Aesthetic Appeal

A flawless procedure can still turn into a bad review if the clinic hands the patient off with nothing more than a printed discharge sheet.Bill Walker talks with Louise Hobbs, RN and founder of ViraLou Aftercare, about what a real concierge recovery service looks like: RN-led home visits, vetted and trained nurses, and a vitals kit stocked for whatever the first 24 hours throw at a patient. Louise breaks down how her team picks up patients from the surgery center, stays with them overnight, and knows the difference between normal swelling and something a surgeon needs to hear about.The bigger shift, Louise argues, is that aftercare is moving from an afterthought to something surgeons now bundle and sell as part of the surgical package itself — because a bad recovery experience colors how a patient remembers the surgeon, no matter how clean the results are.Listen for how staffing an aftercare team the right way protects a surgeon's sleep, their patients, and their reputation all at once.

Questions answered by this episode

1. What is post-surgical aftercare?
2. How much does post-surgical aftercare cost?
3. Is swelling normal after plastic surgery?
4. Do you need a nurse after plastic surgery?
5. What should you expect in the first 24 hours after surgery?
6. What does a recovery nurse do after surgery?
7. How do you choose an aftercare service after surgery?
8. Can you get post-surgical care while traveling for plastic surgery?
9. Why do plastic surgery practices offer aftercare packages?
10. How are aftercare nurses trained for post-surgical care?

Learn more about ViraLou Aftercare

GUEST

Louise Hobbs, RN, BSN
Founder, ViraLou Aftercare

Louise Hobbs is the founder of ViraLou Aftercare, a concierge post-surgical recovery service serving Orange County, San Diego, the Inland Empire, and the greater Los Angeles area. A registered nurse since 2019, Louise spent more than 30 years as a licensed esthetician before training as an RN, giving her aftercare team a rare blend of clinical and aesthetics expertise. She built ViraLou around one rule: full compliance, from insurance coverage to W-2 nurses, so surgeons, patients, and her own team are protected. Every ViraLou nurse trains through the company's in-house academy before they're cleared to care for a patient on their own.

Follow ViraLou Aftercare on Instagram @viralouaftercare

About Aesthetic Appeal

Aesthetic Appeal is where Aesthetic Brokers brings you the latest insights straight from Southern California. We break down what's happening in the medical aesthetics world—especially when it comes to private equity and transactions with mergers and acquisitions that matter to you as a practice owner.

Learn more about Aesthetic Brokers

Follow Aesthetic Brokers on Instagram @aestheticbrokers

Theme music: Blinding, Cushy

Every ambitious med spa founder eventually hits the same fork: expand into satellite locations, or double down on one destination. Amanda Barrett tried the first path with Vadara Med Spa in the greater Seattle area, then reversed course to save her business, her staff, and her sleep.

Bill Walker talks with Amanda about why satellite offices sound smart on paper but crush rebooking rates and drain staff morale, how she consolidated three spas into one Mill Creek destination, and the leadership structure — four nurse practitioner managers who share the boss seat — that lets her stay in the injection room instead of running the floor.

Amanda also makes a strong case for meaningful complication training. Her team runs regular drills, and every RN and nurse practitioner on staff can pick up an ultrasound, find an abnormal area, and treat it. She frames it as a moral obligation: if you cannot treat the complication, you do not get to perform the treatment.

A candid look at the growth path a lot of aesthetic founders quietly get wrong, with a working example of what to do instead.

Learn more about Vadara Med Spa


Questions answered by this episode

1. How do you grow a med spa without burning out?
2. Should a med spa open multiple satellite locations?
3. What is the biggest mistake med spa owners make when scaling?
4. How do you train med spa staff to handle a filler complication?
5. How do you empower nurse practitioners to manage a med spa?
6. What is the difference between a med spa and a wellness center?
7. Is functional medicine a good add-on service for a med spa?
8. How do you keep rebooking rates high in a med spa?
9. Should a med spa owner also be the manager?
10. How do you build a leadership team that runs the practice without you?

GUEST
Amanda Barrett, DNAP, CRNA
Founder, Vadara Med Spa

Amanda Barrett is the founder of Vadara Med Spa, a medical aesthetics and functional wellness center in Mill Creek, Washington. A doctorate-prepared CRNA with a background in operating-room anesthesia, she built Vadara from a single rented treatment room into a consolidated destination practice known for double-digit annual growth, deep injector training, and an empowered leadership team of nurse practitioner managers. Amanda is passionate about complication readiness, patient safety, and expanding into longevity and functional medicine alongside aesthetics.

Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn

Follow Amanda on Instagram @amanda.vadaramedspa

About Aesthetic Appeal

Aesthetic Appeal is where Aesthetic Brokers brings you the latest insights straight from Southern California. We break down what's happening in the medical aesthetics world—especially when it comes to private equity and transactions with mergers and acquisitions that matter to you as a practice owner.

Learn more about Aesthetic Brokers

Follow Aesthetic Brokers on Instagram @aestheticbrokers

Theme music: Blinding, Cushy

Most practice owners can tell you their monthly revenue. Very few can tell you where inside that number the next $10,000 is actually sitting.

Ben Wolber, founder and CEO of Illume, joins Bill Walker at The Aesthetic Show in Las Vegas to break down what his platform finds after pulling together the scattered systems most med spas run on — booking software, EMR, POS, and beyond.

One single-location practice in Cincinnati had $209,000 in unflagged revenue opportunity sitting in its own numbers. Another group had over $600,000. Ben walks through how role-based KPI dashboards turn that kind of blind spot into a coaching conversation for injectors and front-desk teams alike.

Listen for the one metric — retail-to-service revenue ratio — that surprises almost every owner the first time they see it broken down by provider.

Questions answered by this episode:

1. How much revenue are med spas losing by not tracking patient reactivation?
2. How much time do med spa owners spend manually pulling reports each week?
3. What is a good retail-to-service revenue ratio for a medical spa?
4. How do you calculate retail versus service revenue for a med spa?
5. How do you set KPI targets for injectors?
6. What data analytics tools work best for multi-location med spas?
7. How much does a med spa data analytics platform cost?
8. What is patient reactivation in a medical spa?
9. How can AI help med spa owners understand their financial data?
10. What should a med spa owner look for in a business intelligence platform?

Learn more about Illume

GUEST

Ben Wolber
Founder & CEO, Illume

Ben Wolber is the founder and CEO of Illume, a data intelligence platform built for med spa and wellness practice owners. Before launching Illume in 2025, he worked in healthcare consulting, building financial reporting for large hospital systems before shifting into fractional data work for med spas and wellness practices. Illume has since closed a pre-seed funding round backed by Keyhorse Capital and Cintrifuse Capital and now powers reporting for practices across the country. Ben and his team built the platform to translate scattered system data into role-based dashboards and coaching insights practice owners can act on immediately.

Connect with Ben on LinkedIn

Follow Illume on Instagram @joinillume

About Aesthetic Appeal

Aesthetic Appeal is where Aesthetic Brokers brings you the latest insights straight from Southern California. We break down what's happening in the medical aesthetics world—especially when it comes to private equity and transactions with mergers and acquisitions that matter to you as a practice owner.

Learn more about Aesthetic Brokers

Follow Aesthetic Brokers on Instagram @aestheticbrokers

Theme music: Blinding, Cushy

Getting new patient leads is the most expensive marketing you do, and the least profitable. The growth in 2026 is in the client you already have. Recording live at The Aesthetic Show, Jessica talks with Skya Jones of Boulevard, a former practice manager who now teaches medspa teams how to put their marketing on autopilot. Skya walks through AI-driven automated campaigns that quietly fill the schedule — the "your forehead's moving, time for tox" nudge — and segmentation that pairs a toxin-only client with the microneedling offer that actually improves margin.The counterintuitive part: memberships aren't one-size-fits-all, and a Botox bank is usually the wrong one — toxin margins are too thin to discount. Skya makes the case for memberships built on priority booking and cross-service perks instead, and shows how automated recurring revenue de-risks the business for a future buyer.

Questions answered by this episode:

1. What is the best all-in-one software for a med spa?
2. How do med spas keep clients coming back?
3. Is client retention more profitable than new client acquisition?
4. How do you measure marketing ROI for a med spa?
5. How do automated marketing campaigns work for aesthetic practices?
6. Should a med spa offer a membership program?
7. Why is a Botox bank a bad membership model?
8. Does an all-in-one platform replace Mailchimp and Constant Contact?
9. How does recurring revenue increase a med spa's sale value?
10. How do you segment email marketing for a med spa?

