Your MedSpa Busy Season Has a New Requirement: AI

Welcome to Medical Millionaire, where medical aesthetics meets business growth. Hosted by Cameron Hemphill, entrepreneur, investor, and one of the industry's most respected voices. As founder of Growth99, strategic advisor to Terry Ross Consulting, Cameron helps owners go beyond revenue to build real enterprise value. This podcast is for med spa owners and wellness entrepreneurs.

ready to think bigger, execute smarter, and build a business that actually scales. Here's your host, Cameron Hemphill. Hey, what's up, everybody? Cam Hemphill here, your host of the Medical Millionaire Podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in.

My goal is to give incredible value and insight for practice owners. So if you're looking to grow your practice, scale your practice, hey, perhaps even sell every single one of these episodes that we put together, they are for you. We want to help you succeed. I want to help every practice owner get to the next level, no matter where you're at, whatever season you're in, if you're growing, if you're scaling, if you're selling, whatever it is, I want to help you.

So without further ado, guys, I have been on a rip with incredible guests. I've had private equity on, I have had incredible tech providers on, I've had even the most well-respected brands and providers that own practices throughout the entire US. Just some great conversations and I wanted to keep it going. You know, very recently I was like, oh my gosh, we're already in Q4 of 2026.

And I'm very surprised where the time has gone. And it's like, I feel like the older I get, time just keeps accelerating. And 26 just seemed to just fly by. And there's been so much that's taken place inside of our specialty.

We've talked a ton about artificial intelligence and now super intelligence that is apparently here when I tune into all the big power players out there. And lots of private equity conversations. People are now thinking about, is it now time to sell my practice? Should I be having the conversation? Should I get my books right? So it's really been a really powerful, impactful year. And I have an incredible guest on.

She has been on the show before. She works at one of the most well-respected tech companies in the space. And they are tripling down, quadrupling down on AI. And truthfully, when I peel back the layers and I think to myself, who is going to be here in the next few years? My thesis is there's going to be lots of tech consolidation, meaning if you have like an app build on, or you're using a widget, it's going to get consolidated at some point.

I really think it's for the best benefit for the provider and the patient experience. So it's something to pay attention to. And so I have Carly Adams with me. She is with Podium.

She's been with Podium for years. She knows the industry. She knows AI. She knows tech.

This company is growing like a weed. They have Avery, which all of you guys have probably using or know about. It's the front end lead system. And they also have Operator, which is the EMR system, which you can actually ask any question you want and it gives you an answer.

And so they've just done an incredible job of integrating AI to the better benefit of the patient and then you as a provider are the byproduct of it. So, Carly, thank you so much for joining. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, Cam.

Excited to be on here. Yeah, I know it's been a little bit. I talked about Q4 here. We're heading into selling season, busy season.

If I was to look at some of practices that I'm involved with numbers for September, by the way, guys, we're recording this October the 6th. It was wild practices that I know that I've seen their revenue. September was like a blowout month. So my sense is that's going to continue as we go into what Black Friday, you go into the holidays, all the things.

So I want to ask you, Carly, a question is how is Podium, how is your tech gearing up to help practice owners really leverage AI for busy season, selling season, and getting them positioned to have success during the holidays? Yeah. So the biggest opportunity you have right now with leveraging tech, especially AI going into the busy season is When you're in busy season, you're so limited to the hours you have in the day and how much availability your staff has. On top of your staff having family time, time off, a lot going on on their plate. And so being able to leverage AI to drive efficiency throughout your entire practice is priority number one.

And not only drive efficiency, but drive more revenue is priority number two, obviously. So the biggest thing is there's so much that you're doing to provide a phenomenal patient experience, especially during the busy season. You want everyone to know about your Black Friday specials. A lot of the practices that we have as clients, they're pulling in like a third of their revenue in the busy season or even just with their Black Friday holiday specials.

So with AI, you're able to streamline all of those processes. Think about all the reports that you're pulling manually to really sift through to figure out who to reach out to, have visibility in your business, all these things that take manual time off you and your team's plate. you could be doing other things and having AI run the show for you on the back end. And so making sure you also have AI on the front end because your front desk gets super overwhelmed during the busy season, answering phones, managing leads, checking people in, checking people out, rebooking people, booking packages, gift cards, et cetera.

There's a million things that the front desk is doing every single day. They are the. like heartbeat and bloodline, like they're the first impression, you want them to feel calm, cool and collected and have a really sunny disposition. We don't want them frazzled during the busy season.

This is the opportunity to really show up and drive a ton of revenue. And so leveraging AI as well to take as much off their plate as possible, a lot of manual tasks, especially because your front desk, you're paying them a substantial amount of money where you could be paying an AI agent a fraction, like pennies on the dollar comparatively, to do a lot of the manual tasks. And we could redistribute that talent from your human employees to be managing other aspects of the business during your busy season. And so that's where AI and technology comes in because there's so much lack of visibility we're seeing and noticing within practices and understanding where they can optimize day-to-day and especially blow it out of the water come busy season.

Well said. I mean, you bring up some really good points and I think part of it has to do with the preparation, right? So if, look, Black Friday is, when is Black Friday? Is it the day after Thanksgiving. Is that what it is? I think I know this, but right. Okay.

So they have Thanksgiving, like for some reason I'm associated with like Halloween, but I know it's a day after Thanksgiving. Okay. I avoid it like the plague, but my wife definitely could tell. You what it is.

Mark your calendars, Cam. So freeze on your credit card that day. Hey, you know what? Great idea. I think I will do that.

But Hey, My wife also buys from practices. So sorry for the local practices that may get impacted. Well, but here's the thing is, is there I feel like there's so much preparation, manual preparation that takes tremendous amount of staff and time and effort and error. Right.

