Dr. Rick Balharry - Canmore MediSpa & Laser Centre in Alberta, Canada

Technology has allowed this Canadian MD form Alberta to leave Obstetrics and the ER to focus on cosmetic medicine.Dr. Rick Balharry - Canmore MediSpa & Laser Centre in Alberta, Canada

Name: Dr. Rick Balharry=
Clinic: Canmore MediSpa & Laser Centre
Location: Canmore, Alberta, Canada
Website: canmoremedispa.com

Can you give us a picture on how you manage your medispa and laser center?

I have now backed out of Emergency Medicine and Obstetrics and focused on my office apart from my surgical days. This has allowed me to structure visits accurately so there is rarely anyone waiting. I do the invasive procedures and the injections and my technician does IPL, laser hair removal, dermal infusion, peels and skin care advice.

I also have a large vein practice and perform ultrasound examinations, US guided injections and regular sclerotherapy in the office and the surgery if needed at the Hospital. To add to this I have a large rehab practice as I do prolotherapy injections and PRP injections for the treatment of soft tissue injuries. These also are often ultrasound guided procedures. So, my days are...

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Dr. Donald Rainone At Smoothskin In Londonderry, NH

Londonderry, NH Cosmetic Physician Dr. Donald Rainone

The business of cosmetic medicine has its ups and downs according to Dr Rainone.

Name: Donald P. Rainone, M.D.
Clinic: Smoothskin Cosmetic Laser Center
Location: Londonderry, NH
Website: smoothskinnh.com

Tell us a little bit about your clinic.

The clinic is co-owned by me and an RN. I provide leadership and direction, and perform all laser and injection procedures. The RN oversees HR, risk management, and customer service issues, and maintains vendor relations. The esthetics manager directs the esthetician team, and performs quality control over esthetics procedures and equipment. 

I offer medical injectables, laser tattoo removal, laser rejuvenation, microdermabrasion, chemical peels, IPL hair removal, and IPL brown spots and facial vessels. I pared down my services, especially when the recession hit from 2008 – 2011, omitting massage, laser leg veins, lipodissolve, and liposuction. Focusing on fewer services has heightened my expertise level and made me busier.

My patient population covers all ages, both sexes, and a broad socioeconomic distribution. Tattoo removal brings in more lower income, young males, while medical injectables bring in higher income, older females.

I am located about 50 minutes north of Boston, MA, 15 minutes over the New Hampshire border.

I have only about 1,000 SF and every inch gets used to the max: 4 treatment rooms total. One thing I stay on top of is how much revenue per square foot, per hour, is generated by the rooms. This helps me when deciding what to expand or cut.

Can you give us some insight into how you hire, manage, and motivate your staff? 

Hiring is a challenging event and we apply some rigor to avoid getting the wrong person. We usually post on Craig’s List and weed out the obvious poor fits prior to an interview. We then do several return interviews with the RN and Esthetics Manager. We have esthetician candidates do a sample facial on the esthetics manager to test how caring they are in the touch/handling aspect of a client. I have found that anyone can be trained, but you cannot teach “nice.” Kindness goes a long way in this field. 

Yes, I have lots of horror stories. We address problems in real-time, document the discussion in the employee’s record, and promptly terminate any gross violations. One employee was not completing her tasks because she was spending the day logged onto dating sites. She did not even bother to erase the browser history.

Unfortunately, I suffered a great financial loss by an employee who turned out to be a professional white collar criminal, embezzling the total cash equivalent of one quarter’s gross revenues. I was able to recover 20% of that through legal action.

I now run a criminal background check on every potential new hire. I also tightened the password access to transactions in the point-of-sale software, hindering the ability for employees to hide evidence of cash skimming. As a final precaution, I now make all my own bank runs for cash deposits. 

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Jean M. Casello MD, Medical Director Of Renovo MD In Shrewsbury, MA

Dr. Jean M. Casello entered the world of the cosmetic industry with uncertainty, which paved the way for a flourishing practice.