Learn more about Boulevard

GUEST

Skya Jones
Medspa Expert, Boulevard

Skya Jones is one of the in-house medspa experts at Boulevard, the client experience platform built for appointment-based self-care businesses. A former practice manager and provider with nearly a decade in the medical spa industry, she leads medspa education at Boulevard, working alongside customers to streamline operations and deliver memorable client experiences. Before joining Boulevard, she managed and consulted for medical spas and retail beauty businesses, and she presents on medspa operations and marketing at industry events across the country.

Read Skya's articles on the Boulevard blog

About Aesthetic Appeal

Aesthetic Appeal is where Aesthetic Brokers brings you the latest insights straight from Southern California. We break down what's happening in the medical aesthetics world—especially when it comes to private equity and transactions with mergers and acquisitions that matter to you as a practice owner.

Learn more about Aesthetic Brokers

Follow Aesthetic Brokers on Instagram @aestheticbrokers

Theme music: Blinding, Cushy

Most medical spas are held together by a patchwork of disconnected tools—one or more for marketing, another for scheduling and charting, a third for photos, another for payments. Every handoff between them quietly eats staff hours nobody is tracking.

Bill Walker talks with Walker Szurek, co-founder and CEO of Prospyr, about why he built a single connected platform instead of one more point solution. Szurek starts with the EMR and CRM living in one place, then adds point of sale, e-commerce, memberships, and reporting that finally ties a lead all the way through to revenue.

The bigger promise isn't AI for its own sake, it's giving staff their time back. Szurek explains how 60 to 70% of inbound texts are just booking, rescheduling, and canceling, work that can be automated so the front desk spends its hours on new leads and clinicians stop charting at 1 a.m.

Questions answered by this episode

1. What is the best all-in-one software for a med spa?
2. What software do plastic surgery and wellness practices use to manage patients?
3. How can AI save time at a medical practice front desk?
4. How do you manage multiple med spa locations in one system?
5. What is the difference between an EMR and a CRM for aesthetic practices?
6. How much of a front desk's time goes to booking and rescheduling?
7. How do you reduce the number of software systems your practice runs on?
8. What features should aesthetic practice management software include?
9. Does AI transcription actually help with medical charting?
10. What is Prospyr and who is it built for?Learn more about Prospyr

GUEST

Walker Szurek
Co-Founder & CEO, Prospyr

Walker Szurek is the co-founder and CEO of Prospyr, an all-in-one practice management platform built for medical spas, wellness clinics, and plastic surgery practices. A Stanford-trained mechanical engineer, he started out in private equity due diligence at Bain & Company before moving into software, including a product director role at Chargebee. He founded Prospyr in 2021 with CTO Greg Kopyltsov, shaping the product from a network of practice owners, managers, injectors, and front-desk staff before writing a single line of code. Today Prospyr runs on roughly 500 locations, unifying the EMR, CRM, marketing, point of sale, and AI tools that practices otherwise stitch together across separate systems. Based in Austin, Texas, he stays close to customers and credits listening as the company's real superpower.

Connect with Walker on LinkedIn

Follow Prospyr on Instagram @prospyrmed

About Aesthetic Appeal

Aesthetic Appeal is where Aesthetic Brokers brings you the latest insights straight from Southern California. We break down what's happening in the medical aesthetics world—especially when it comes to private equity and transactions with mergers and acquisitions that matter to you as a practice owner.

Learn more about Aesthetic Brokers

Follow Aesthetic Brokers on Instagram @aestheticbrokers

Theme music: Blinding, Cushy

You built a loyal following on your own name and your own hands. Now the calendar is full, the ceiling is close, and the business is worth almost nothing without you standing in the room. 

That is the wall most injectors hit right before they decide whether they own a job or a company.

Jessica Hunter talks with Catherine Marben, who rebuilt her Scottsdale practice from a one-woman salon suite into a purpose-built clinic she can eventually sell. Catherine walks through taking her own name off the door, keeping overhead low while she saved for a building, and bringing in a consultant to see the parts of the business she could not see herself.

Catherine explains why doubling your cost of goods only funds the next purchase, not growth, and how learning her true margins and benchmarks changed every pricing and hiring decision after. She also gets honest about the mental block that stalls most owners: believing you have to do it all yourself.