In fact, I'll give you a story. I had a practice last year. They had a very successful Black Friday practice. But if I was to look back, like the playbook on how to prepare for that specific Black Friday or for the holiday season, they were using third parties to send out emails and third party systems to send out the gift card sales.

And then they'd have to track the gift card sales in one system and then transform over to another system, an EMR system. So not only was it like a tremendous amount of work to create the email to get the lists right? Because they had to like siphon through all the data inside their EMR system and then siphon it within their booking system, extract it, and then look at it on Excel and then map everything correctly. And then literally we're going to, I think it was MailChimp. It was some sort of email tool, creating an email, uploading the list, sending it out, and then sales would come in.

And look, they had a wonderful sales event. It was great. But that work and that effort and then having it then upload back to the EMR system to track when they came in to actually like use the gift cards in exchange for value, nightmare. I think they're still reconciling it from last year, right? So like that's the nail point that you're trying to talk about.

So we just lean in on that a little bit of how much time, because these holidays creep up, like Q4 creeped up, I mean, they creep up. So just drilling on that a little bit more of how much time a practice owner can save by just utilizing AI and tech in the right way. Yeah, for sure. And I think, too, the busyness of everything is the majority of practice owners are also seeing patients.

They don't have the luxury of sitting around and running a business all day. They're wearing a lot of different hats and doing a lot of different aspects of the business, top to bottom, and seeing patients. And so that's not really why they got into the business. They got in because they love the patient care side of things.

And so when you think about running a business... and you are a business owner that sees patients, it's like, okay, how do I make sure, to your point, the juice is worth the squeeze? How do I ensure that our entire team is utilizing time efficiently and effectively? Because we all have these grand ideas. And right now, people have started planning for the holiday season. Like back in August, September, the conversations we're having with our clients, they're starting these plans and they're starting to work with their customer success managers at Podium as well to plan a very successful holiday season and using our technology to So we know how much planning and time and effort goes into this to make sure you can optimize.

But there's a few things that you can leverage technology for when you think about how to handle the volume without adding additional headcount, which is where AI really comes in as well. And I think. A lot of the people that I talk to day in, day out, how they're using AI right now is great, but it's very minimal. And it's, I'm using AI to prep for the holiday season by creating a nice flyer.

Like I'm having ChatGPT or Canva create a flyer for me. for marketing purposes, or draft up some type of text message. And that is just the surface, like the tip of the iceberg of what you could be leveraging technology for going into the busy season. So when you have AI agents that are working with you and for you, on the front end especially, you could be having them proactively texting out offers to really segmented individuals instead of having to manually pull those email lists, like you were saying, that you want to segment different people.

You can also have them start opting people in and prepping and working up and start advertising, hey, we have Black Friday coming up, like opt into our VIP list for special promotions and offers. You also, when you go into the busy season, having AI agents also help with that after hours coverage is huge because you not only are going to see a big increase in people wanting to come in, but we know that like 40% of our interactions and leads are coming after hours. And so being able to have AI agents take that off your front desk plate so they come in not managing 15 missed calls and voicemails and DMs from Instagram and Facebook, like have an AI agent take that off the plate and manage everything right. So having that AI manage your entire schedule as well is huge to be able to optimize.

So when you think about, okay, I want to maximize my busy season. I want to have really good insights into my utilization skills. and be able to understand and book as effectively and efficiently as possible. I want my utilization to be like damn near perfect, right? When you're going to the busy season, because everyone wants to get in and be seen to look their best for the holiday season.

And so being able to leverage, like you touched on operator at the beginning, operator is going to be your absolute best friend. We have Avery on the front end and that AI agent at podium. But in general, like at any business, you should be looking for an AI agent that's able to manage all of your front end, any communication is never missed with an AI agent, right? So there's always human error, and then humans don't work 24 seven AI agents do. So making sure that they're there and available that they can manage all the communication during the busy season.

But then on the back end, operator is going to be able to help you make all of those plans going into the busy season. So giving you that full visibility where if you're driving home and you have a thought, right? Like I said, we have these big grand ideas. You have a thought, hey, I really want to see who invested or who came in a lot last holiday season. You could actually send a text really quick.

You could voice text while you're driving to operator and ask operator to pull a full list of everyone that came last Q4 and who spent the most and how you could remarket to them. So if you have these ideas, it's like to sit down and actually execute on the idea. It's hard. Like we all have these really great ideas, but then and they're always on our mental to do list, especially during the busy season.

So then having your business manager operator be able to go in and execute for you and pull those lists for you, which normally would take hours of manual time, even 20, 30 minutes here and there. It adds up. And it's something that you have to do. And there's not only an opportunity cost if you don't, but even if you do do it, there's a personal cost.

You're sacrificing that time with friends and family to be able to run this business because during your hours of operation, you typically don't have time to dig in and pull data and reports and make that meaningful impact for your business. So that's where the business manager, having a business manager, AI agent come in and leverage operator to run your operations with you and give you that full visibility and insights and where you have gaps and where you have opportunity going into the busy season and help it strategize with you is a huge reduction in time that you have to spend as a business owner to really strategize for Q4. One other thing too, when you think about Q4, you can even ask operator not only to look into your business, but you could say, hey operator, what are my competitors in my region within a 15 mile radius? What specials are they running? What are they promoting right now? And they can do like a full analysis, not only just on your business and give you visibility, but it could even give you competitive analysis. Like it can go as far as doing stuff of that.

And how much are they charging? What are they promoting? What are the holiday specials they have going on? So you are able to get more insights, not only just for your business, but also your competition and what's going on in your local market. So this business can go out and do all that for you. It's incredible. And so it's actually crawling the web.

