s right, and don’t wait, because what you do now, doesn’t land until six months later.

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Askari Townshen…:Exactly, and if you are better prepared than the other people in your area, well, guess what? You are the people that will float, and they’re the ones that are going to sink.

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Rick O’Neill:Richard’s got this hilarious meme that we use in the group a lot and it’s like, “You can be two versions of Thor. You can be fat Thor or you can be ripped, ready for action Thor” when you come out of these kind of periods or phases, throughout time. So it is exactly that, you got to put in the graft, tighten up, get the efficiency going, create a great experience for customers. It is hard work because you’re also busy treating people and being a dad and a mom and a brother and a sister and all the other stuff. We get it, we’re all business owners, but you’ve got to suck it up, buttercup, haven’t you, and crack on.

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Askari Townshen…:And I would argue a lot of us in this sector, in this industry, are focusing too much on the working, as in providing the treatments. We are fantastic doctors and nurses, practitioners, but we’re not always fantastic business owners or managers of teams, and I think focusing more of our time on how we run our businesses is going to be a better use of our time than spending those extra few hours in the clinic room with a needle in your hand.

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Rick O’Neill:Yes, absolutely. Sometimes you’ve just got to work on the business rather than in it, as they say. All right, last question then. What three things would you go back and tell yourself from 15 years ago to achieve success faster?

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah. You know I had a little think about this and straight away, my number one, I wrote down location, location, location.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:When I came out of the NHS, I thought I was going to have some lovely little leafy clinic, discreet because no one’s going to want to be seen coming in or out. And it seemed like a great idea, but I quickly found that my discreet lovely clinic in the leafy side street of Northampton didn’t have any footfall.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:And that meant that nobody walked past my clinic and saw the name or the logo or the telephone number so getting people in was really tough.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:And guess what? My clinic right now is in Leadenhall market.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:Okay, pre-COVID the footfall there must have… I don’t know, 10,000 a day?

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Rick O’Neill:Wow.

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Askari Townshen…:Huge throngs of people walk past my clinic every single day, and whether they like it or not, whether they know it or realize it or not, they see the name of my clinic.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:Or they look in through the window and they see my staff, our logo, our uniform, our products and, one day, whenever they’re thinking about Botox, we pop up on their Google Local search. “Oh, yeah. Oh, that’s the one I walk… Gosh, you know what? I walk past that.”, and there’s my customer.

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Rick O’Neill:That’s your awareness.

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Askari Townshen…:So different ways to do it, I’m not saying that everyone should have like a High Street location or anything like that, but just think carefully about where is your place going to be?

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:And if it’s not on a busy bustling street, how are people going to find you? And you’re going to say, “well, because there’ll be social… There’ll be a website.”, but you know what? Everyone’s got socials and everyone’s got websites, so how are they going to find you?

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Rick O’Neill:Everyone. With the Google Local side of it, a large part of how you get ranked is your proximity to the nearest kind of center of activity in the real world.

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:And we obviously look after, oh, I don’t know, 200 or so Google profiles for clinics, right? And we see data from the leafy side street ones and the central London ones, and the numbers are just night and day-

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Askari Townshen…:Right.

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Rick O’Neill:… In terms of activity, searches, click throughs, click to phone, click for directions. All of that, the numbers are night and day.

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:So not everyone can be in the center, obviously, because that’s hugely expensive as well, right?

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Askari Townshen…:Yes.

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Rick O’Neill:So your rental and your lease is going to be very, very, very different to your Northampton one that you had, but, like you say, it’s just a bit of thought about how close am I to where people are going to be searching, online and, also, in the real world, of am I visible? So-

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Askari Townshen…:Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s free advertising, you know? People walking past the front of your store, if you’ve got a board outside or something. It doesn’t have to be that you are right on the street front, but you have to be visible.

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Rick O’Neill:Absolutely.