Listen for the moment she names the difference between a fear-driven business and one built on real numbers.

Questions answered by this episode:

1. How do you turn a med spa into a business you can sell?
2. How much does it cost to open your own med spa?
3. How do you price injectables to actually make a profit?
4. When should a solo injector hire staff?
5. What is a healthy profit margin for a med spa?
6. Should you take your own name out of your business name?
7. How do you scale a med spa beyond a salon suite?
8. Do you need a business consultant to grow an aesthetics practice?
9. How do you know when your team is at capacity?
10. What should you look for when hiring med spa injectors?

Learn more about Profile Aesthetics: https://profileaesthetics.com/ 

Follow Profile Aesthetics on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/profileaesthetics/


GUEST

Catherine Marben
Owner, Profile Aesthetics (Scottsdale, Arizona)

Catherine Marben is the owner of Profile Aesthetics in Scottsdale, Arizona, a clinic she built from the ground up after starting as a solo injector under her own name. A nurse by training who became a sought-after injector and trainer in her community, she rebranded from Catherine M Aesthetics into a scalable, sellable business and a purpose-built 2,600-square-foot space with five treatment rooms. She is known for a culture-first approach to leadership and for teaching other providers how to price, hire, and grow without burning out.

Follow Profile Aesthetics on Instagram @profileaesthetics

About Aesthetic Appeal

Aesthetic Appeal is where Aesthetic Brokers brings you the latest insights straight from Southern California. We break down what's happening in the medical aesthetics world—especially when it comes to private equity and transactions with mergers and acquisitions that matter to you as a practice owner.

Learn more about Aesthetic Brokers

Follow Aesthetic Brokers on Instagram @aestheticbrokers

Theme music: Blinding, Cushy

For any practice owner eyeing a sale, or an investor sizing one up, the real risk in a med spa or surgery center rarely shows up on a P&L. It's in what happens after the doors close: whether DVT protocols get followed, whether a medical director has ever set foot in the building, whether anyone can prove any of it.

Tom Terranova, CEO of QUAD A, walks through how the organization's new med spa accreditation program grades procedures by risk level, why documentation is the single most common gap facilities uncover, and the research tying accreditation compliance directly to drops in mortality from blood clots.

He also makes the case for why variability, not incompetence, is the real threat to a practice's value. An unaccredited multi-location group can multiply an investor's risk far beyond what the math suggests, while standardized, predictable operations are exactly what private equity is looking to buy.

Listen for the story of the clinic that scored a perfect survey in 90 minutes, and why "radical accountability" changes how a team handles mistakes.

Questions answered by this episode:

1. What is medical spa accreditation?
2. How does risk affect a medical practice's valuation?
3. Does accreditation help when selling a medical practice?
4. What is QUAD A accreditation?
5. How long does it take to get accredited?
6. What is the leading cause of death after cosmetic surgery?
7. Why do private equity firms prefer standardized practices?
8. What is the most common accreditation deficiency?
9. Is medical spa accreditation required by law?
10. What is risk stratification in medical spas?

Learn more about QUAD A

GUEST

Tom Terranova
CEO, QUAD A

Tom Terranova is CEO of QUAD A, a nonprofit accreditation organization founded in 1980 that reviews ambulatory surgery centers, med spas, and other outpatient facilities for quality and safety. He joined QUAD A in 2009 and has led the organization since 2019, after practicing M&A law at Greenberg Traurig and building predictive-analytics models for corporate risk earlier in his career. Terranova holds a JD, MBA, and MA, and has spent his career translating patient-safety data into standards that regulators, investors, and practitioners can act on. He is a frequent speaker on accreditation, risk, and the business side of aesthetic medicine.

Connect with Tom on LinkedIn

Follow QUAD A on Instagram @quadanow

About Aesthetic Appeal

Aesthetic Appeal is where Aesthetic Brokers brings you the latest insights straight from Southern California. We break down what's happening in the medical aesthetics world—especially when it comes to private equity and transactions with mergers and acquisitions that matter to you as a practice owner.

Learn more about Aesthetic Brokers

Follow Aesthetic Brokers on Instagram @aestheticbrokers

Theme music: Blinding, Cushy

She started injecting Botox out of the front seat of her car, reclining patients onto her lap at gas stations between Encino and Laguna Beach, back when almost no one knew what Botox even was. 