It'll actually go outside of the Podium app and it'll crawl the web and see exactly what's taking place from a competition standpoint. It'll crawl socials and stuff like that. Yeah. What are people putting on their Instagram? What are they advertising on their website? How often are they posting? Like you could get a full competitive analysis from your local market at your fingertips, which typically would take a large investment of time or financially go paying somebody else to do that for you.

Yeah, pay someone else to do it or you go do it yourself. Either way is like cost prohibitive and time prohibitive. I wouldn't want to do it. I want to know, but I don't want to do it, right? When you think about it too, it's like, okay, when you think about repurposing your human employees, I like to call them that.

I'm like, I don't know if that sounds degrading, but really moving forward, we have our AI employees and we have our human employees and human employees are paying a lot. I'd rather pay my human employee to pull a list of VIPs to really go have a very customized, like handwritten card or note or something sent out to welcome them to come in for their holiday procedures or whatever compared to have it. Hey, can you go look at like our top 10 competitors websites and give me a quick analysis by the end of the day? There's so much more that they're doing to drive revenue that AI could be doing a lot of these manual tasks and where your front desk, you want to repurpose their time to provide a phenomenal overall patient experience, which then there's tons and tons of side effects from that, that we see an increase in rebookings, we see an increase in retail sales, we see all these other things go up and to the right because the front desk has their time and talents is being repurposed to provide a very engaging, wonderful patient experience. I want to talk about after hours for a second, because you talked about that.

And I think I just want to put some color on that. You know, the individuals that are looking to book, place of purchase, service related, retail related, treatment related, most of the times these are working professionals that are in office or they're on the clock. And, you know, they maybe, I mean, look, there's data behind it. In fact, I had a shot data report recently that said, 30% of the inquiries come in after hours, whether that's the weekend or whether that's when you, before you open or after you close.

I actually have a tool for a practice that I can see an influx of calls coming in when they decide to go home for the day. And so like, it's this, there'd be no intel into that if they didn't have the right tool sets baked out. Because somebody, you can have an ad running, Somebody can make the phone call. The agent can actually answer the phone.

The agent can reply through text message if they call. And so talk to us about the opportunity because you're right. What's going to happen and what already is happening is let's say you start doubling down on your marketing spend and you have this massive Black Friday special you're going to roll out and it's been successful in the past. people are going to want to reach out when it's convenient for them, not when it's convenient for you to be open or close.

Right. So that opportunity alone, I think you and I could talk on it for an entire hour of the opportunity. So yeah, like we lean in on that. Give me an example.

Give the audience an example of what I close my practice every day, for example, at 4 PM. And I have no idea who, uh, if I get any texts or any phone calls or what takes place? Because maybe I just use the local landline or something like that. Or, you know, I don't know. What is your data on it? What's the opportunity cost on it? Yeah.

So, so much that you just said, I'm like trying to pick one thing to focus on because first and foremost, like number one, you said, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to ramp up my spend. My hard-earned, I'm going to invest more in my marketing going into the busy season. Okay. So step number one thing that comes to mind is, okay, are we tracking any of where that spend goes and how it performs, right? So step number one, making sure you have a really good system in place that captures all of your leads in one place.

And then you also have the data and analytics to understand how those leads perform. Because time and time again, I know that I'm preaching the choir here, but I would say maybe, maybe one out of five people that we talk to every single day on my team, one out of five people actually track all that, where their leads come from, how many missed calls they have, how many DMs on Instagram, how everything performed. Because it's really hard to if you don't have the right systems in place. So essentially there's, okay, how, where are the leads coming? And then how do they get followed up on? I feel like I could be the best PR for any marketing firm defending them because I think everyone thinks there's a marketing problem.

Like I have a problem with my marketing team and it's like, no, we actually don't have the right tools in place, which you bring up the second piece, which is people are reaching out after hours. So what systems and tools do you have in place to capture and respond quickly? Because If you think about it too, if I'm going to advertise on a social media platform, for example, and I'm scrolling on my phone at night and I'm like, yeah, I've had four babies. I hate my melasma. I hate it.

I had pregnancy melasma. I'm done having kids. I needed to invest in it. I needed to book something.

And in moment, when you have that top of mind and you see an ad that speaks to you, because I always joke, I'm like. My phone. I think people think targeted apps are creepy. I'm like, no, it's how my phone shows me that it loves me.

My phone listens to me and then serves up ads that are important to me, right? We've all purchased... I started asking people more socially, are you purchasing... targeted ads. And I'm, and I have yet to run into a friend, male or female, that is not making purchases off targeted ads.

Like our phones listen to us and then it serves up content that we want. Right. And so when you have one of those ads served up from your med spa or from your business, you want to capitalize on it in moment. Like I'm thinking about it.

I'm a hot lead. I interact with it. Why are we waiting until tomorrow? It'd be like walking on a Like think about any other industry. I walk into a car dealership and they're like, hey, can you just like, let me get your name and number.

Can we call you tomorrow? It's insanity, right? And it also feels like you're flushing that, you know, 500 bucks maybe you invested per lead to come in down the drain. And so being able to have AI agents, okay, I get that lead and then they are responding in two minutes or less and booking in five minutes or less is what's really gonna change your Q4 number and beyond. Because otherwise that lead sits there, somebody else could get into them first. And then the hardest thing though, is they interacted with you not via phone call.

And the next morning we come in and we call them when they're at work or they're busy with their kids or doing a thousand other things. Make sure A, you're communicating on the medium that they prefer to communicate on. And then you're communicating really quickly. To be able to get in, answer questions and book them immediately is going to be an absolute game changer.