Jean M. Cassello MD Shrewsbury, MA Renovo MD Medical Director

Massachusetts Medical Spa Physician Dr. Jean M. Cassello Name: Jean M. Casello,MD
Clinic: Renovo MD
Location: Shrewsbury, MA
Website: RenovoMD.com


Can you tell us more about the daily operations of your clinic?

Our clinic is composed of an office manager, receptionist and a part time in-house marketing director. The office manager takes care of the day to day running of the office. On the clinical side, I am on site full time and I have a full time esthetician. We are in the process of hiring another esthetician and a nurse to do the injectables.

We offer comprehensive services: fillers, Botox, IPL, LED treatments, fraxel resurfacing, electrology, skin tightening, sclerotherapy, permanent makeup, chemical peels and pharmaceutical grade products. We have recently added tattoo removal.

Our patient population is mostly women from 40-70 years old. We also have a fairly large population of teenagers with acne. About 20% of our patients are men.

We are located in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. We are in a small town about 40 miles outside of Boston. We see patients 4 days a week in this office and one day a week at our off site off

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Where Does Creating The WOW Factor Begin?

Have you ever been put in the bad situation of believing you need to fill an opening out of need? You post and ad and literally the first few people that respond and can walk and chew gum get the job.  How did that ever work out for you...

There is a real skill set to interviewing & selecting the "A" players that will create the WOW factor even without all the tech behind them. The question I'm most often asked is how to find them, interview them and hire them.  Here are a few tips to consider.

1.  Start with ad itself. Don't flour up the position or your establishment to make it seem like a dream job.  Instead, think of what you specifically need for the position you're trying to fill and use language that will weed out anything other than "A" players. In other words don’t talk about your wonderful environment. Talk about the demands of the position.

2.   Weed through the stacks of resumes and make piles of A & B applicants. All others can be put in a rainy day file for a possible another look. Now send an email to each of your A/B possibilities asking them to describe in specific terms what they can do for your organization. Then sit back and evaluate who you want to bring in for a face to face meeting. In order to hire a WOW employee they need to really impress you in this phase.

3.  At this point you're now meeting the applicants. Remember your job is to find the best "A" level player. Now you have to find out if they can think on their feet and react positively to pressure.  For myself I inform each applicant that regardless of what they are being hired for that every position also has three responsibilities.

   A.  Everyone is in Sales

   B.  Everyone is a Customer Advocate

   C.  Everyone is responsible for outside marketing activities and needs to bring in 5 new patient per month through those efforts.  In short they will need Evangelize how we are and what we do.

Now at this point you will begin to weed out the producers from the pretenders but for me, there is still one more test. I call it my pen test but feel free to create your own. I tell the applicant that I need them to role play for me. I tell them that I want you to sell me a pen and not just any pen. I want you to pretend that there are 3 other pen sales people in the waiting room all trying to sell me the exact same pen you're trying to sell me. I then count down from 5 and it's roll play time. 

What you're looking for is the applicant that can take the heat of the moment and find some way to shine. Funny thing is that I'd estimate that 75% of the over 1,000 people I've interviewed in my life fail this test. Some break down and cry, some stammer then shut down, some freeze and walk out and some hit it out of the park. I submit that if a candidate can't handle selling a pen how the hell are they going to sell aesthetic services?  If they can't handle the pressure of a simple role play how will they handle the irate patient we get from time to time. If that can’t sell you a pen that’s the same as 3 others how can they sell Botox & Laser treatments that are same at other practices in your area.   I’m constantly amazed at how few staff members at other organizations I meet can’t give a simple elevator pitch as to why I should buy from them vs. the competition.  If they lead or bring up price in the first sentence or two I can assure you the organization is floundering on failure.

So, seek out the "A" level players.  They exist but you need to attract them, hire them and retain them.  The last one might be another topic to discuss...