Today that one-woman operation is a multi-location medical spa group across Orange County and Los Angeles. How does a burned-out nurse with $4,000 in her checking account turn pure instinct into a brand?

Erin Alonso, Founder & CEO of DermFx, takes Bill Walker through every location she has opened and the decision behind each one — from the upstairs four-room space a landlord didn’t want to rent her, to the first building she bought with an SBA loan she couldn’t believe got approved.

She is candid about having no business plan, no MBA, and no strategy beyond a gut that kept telling her which buildings were DermFx buildings.

The real throughline is not real estate — it is people. Alonso explains why she hires for one trait above all others, why she sends her strongest team into every new location instead of keeping them close, and how handwritten thank-you cards twice a year to more than 130 staff became a retention strategy she built without ever calling it one.

Her rule on integrity is just as blunt: she would rather earn millions less than put anything fake in a patient.

For any operator weighing a second, third, or fourth location, this is a field guide to growing without losing what made the first one work.

Questions answered by this episode:

1. How much does it cost to open a medspa?
2. How do you start a medical spa business?
3. Is owning a medspa profitable?
4. How do you grow a medspa to multiple locations?
5. How do you get an SBA loan to buy a building for an aesthetic practice?
6. How do you hire and keep good aesthetic nurses?
7. What makes a medspa successful?
8. How do you keep your brand and culture consistent across multiple locations?
9. What should you look for when hiring medspa staff?
10. What mistakes should you avoid when opening a new medspa location?

Learn more about DermFx

GUEST

Erin Alonso
Founder & CEO, DermFx

Erin Alonso is the Founder & CEO of DermFx, a Southern California medical spa group she built from a mobile Botox practice into multiple locations across Orange County and Los Angeles. A Family Nurse Practitioner with 25 years in aesthetic medicine, she was an early pioneer of non-surgical facial rejuvenation, injecting neurotoxin before most physicians had heard of it.

She now trains top providers for brands including Allergan, Galderma, Merz, and Revance, and is known across the industry for her energy, her hands-on work with her team, and her drive to make aesthetics affordable for everyone. She is also a dedicated philanthropist, funding an orphanage in Mexicali through The Forgotten Foundation, which she supports entirely through events and in-store sales at DermFx.

Connect with Erin Alonso on LinkedIn

Follow DermFx on Instagram @dermfx

About Aesthetic Appeal

Aesthetic Appeal is where Aesthetic Brokers brings you the latest insights straight from Southern California. We break down what’s happening in the medical aesthetics world—especially when it comes to private equity and transactions with mergers and acquisitions that matter to you as a practice owner.

Learn more about Aesthetic Brokers

Follow Aesthetic Brokers on Instagram @aestheticbrokers

Theme music: Blinding, Cushy

Most owners add a new service because they're personally excited about it. Jessica Hunter has a harder test: before you spend a dollar on a device or a drug, can you prove that 40% of your current patients would actually try it? That one number is the difference between a home run and an expensive mistake.

Jessica and Bill Walker get into how to add GLP-1s, hormone therapy, and peptides without blowing up your liability or your margins. They cover why every service needs its own consent, how often to revisit your intake forms, and why one client spent twelve months asking every patient the same question before buying a device that now averages $40,000 a month.

Bill explains why a practice with 80% of its revenue in GLP-1s is over-leveraged in a buyer's eyes, where the old guard and the newer wellness platforms draw the line on weight-loss revenue, and why doing a few complementary services well beats chasing seventeen. He also makes the case that a $5 million practice growing 30% a year is exactly the one you should be selling.

Listen for the 40% rule, the EMR feature most owners are already paying for and never use, and why a rural owner needs to start planning the exit two and a half years out.

Questions answered by this episode:

1. What is my medical spa worth?
2. When is the best time to sell a medical spa?
3. Should I offer GLP-1s in my med spa?
4. How do I add hormone replacement therapy to my practice?
5. What do private equity buyers look for in a med spa?
6. How do I decide which new services to add to my practice?
7. How much of my revenue should come from GLP-1s?
8. How do I market new services to my existing patients?
9. How often should I update patient intake and consent forms?
10. How far in advance should I plan my practice exit?