And that's why we seek such a big increase in revenue for our customers at Podium, it's like 30%. And it really is that instant gratification where you see that 30% increase in revenue because you're booking people quickly in the media and communicating on the medium of communication that they prefer, that channel they prefer to communicate with you on. And then when it's convenient for them, convenience wins. At the end of the day, convenience wins.

And if you can get to them fastest, like you're already ahead of the competition. You're already, you're like 80, 80 times more likely or 80%, I apologize, 80% more likely to win that business if you're first to respond. It's kind of crazy. And so being able to, and the control issues, I think a lot of us that haven't used a lot of AI in our personal and professional life, we have that control issue where we want to provide that phenomenal patient experience.

That's not lost on us. That's why we've been developing our AI agents for over four years, almost four years now, because we know how important that is to have someone that represents your brand, your tone, your voice, which we can do at Podium. We've really mastered that. And so you're not going to lose out on that warm touch.

I think a lot of people are like, well, I don't want to leverage AI. I want that warm, personal touch. Amazing. So do we.

You also don't want to sacrifice the speed to lead and conversion after hours because you want a human touch because AI agents can be just as good. They're not bots anymore. It irks me a little bit when people call AI agents bots. I'm like, no, no, no.

Bots are annoying and frustrating and you're yelling at your computer and trying to get in touch with Verizon Wireless or Delta Airlines. But AI agents are amazing. They can sound just like you and your staff. Yeah, I would double click on that.

And look, I'm not just somebody that is interviewing Podium and saying, hey, tell me all about the greatest features, backed up by data, backed up by fact, backed up by case study. I actually have taken your system and implemented it for practice, like hands-on. My hands have been dirty. I've built the funnels.

I've built the AI. I've talked to your customer success team. I've talked to your support team. I have successfully rolled it out.

A practice that I had, had Podium. They were literally using like 20% of it. And they were, well, I don't know if it's working for us or not. I'm like, look, let me just look at it.

I look under the hood. I'm like, well, you're only using a fraction of it. So let's actually implement it. And they were hesitant on, well, the AI was not responding as well as it should.

And when I go in a Podium and I look inside the AI center, I'm like, look, It's because you haven't taken the time to actually build out the knowledge base, right? And once the knowledge base is built out, we went through an entire process. I'm like, okay, how is the AI working now? Let's flip it on. And their success rate is like 98% success rate of it being able to read the site, the treatments, the offers, everything that they do through text message was a phenomenal experience. And then also just want to talk about the call tracking too.

I was talking a little bit about how much business comes in after hours. And when you're talking, I pulled up a report and I just looked and we have at this particular practice, I don't like to name drop, but it's 285 phone calls for the audience. Hang with me. 285 phone calls have come in in the past 60 days.

Okay. After hours. All right. And out of those phone calls, 263 of them were delivered a positive outcome, right? So that's a pretty high win rate.

And I can see how many appointments were booked, how many appointments were rescheduled, and then how many lead handoffs there were, right? So it was really interesting was the bookings from after hours that this, this was a voice agent too, that the voice agent took, had the conversation and had a, I mean, you can listen to it, you can have the interaction, whatever it is, it was a great experience. And you can also give feedback and also get smarter. Obviously, you can talk more about that. But it successfully booked appointments, successfully rescheduled.

And the amount of time, that would be a really cool number. How much time and money do we make on that experience? It's definitely in the five, maybe even six figures probably shoot for this particular practice. But Talk about a return. That's just one use case.

That's one use case. And it's just like, talk about the return on capital time saved that did for you. And look, here's my thought. Maybe it's three months ago.

I said live on a podcast. I said, look, AI agents are coming. Voice agents are coming. They're here.

They're already here. Some people put them by the wayside. They don't believe in them. I'm over here.

I'm like, look, I think it's going to be 12 months before they fully get into effect. I miss that window probably by like nine months. They're here and they sound really, really good. They actually sound more like a human.

They'll say like, um, let me look, hold on one sec. Like they have really, they're getting better. Very, very fast. I'm very impressed.

And the ability to solve the problem. And I'm starting to listen to some of these calls. I guess I like listening to phone calls in my spare time, whatever. But I'm intrigued by it because I like to hear the live person's interaction.

And their interaction is becoming more comfortable, Carly, more comfortable with the agent. And my thesis is by maybe next year, at some point, it's going to happen. We're going to want to talk to an agent over a live person, just like we like to text over communicate to a live person. I mean, I'm 41 years old.

I remember when texting came out. I'm like, why don't we text? I can just make a phone call. Now it's like, why are you calling me? I only want to text me first before you call me. It's interesting.

It's just how it is. Yeah, it's like, why are you calling me? You're supposed to text first. But I think that's what's going to happen. And so, you know, I guess just to hit this home is individuals that are not thinking about AI or maybe they haven't invested in AI or maybe they kind of have a software tool and they're dabbling with AI.

Now's the time. Like holiday season is coming. Your practice is losing opportunities every day. Not because your services aren't great, but because leads are slipping through the cracks.

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And mention Medical Millionaire for exclusive intro pricing. And then let's pivot for a second. Sorry, I'm kind of going on a tangent, but I like to do that sometimes. No, I think this is great because I think people need to start thinking this way because it is overwhelming and it's a little nerve wracking, but I think it's really good to bring up these things because there's so much missed opportunity in brick and mortar businesses that AI can jump in and handle for you.

Sorry, so carry on. I think it's important. It's so convenient, you know, and look, you have to take the time to work on your business versus in your business. Actually, I haven't said that in a while.

That was a massive theme that I have inside of my genetics, if you will, as an entrepreneur. But most of us as providers, we're always working in our business with a patient and we don't take the time to work on our business. Take a Saturday, go build it out, you know, because what happens is you're going to save yourself so much time down the road. And you brought up another point, the segmentation of patients inside of an EMR.