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Askari Townshen…:So number two… Number two I put on here is be ready to convert and I think we kind of talked about this a bit earlier, although I think we were talking more about digital, make sure your landing pages are set up, what are your funnels like, et cetera. But I’m also actually thinking about real life.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah?

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Askari Townshen…:Do you have everything set up? When they come in through the front door, do they feel welcome? How will they be welcomed? Who’s going to look after them? What’s the process that you have flowing through your clinic from the moment they step into the door, to the moment they check out, pay and leave? Every step of that journey in my clinic is defined. It’s reproduced and it’s thought about and taken care of.

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Rick O’Neill:Absolutely.

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Askari Townshen…:No point in having a wave of customers come in, if you can’t look after them and make them happy.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah.

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah. I would rather have no unhappy customers, so they can’t go and tell everyone how terrible you are-

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah. That’s dangerous.

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Askari Townshen…:… So yeah, fix it first. Exactly. Fix it, then get the customers in so they can go and spread the good word. Don’t get loads of customers in when you’re broken, because they’re going to spread terrible things about you.

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Rick O’Neill:Absolutely. I talk about this a lot, it’s about getting the foundations right so that you’re not driving people into a leaky bucket, but also, as you said, it’s not just about digital marketing. I’m going to be really careful here. I know someone who went to see someone. Right, there you go, that’s all you’re getting. That’s all you’re getting… For a paid consultation. It ended after 15, 20 minutes and the person who’d gone in, came out, not really clear what was recommended, how much it was going to cost, when that could happen or what the long term plan was and so never went back.

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:Was very, very keen to crack on and work with that person because of things they’d heard, but the experience they had was, “I’m none the wiser I’ve been left with no material or follow up with what the plan is. I paid for this consultation. I’m a bit befuddled and confused. I’m going to go elsewhere.”

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Askari Townshen…:Right, and the cost of acquisition of each customer, which many people don’t know or don’t really think about. Every time somebody walks in through my front door, that costs me money. There’s a value on that and it’s important that we focus on making sure that we recoup our investment.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So location and being ready to convert and then your final golden nugget?

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah. My last one actually was, again, back in the days, 2008, I bought all this fancy kit. I didn’t need it. It cost a lot of money and it was a huge drag on the business. In those early days when your snowball is rolling down the hill and, but very, very slowly.

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So here’s the thing. Build up your database, your client base, make people happy with a small number of treatments that you’re great at providing. Like we’ve said, be ready to convert. So maybe it’s just injectables, you don’t need anything other than your injectables and as your database grows and you understand your client base and what they’re after, you can start leveraging your existing patient database and sell them future treatments, or even just ask them what other treatments might they be interested in. Ask them just as you’re doing your treatments or ask them through an electronic survey and then make wise decisions about what kit you’re going to buy at a later date. Don’t saddle yourself with expensive kit off the bat.

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Rick O’Neill:Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Some of these things are huge commitments and when you talked about efficiency in business, that’s also cost efficiency, right? Compared to returns and how long’s that going to take? So yeah, completely, I love that one.

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Well, Askari, I really enjoyed that.

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Askari Townshen…:Sure.

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Rick O’Neill:That was an awesome chat. It’s been every time I talk to you, I learn a little bit more about your background and what you’ve been through and what’s sort of driven you to where you are, and I have a lot of respect for that, so-

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Askari Townshen…:Thank you.

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Rick O’Neill:… Congratulations on everything so far. As I said, I’ve no doubt that what you’re working on now will be successful and that Collums will take over Planet Earth and then look to conquer other planets.

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Askari Townshen…:Yeah.

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Rick O’Neill:So yeah, no, just thanks very much for agreeing to come on and for chatting with me and, obviously, you and I have got other discussions going on and things we’re working on, which is all good as well, but yeah, for now, mate, thank you very much for coming. Well,

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Askari Townshen…:Well, thank you so much for having on your very first podcast. It’s been fun.

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Rick O’Neill:Take care, mate.

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Askari Townshen…:Cheers, Rick. Take care now. Bye-bye.