HOST

Bill Walker
Founder & CEO, Aesthetic Brokers

Bill Walker is the Founder & CEO of Aesthetic Brokers, where he leads transaction advisory for medical spas, cosmetic dermatology practices, and plastic surgery centers. Prior to founding Aesthetic Brokers, Bill led mergers & acquisitions for a large private equity-backed healthcare services organization, where he helped doctors unlock hundreds of millions of dollars in generational wealth. He is a nationally recognized speaker and thought leader in healthcare M&A.

Bill began his career as a Marine Corps pilot, ultimately serving under two administrations at the Presidential Helicopter Squadron and commanding a squadron in combat.

Follow Bill on Instagram @aestheticbrokers

Connect with Bill on LinkedIn

HOST

Jessica Hunter
Head of Aesthetic Consulting, Aesthetic Brokers

Jessica Hunter is the Founder & CEO of Hunter Consulting and Head of Consulting at Aesthetic Brokers, where she helps medical aesthetic clinics grow smarter and stronger. She's partnered with more than 75 clinics across Canada and the U.S., guiding them to boost profits, streamline operations, and build lasting success.

Known for her energy, straightforward approach, and genuine care, Jessica believes the best advice comes from truly understanding each business, especially its financial health and unique challenges.

Follow Jessica on Instagram @hunterconsulting_

Connect with Jessica on LinkedIn

About Aesthetic Appeal

Aesthetic Appeal is where Aesthetic Brokers brings you the latest insights straight from Southern California. We break down what's happening in the medical aesthetics world—especially when it comes to private equity and transactions with mergers and acquisitions that matter to you as a practice owner.

Learn more about Aesthetic Brokers

Follow Aesthetic Brokers on Instagram @aestheticbrokers

Theme music: Blinding, Cushy

The same tool that can save hours of admin work in an aesthetic practice can also quietly erode the thing patients are actually paying for. Jessica Hunter explains where to lean in hard, where to pull back, and how to tell the difference before a practice accidentally automates itself out of relevance.

Jessica walks through her own daily use as a consultant — sorting financials, templating protocols, summarizing emails — and lays out the specific tasks she would hand off to AI inside a practice: appointment confirmations, post-treatment check-ins, Botox rebook reminders, pre and post care content, and competitive research. She also shares a small branding trick: pasting a client's website into Claude so any new document inherits the tone and look of the brand.

The other side of the conversation is sharper. AI-written social posts read as phony from a mile away, and patients are not paying for a generic caption — they came for a face, an expertise, and a portfolio of before-and-afters. The same logic applies to consultations: the moment an AI tool starts telling a patient what their treatment plan should be, the provider has quietly handed over the one thing only they can do.

A practical breakdown of which AI tasks free up the day and which ones quietly cost a practice the patient relationship it has spent years building.

Questions answered by this episode:
1. How can med spas use AI?
2. What's the best AI tool for small business operations?
3. Should aesthetic practices use AI on social media?
4. How fast should a med spa respond to a new lead?
5. Can AI do a med spa consultation?
6. How do you automate appointment reminders for Botox patients?
7. Why does AI-generated social media content look fake?
8. How do you use AI to write pre and post care instructions?
9. How do you do competitive research with AI?
10. What tasks should practice owners never hand off to AI?

HOST

Jessica Hunter
Head of Aesthetic Consulting, Aesthetic Brokers

Jessica Hunter is the Founder & CEO of Hunter Consulting and Head of Consulting at Aesthetic Brokers, where she helps medical aesthetic clinics grow smarter and stronger. She's partnered with more than 75 clinics across Canada and the U.S., guiding them to boost profits, streamline operations, and build lasting success.

Known for her energy, straightforward approach, and genuine care, Jessica believes the best advice comes from truly understanding each business, especially its financial health and unique challenges.

Follow Jessica on Instagram @hunterconsulting_

Connect with Jessica on LinkedIn

About Aesthetic Appeal

Aesthetic Appeal is where Aesthetic Brokers brings you the latest insights straight from Southern California. We break down what's happening in the medical aesthetics world—especially when it comes to private equity and transactions with mergers and acquisitions that matter to you as a practice owner.

Learn more about Aesthetic Brokers

Follow Aesthetic Brokers on Instagram @aestheticbrokers

Theme music: Blinding, Cushy