If I was to ask the audience right now, go to your EMR and go extract every single person that has spent over $ 5, 000 this year that's not on a membership. Go show me how to do it. And I can tell you right now, maybe one, maybe two will say, oh, I can easily do that. This is segmented data that is absolute gold.

Imagine if I could give you a list, patient or provider, so if you're a practice owner listening, I want to give you a list of every single person that has spent over $ 5, 000 with you per year and is not on a membership. What would that be worth to you? A call list. What would it be worth to you if you can create the call list when you're driving home and then have that call list be sent out a text message or an email campaign? It's crazy. Or every single day when you're in like even to like elevate a little bit more, it's like, OK, every single day your providers get a run at a run through report of everyone on the calendar that day, how much they spend and who's not a member.

So they're prepped for. The day as well. There you go. And that's the ages talking to each other.

Those are the things that could be a reality of your situation with leveraging AI technology. I'm a provider. I show up every single morning. I get a text message, and it's this beautiful, color-coded, aesthetically pleasing report that's like a breakdown of everyone that I'm seeing that day, who's a member, who's not a member, how much they have paid, like invested with your business.

Those are things that can be a reality to run your business every single day for you and your providers. Yeah, it's like if you even have like a front desk person or people or you have an office manager and it's like, hey, when you get downtime, go through the database of patients and make some calls and maybe, you know, who hasn't been in a while. It's like, what are you talking about? Like, where am I going to get the segmented list first of all? What am I just going to go through a list of 5,000 people and start making phone calls? Like, there is not like, look, there's very few pieces of tech. I know Podium can do this.

to segment data on the flight and deliver a marketing material message that's customized to them. It's not just like, here's an email blast of our Black Friday. Like, that's cool. Like, obviously do that.

I get it. But what if you wanted to create a list on the fly? I think Podium, you can actually just like give it a prep playbook. Is this right? Can you give it a prep playbook now and hit a button and it'll, once you tell it to like give it instructions what to do it every day, will it do it now? I don't know. Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. Okay. That's next level.

Like that is next, next level stuff. So imagine having a list, like here's what's really interesting is you have, let's just say you have like, you have patients that frequent, frequent high spenders, you know, they come in frequently and then maybe they like, they don't come in for 120 days when they're used to coming in every 90 and they don't come in. Nothing is telling you, Hey, alert, Sally has not come in. Maybe she's going to, the other practice down the road because I don't know, she got an offer.

Maybe, maybe something happened. Nothing is saying alert, alert, alert. You should call her, you should email her, you should text her. But if you have AI injected into your tech, it can flag that stuff.

You know, so I mean, that's what I wanted to get at is really just like the use cases behind it of how much like the patient segmentation with the marketing on demand is, uh, absolutely critical. So let's, let's pivot just for a second. I know we doubled down on like reactive existing. I just wanted to add to that because I love what you said.

We have to work on our business, not in our business. So when you think about and with, and I mean, this is your expertise, but you think about working on your business, it's like, okay, what do I want to know every single day with that happens at my business from a data stats perspective? I want to know how many leads came in. I want to know who's rebooked out of all the appointments we saw. How many rebookings did we have? How many leads? How many calls? How many missed calls? How much revenue did we do? What was the utilization that day? Like all these things, like boom, you can get a report every single day with all of those things, right? Okay, what I want to know on the week.

And what do I want to know about next week? I want to have a really clear insight and have a report served up to me of my utilization across my providers for me and who's high priority next week, who's low priority. And then we can feed it to the booking agent and that understands who's high priority, who's low priority. We can make sure that we're filling people's calendar. Okay, but also Dr.

Smith is really high priority. We're missing a lot of schedule. Like we have a bunch of gaps in the schedule next week. Okay, let's pull...

a list of everyone that hasn't been in to see Dr. Smith in the last six months. This is how you should start thinking about running your business with AI. And AI can help run it alongside you and for you.

And taking the time to your point to not be in the business, like running the business and really having a good understanding of what needs to happen. That's where AI comes in, where it can help I think a lot of business owners are lacking that critical piece of visibility to their data more than anything, right? Like that visibility at fingertip that they can see every single day to really run the business and drive as much revenue as possible, they're just missing a lot of those gaps in revenue because there's lack of visibility. That's like the biggest underlying theme I'm seeing because they have seven systems, a lot on their plate, and nothing talks to each other. And then to pull a report to your point, it's a miserable experience.

So anyway, yeah. No, miserable experience, you're exactly right. And they don't have the time to do it, nor the desire to. Nor once they even finally get the data, what do I do with it? It's just like, I mean, we live in such, if I'm a provider right now, oh my gosh, I could take a practice, no joke, that is doing, let's just say it's one provider that's doing 750K a year.

So that's you, a provider, you're listening, like this is a use case for you or a scenario for you, for example. you're making good money. You're probably operating at 20, 25%. So 20, 25% of the 750,000 is going to your pocket.

You're living good, right? Maybe your married husband brings in some money too. I don't know, but you are busy. Okay. You're very, very busy.

And because I know you have to have a website, you're doing social, you're probably very limited on staff because you want all the capital to come into your pocket. You have one system. It's kind of handling your booking. You're never going to look at a report.

Right. So like because you you're back to back with patients like you're literally by the time the day's over, you're you're tired and you want to go live your life. Right. So it's if you were to take this type of tool set and I was to inject it into just say a single provider rooftop.

I mean, this compounds when you have like multiple providers in multiple locations, by the way. So I'm not framing this as like, this is good for one person. What I'm saying is the opportunity for one person, I could take a practice from 750K to easily $ 2 million. Hey, look, and I don't even have a magic weapon in 12 months.

