Laser Clinic, Med Spa, Skin Clinic.... Got Strategy?

Does your laser clinc, skin clinic or medical spa have a strategy?

Strategy is the great leveller that allows small early stage companies to become crushing guerillas over established incumbents in a relatively short period of time.  It's almost the only advantage that a startup has: the road map to the future of the businesses development. 

While often physicians starting medical spas think that they have a secure patient base that they can target,  this often doesn't amount to mush and bigger competitor that has a longer history will continually be stealing their patients.  So the only thing left is a keener savvyness on how the game is played, and getting to where you need to be before the guy down the street does.

Strategy allows the quick-witted to outperform the established competition. Businesses tend to get complacent over time. They start winning a little and a mind shift takes place that gives way to a feeling of entitlement.  Physicians often feel that their patient base is secure and inviolate. Nope.

It happens in every business, in every market, in every time.

Microsoft and Apple did it to IBM, Mc Donald's did it to the corner diner, and non-surgical medicine is doing it to surgery. Some medical spas draw as many as 70% of their clients away from existing plastic surgeons.

The other thing is that strategy is often counterintuitive, and few entrepreneurs can intuitively grasp and then communicate a counterintuitive strategy, especially if the strategy is based on rapidly flipping back and forth between different directions, depending on what stage of development your company and industry is.  Try and explain that to a group of radiologists trying to learn how to perform microdermabrasion.

So you want get Strategy?  Start reading. It's surprises me almost everyday how many laser clincs, med spas, and skin clinics still go without.

Comments

[Medical Spa MD]

“We are going to disrupt these people through preemptive attack… we will deceive them, we will run psyops on them, at selected points and times they will be killed suddenly, in significant numbers, and without warning.

Tomahawk missiles, 2000 pound laser guided weapons dropped from B2’s or F22’s at very high altitude, remote control, booby traps, blackmail and at places, small groups of soldiers or SEALs will appear in total darkness, blow down the doors and kill them at close range with automatic weapons and hand grenades…

We will find their money and freeze it. We will arrest their front agents. We will operate against their recruiting and transportation functions. We will locate their training areas and surveil or mine them. We will isolate them from their families.

We will try to dominate their communication function and alternately listen, jam or spoof it. We will make their couriers disappear. If we can find out how they eat, or play or receive rewards, or where they sleep — we will go there and kill them by surprise.”

– Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey, September 19 2001