Easily do it. Because I now have the markers of what's going on at my fingertips. I can ignite the database. I can turn on the marketing.

I can measure it. I can make decisions based on data, not emotion. Right. And then I can just have those decisions be implemented without it.

I'm like, cool. That's a decision. AI, you're smart. Go ahead and do your thing.

Send it out. By the way, I'm done. See ya. It's, it's fascinating.

Yeah. It's, I, I completely agree. I think we always joke on my team. I'm like, we go off data, not vibes.

So to your point, like emotion out, as little as, Hey, I just hired somebody on my front desk staff. Like, I don't, I don't know how well they're doing. Right. And leveraging an AI analytics agent to pull all their phone calls and grade all of them and have that at your fingertips.

Right. So, or, Hey, I have phenomenal front desk person. I'm going to pull all their phone calls. I'm going to feed it into my AI agent so that my AI agent has that tone.

I want them to sound exactly like Jane from the front desk. And so I think to your point, everyone's overworked, overtired. There's so much on people's plates. And so being able to make data-driven decisions for your business and really understand what's happening, top of funnel, down to the bottom, and then re-engaging, re-marketing.

It's so hard to get a new patient, a new client in the seat and through the doors. And so once they're through and they love you and they're obsessed with you, like let's make it really easy for them to continue to do business with you and come back time and time again. And that's where AI technology can be one of those, the biggest unlocks for you. I think about even a small, a small practice that runs really lean, like one of my favorite clients, she came in, she's the COO of a business and came in they run really lean.

They do not have a front desk. They're having the AI agent pick up all of that on the front end. And then when the team members that are seeing patients are available, they're answering calls as well. It's a big team effort.

I don't think that's unique. I think that's what the situation a lot of practices are in. And her leveraging Avery, a full consolidated system, a business manager operator to understand the utilization, the daily reporting, all these things. She took her revenue from like 20K a month.

After two months, she was up to like 70K per month because of the visibility and the understanding and being able to be proactive. We're so reactive in this business. Having that data and that visibility gives you the ability to have control and insights and be proactive with your bottom line, which I think moving, that's a huge competitive advantage. Like most people don't have any understanding.

Like you've been saying like, oh, I have a business that Miss 285 calls. How many people can even tell you how many calls they miss on average? And because they don't, they have no idea. And that's one of the most basic things. Like every time somebody picks up the phone, it's like five grand for you, right? So for lifetime value in this industry.

So being able to understand all those data points and having the guidance and structure to be able to execute on it with AI is wonderful. is by far one of, in my opinion, hands down, the best thing you can do for your business. And AI is an investment. It's an investment of time and finances.

But at the end of the day, I can't think of a better way to drive ROI and repurpose the humans within your practice that you know and love to elevate everyone's experience and maximize their time. You're exactly right. I mean, some people can look at it and say, sounds like a lot. Sounds like it's daunting.

AI this, AI that. I have an appointment at noon. I got to go get ready for a patient, right? It's like, look, I would block out two or three days or even a whole week to shut the business down. Like, just book yourself out.

Just pretend you're going to go on vacation and actually don't go on vacation. Like, go work on your business and take the time to implement it. Look, if you don't... every day you wait, you're falling behind.

And I'm not even trying to like, I'm not even trying to sell Podium at all. It's just the reality of the situation. They're going to use something like, I'm going to give you two more use cases, sorry. No, don't.

Yeah, it's not a fear tactic. It's like, hey, like this is, we've been talking about AI for two years now in this industry. Right, yeah. It should be, it should be.

I would love to hear. I'm going to give you two. Okay. So I had a conversation with a gal yesterday, you know, and people call me and they're like, Hey, your podcast is amazing.

Can I chat with you? I, you know, I got a question about my practice. I'm like, sure. Yeah, let's chat. I'll see if I can help you out whatever way she's doing.

I think it was 900 K a year. She's got a couple of providers. Practice is doing well. She uses, what's the booking system? Square.

Remember Square? Been around forever. Probably the first booking system. Looks great, yeah. Pretty decent tool.

And then she uses a static record. No knock on a static record, whatever. But immediately when I said, what's your tech stack look like? She gave me those answers. And I'm like, you have no idea how to measure your cost per lead.

You have no idea how to measure your conversions. You have no idea how to measure your calls. You have no idea. You can't make these systems talk to each other.

So you have to break that seal. There is no more let's run a fragmented technology medical aesthetics practice. That's step number one. Just nick it in the back, go get it done.

Because if I was to work with her, let's just say I'm like, yeah, cool, let's go work together. Let me help you out. The first thing I would do was fix that problem. I have to fix the foundation.

I could go hire the best front desk person who's amazing on the phone. That's going to cost me money and time and effort. I can go hire 10 providers. I could go build out a million dollar space for her.

And then if I didn't fix this tech issue, the engine's broken before I just went and put all of the fancy fixtures on it. Right. It's you have to fix that. That's literally the first thing I would do is I would fix the tech stack and obviously the finances and all that stuff.

And there's more to come to it than that. Another use case. So, so like that's the first thing I would do. I don't know.

I've been in this space for, you know, 12 years. Here's another one practice. That's doing eight figures a year. They, they're wonderful brand, like just incredible practices.

they've been around for 10 years and they still have antiquated tech. Okay. They have fragmented systems because they've kind of grown with the market, right? They had the booking system and then they migrated then wellness launch. So they had another EMR system and then they just threw bodies at it because they had the money and then SOPs and there's SOP here and SOP there.

And, you know, we had a pretty serious conversation. I'm like, well, why don't you guys like really figure out like your front desk tech is, it's broken. Like you're not, You have no way to track phone calls. You have no way to track leads.

No idea who's booked, how much they booked. Did they come back? Who books them on your team? What KPIs are you tracking your team? It was just not there. But the engine's running great. Kind of, right? So help them implement some great tech.

Podium is definitely a piece of that stack. And we now have complete transparency into the success and health of the front desk. We can hear phone calls. The leads are coming in, getting a response to after hours.

Leads are getting a response to. We saw, this is no joke, an uptick. We launched this, it was August. It was August.

It was, okay, June, July, August when we like rebuilt the whole thing. August was testing. September was the first month of tracking. They sold memberships.

It was roughly, I think it was, 18 memberships. The MRR was about $ 15, 000 in monthly recurring revenue. The ARR would be 15 times 12. What is that? $ 180, 000 in annual revenue.

And the front desk successfully booked and sold the whole thing as a unit. And ARR and new revenue was right around like $ 254, 000 in one month. That was the front desk. That has nothing to do with the providers.

That was one month. And they had never gone through an exercise like this because who's going to do it? You know, everybody's busy. Everybody's busy, right? And so the nice thing is there's tech available now that just unlocked, like just completely unlocked this whole new solution to bring in this excess capital that was already sitting there, but then you just put tech on it. And it's just incredible to see.

And I mean, they're very, very happy. Yeah, I think like, The best way I would describe a lot of your, we call them a system of record, right? Your system of record in any industry. And in this industry, it's an EMR. But your system of record being a digital filing cabinet, the days of that are gone.

They're gone. They're done. There's so much more. Your EMR should be producing...

dividends like you just reviewed, you should be seeing a ton of ROI from your EMR. It shouldn't just be a database. Are you looking at your EMR like you would back in the olden days where it was just like you walk into a dark shop, there's just files behind the front desk? Is that what your EMR is doing for you? It's just storing data? Or is it actually driving revenue? And is it actually giving you insights and data at your fingertips that can help you provide the like maximum results for your business and give you back a ton of time in your personal life and your business and elevate everyone's experience, all of your employees. Like you think about employee satisfaction, how much taking off these manual months tasks off their plate is is a game changer for them like if you're able to get that front desk getting all the little tiny tasks off their plate like they're like we love it like it's amazing we love the AI agent because they don't fill this additional level of stress on their day-to-day job and it's so hard to find great front desk staff people right and there's a lot of turnover there so if you can provide a phenomenal experience um for patients with really energized engaged front desk people because to your point we're able to take off so many tasks with ai it's it's a game changer for sure so yeah i know it's uh the fragmented systems just the time you save alone with having consolidation is huge in and of itself hours hours of time you'll save just having a consistent system.

It's, it's so, it's so important. I think that like you can, I can feel the passion coming from you. I think that the audience can feel it coming from me. It's just the reality of the system.

You phrase it really well. If you went from paper charts to digitation, like that was step one, we were there, we lived there for a couple of years. And then you had like these, these widgets that would like, you could bolt on like You could bolt on something cool on your website that would help with like a converting thing. You could bolt on like a cool retention system.

It's all getting consolidated into one solution and it's getting better because the patient of record, the booking of record lives inside the system, right? I know we didn't talk about like really knowing how successful your providers are too by measuring utilization rate, revenue per hour, average ticket, Where's the lift? Why is Sally not producing as much as Susan, right? There's massive opportunity. In fact, we should do another episode and literally just talk about that. I think my last question for you is, cool, this all sounds great. I get it.

Finally, AI, SI, we'll go. How long, you guys have done a great job of onboarding and you guys have great support. I know that. I've worked with them literally personally as being a practice owner.

I've worked with your team. And I come from a tech background, so I know what it's like to communicate with support, customer success, implementation, onboarding. What does it take for somebody to go through a migration? I'm on an antiquated tech stack, and I want to go to Podium. Is it hard? Is it easy? How long does it take? What do you suggest? Yeah.

So I think first and foremost, like going into the busy season, it's never a good time to switch your system, right? So we started getting in August, people telling us, oh, call me back Jan 1. And I've been doing sales for a long time and I've been doing this for a long time. And you would think that January was just sheer magic in our lives and that every January we'd build like you know we sold or signed up like 10x the people like there's nothing magical about January 1 there's never a good time to make these switches for your business and you can always talk yourself out of it and but the best time to implement AI was yesterday right and so To get everything onboard and set up, the great thing about Podium is that we're not an EMR company. We're not an EMR land.

We're a true tech company that built out a full communication platform, lead management platform, and then embedded and built AI on top of all that and then built the system of record, which is a unique benefit because most legacy tech, they're bolting AI on top and buying companies because their tech is... to legacy or old where they actually can't build AI technology on top of it. And so they have to like bolt it on or buy something and integrate in a way. And so with Podium though, where we're an AI company, we're not a traditional EMR or SaaS company.

We're AI first and have been for years and years. It's not something we just overnight changed because it was popular. This is something we've been running at since 2023 as being an AI first led company. we leverage AI technology to help with your full migration and onboarding.

So for example, after you sign up and partner with Podium, operator will actually start texting you and saying, hey, can you send me X, Y, and Z? Let's get the ball rolling. We're going to start migrating. We're going to start getting your data over and we're leveraging AI technology to migrate everything over. That's one of the biggest headaches we know in this industry.

So we've really set out to make sure that we can make that the best and most seamless AI-led migration process for our customers. So we really have built out a well-oiled machine where you can start day one within minutes after partnering with us with your onboarding. And the other thing too is most people, because they don't have the internal AI tools like Podium does, you're really segmented to doing all of your onboarding during their hours of the business. Where we have.

Operator being able to help load, like typically things that would take you like a full week to do an onboarding, our operator is able to do in an afternoon or an hour when you send over everything. So we leverage a lot of AI tools to be able to help with the onboarding, but you're looking at typically like 45 to 60 days to be fully live with everything, not just migrated. Because in our experience, we've seen a lot of people when they're moving from an EMR, we like to stretch that out, make it a multi-month, three to six month process, like podium. We work pretty quick around here and we want you up and live and fully rocking and rolling like 60 days is really our average that we're doing.

But we work with your schedule so we can do it a little bit faster if you are willing to work with us and put in that time on the front end. But I would say 60 days is what you're looking at typically. And- leveraging a lot of AI to be able to get things done. So you could be texting operator.

There's so many steps when you're migrating and things you have to get over, but you could be texting a lot of that to operator and it's just loading it for you instead of you having to go in. It's really mundane. And then we're also making a lot of other changes so that when you, I actually don't know, this could be live by the time this is launched, but also how annoying is it to go in and type a lot of stuff like how you operate with your business, being able to even just record everything and you talk out loud and share exactly how your memberships work. And then we're analyzing that and we're loading it up and we're leveraging AI throughout the entire onboarding process.

so that it's really streamlined as well. And so when you think about onboarding, I would not bucket it and the, oh, I had a really long or terrible or rough experience with XYZ previously because we're an AI company. And we're a true tech company that, in my opinion, this industry really hasn't been served before by a true tech company. So it's been a privilege the last few years to be able to serve this industry at the level that we're able to, and especially from an onboarding and migration standpoint.

So we have onboarding specialists. We have data migration specialists. You have a full team working with you to be able to onboard really efficiently and effectively. And we keep a pretty well-oiled machine and pretty tight schedule.

So we're pre-booking everything out exactly when you're meeting who you're meeting with. We also have 24-7 tech. I mean, we have so many resources at our disposal. Podium has over a thousand employees.

And so we're here to really serve and make sure that that experience is, I could go on and on and on because our founders, that's the most important thing. I've been here almost 10 years. The most important thing for them has always been like customer experience. Everything we do here ties back to the overall customer experience.

We want you to love the product, use the product, be onboarded. And that's the most important thing, right? We got to do the hard upfront, we can't cut corners. We have to onboard and execute really well so that you can use Podium and make a big impact with driving revenue and efficiency. So I could be really long-winded with that.

So feel free to cut that, Kim, but the onboarding experience is a well-oiled machine. And we really have like our hit list of EMRs that we've built out the AI technology to execute at an efficient level so that it's not this huge burden like it traditionally has been in the past for businesses. That's super important. I think it's really important to make it seamless, make it straightforward, have resources.

How long has Podium been in business? Since 2014. 2014. How many customers do you have? Ooh, I don't know the latest on it. Or aesthetics practices.

I would say aesthetics practices, we're creeping up around like 3,000. 3,000 practices. Mm-hmm. Big awesome practices are having success with it, you know, and you guys have been in business a long time.

Look, I'm originally from Salt Lake City, Utah. They have HQ in Lehigh, Utah. If you guys are in Lehigh or go to Utah, you should go to their headquarters. It's pretty slick.

It's really cool. And they're definitely super hospitable. So, Carly, thank you so much for joining. I know that you got to get back to all the AI build stuff and the team.

And, you know, for you guys, if you are If you're interested in learning more, talking about it, I'm definitely gonna have Carly back on the show or somebody from Podium on the show at some point. I'm absolutely fascinated with what they're doing. I think that everything they're actually doing solves the patient experience. So I think it's, I look at it beyond the practice and customer experience.

It's the patient experience. So it actually leans to your your patient, right? Which actually makes you look better, which I think is important to talk about. But if someone wants to learn more, where is the best place for them to go? Podium.com. We have a full aesthetics website.

You can check us out there. Request a demo. And then just to close, I always like to say one thing. I think I, anyone that's listening to this, first off, kudos to you taking the time to invest in, improve personal, professional growth and development.

My biggest thing is anytime you listen to something, it's like, what could I take away and do tomorrow? Like, Start thinking through what are like the most manual tasks that you and your team are doing that you want to eliminate. And then also just start tracking your data. Even if you're not in a state where you are ready to invest in a tool tomorrow, that's okay. Start just getting an Excel spreadsheet and just start tracking your leads.

Like even just bare bones, like start understanding your data. Data is power. That is how you're going to elevate and get to those short and long-term goals that you have for yourself and for your business. Um, and so, yeah, go into podium.com.

We'd love to talk to you and understand your business. All of our account executives do a really phenomenal job, um, from a consultative lens, understanding your business, what's important to you and doing a really, um, customized demo for your, for your business. Um, that was, that's where I would start. Yeah.

Podium.com. Awesome. Thank you so much, guys. I think if you mentioned Medical Millionaire, I think they have an item of value for you as well.

I'm not privy to what that is, but I think there's some sort of arrangement for them being on the show and talking about AI. So drop that. I don't know if it's 10%, 20%. I have no idea.

But it's an item of value. I know that they'll take care of you and they'll help onboard you. Thank you so much for joining. I'll leave it at that.

If you guys want to watch this episode, we have now launched the YouTube channel. I've mentioned that a few times. Please go check it out. If you're more of a visual person, please subscribe, share it, comment, and pass this episode around.

If you have a colleague or a team member or a manager or an investor or somebody that needs to hear it, share it with them and rate it. Thank you so much. I'll leave it at that. Until next time, happy injecting.

Thanks for listening to Medical Millionaire. Built for operators, founders, and leaders in medical aesthetics who want to grow with intention, increase profitability, and create real enterprise value. If this episode helped you, subscribe on YouTube, follow Cameron Hemphill on Instagram, and share it with a colleague who needs to hear it. For more insights and resources, visit CameronHemphill.com.

Until next time, keep building your practice like a business.