Transcript
Brianna Clark: Welcome to Face Value with Modern Aesthetics. I'm your host, Brianna Clark, and today I'm joined by Cameron Hemphill, founder and former CEO of Growth99, who built that marketing and patient acquisition system to more than 1,000 clinics across the US. He now hosts the Medical Millionaire Podcast, among other ventures.
How is AI changing patient acquisition?
Cameron Hemphill: Oh, man. Big, loaded question, really.
If you look at patient acquisition in the historical framework of medical aesthetics and elective wellness, you had traditional SEO, traditional websites, and traditional paid search, whether it's through social or Google.
Those channels would come through either landing pages or a website and a form fill.
From a legacy standpoint, a form fill could go to an email, and people would have to respond. If you fast-forward, it now goes into CRM systems, which then allow you to create automation and workflow.
That's actually one of the cool things that Growth99 brought to medical aesthetics.
In fact, I have a 22-year background in CRM and workflow automation prior to Growth99. We developed a CRM system where the leads would hit the forms, go into a centralized CRM system, and kick off automation.
It would kick off an automated text, an automated email, and then we rolled into two-way texting.
But if you look at what's taken place in the last, let's call it, 24 months to today, now you're having automated text responses that are not from a workflow or a template that you design, like, "Hey, the text should come in this way."
AI can actually take over and essentially carry out the entire communication.
Now, it depends on what tech stack you're with, and we're still in a pretty fragmented industry when it comes to tech, but there are connectivity points through APIs.
You can actually have the AI reach out automatically, carry out the conversation, and even throw up a booking link that could integrate the booking mechanism directly into the EMR.
Essentially, if built out correctly with the AI apps and the right platform, you can take an eyeball, or a view, to a click, to a landing page, to a form fill, to a centralized database, to automatic communication through a booking link, and actually have that individual show up for a treatment without having to talk to a human.
It's pretty common that people like to book through text messaging communication.
Now you're even seeing voice agents come to life, where you can have voice agents automatically answer incoming phone calls or actually reach out to people through outbound as well.
I've tested a few things over the past 12 months.
I think one interesting part is actually after-hours for practices, where you can flip your phone system over because leads come into the practice after hours and on weekends.
If you're running ads that don't shut off after hours, you will have leads come in, and speed to lead is important, right?
You can have those voice agents flip over and take inbound phone calls.
The experience is okay. I don't think it's all the way there yet. There's quite a bit you have to do on the learning aspect with AI.
But I do think, in the coming months, maybe as soon as 12 to 18 months, the end user—in this use case, the patient—will be quite comfortable talking with AI agents.
I think at some point in the next four to five years, there's going to be this complete flip where we're actually going to only want to talk with AI agents because it eliminates all noise and just focuses on signal.
What's the treatment? What's the price? What's the date? What's the time? Who am I seeing?
Versus a potential front desk person or an untrained front desk person.
So I think that was a long-winded answer, but from a systems and automation standpoint, AI is playing a pretty big role.
I think the communication, effectively today, is through SMS correspondence.
Brianna Clark: And what are some of the common growth mistakes practices make?
Cameron Hemphill: Well, it depends on what phase practices are in.
Just for the audience—your audience in particular—I have invested in practices, I own practices, and I have consulted practices.
In fact, I am the chief operating officer for Terry Ross Consulting.
I have worked with lots of practices and have helped practices exit.
Let's take one persona just for the sake of time.
If you're a practice that has been open for, let's call it, three years, and you're doing $2 million in top-line revenue, and you are the provider owner—meaning you're the provider owner who is also seeing patients, which is very, very common—most practices go from zero to a million and then kind of stop growth at right around $1.2 million to $1.6 million in top-line revenue.
If you get to $2 million, it's really because you've created a nice, compelling brand, your patients trust you, and you've figured out how to charge more in the community.
But if you get to $2 million, there's still a really hard gap there to break out to $3 million, $4 million, or $5 million because what happens is your patients start to take over all of your time.
It's great that you're making money, but you're also the key contribution effort of the revenue.
In one scenario, you could see a practice owner saying, "This is great because I get to keep all the commission, all the money."
But if you're a capital allocator and you understand time versus dollar, you quickly realize that you're at capacity, right?
You can't sell any more time.
I do see practices actually get stuck in this type of world, where they don't want to hire another provider, or they feel like they don't have time to hire a provider and train a provider, or they're very worried that if they get the wrong person, it doesn't work out, or it's not a good culture fit.
If I was a provider owner doing $2 million, typically they're running at around 80% utilization, in some cases higher.
I've seen over 100% utilization.
These providers are just working hard, and if they're not seeing patients, they don't have time to work on the business.
If I was a provider owner in this position, I would actually lower my EBITDA.
That means I would be willing to accept less of a paycheck for the next 12, 24, or 36 months, build out a roadmap, and bring in an operator.
I'd bring in an operator to the practice—not an office manager, but a true operator.
Somebody who has done it and can look at my numbers, look at my KPIs, look at what I should be benchmarking to, and then build out a plan and say, "Here's what you should do."
There are two different types of brains in this world, right?
You have the artist type of brain.
These practice owners who are working on the face and body are artists. They see beauty. They see confidence.
They love it, and they develop something spectacular.
What an amazing job.
But then there are brains like mine, where it's all mechanical. It's all process. It's all data-driven. It's all facts.
Kind of boring, actually. I wish I was a better artist.
But you have to have those two worlds collide because I can see things that you can't.
It's like, you don't want me injecting filler and Botox into your patients, and I don't want you implementing processes, KPIs, benchmarks, productivity, dashboards, command centers, EBITDA, and cost of goods into the environment.
That's where I see a lot of practice owners stall.
They don't want to actually invest in their practice, really, because they're scared or they don't know who to go to.
Brianna Clark: On the flip side, what are some things that you've seen practice owners do really well, whether it's involving technology integration or something else?
Cameron Hemphill: Yeah. Look, there are practice owners out there who aren't afraid of change.
When it comes to tech, they're not afraid of getting out of their own way.
They're okay with being early adopters in tech, trying things, testing things, and being okay with AI.
You have to be okay with change, and you have to be okay with saying, "You know what? I'm on an antiquated EMR system, and I have outgrown that system."
"I'm okay with going through a migration or hiring somebody to help me with a migration because at some point I'm going to have to do it, and maybe it makes more sense to do it now than later."
Every time you delay it, your patient base gets larger, your workflows get more complex, and you're just kind of kicking the can down the road, right?
I think the practice owners that I see do really well, and the ones that have a breakout, are willing to make those changes.
In fact, I'll give you a great story.
I had a practice recently that, when I started working with them, was doing roughly $2.5 million a year.
We'll close at $5 million this year.
That's 12 months with 100% growth at a $2.5 million business.
Operating at 20%, a business that was roughly making $500,000 12 months ago is now making $1 million.
It's a pretty amazing turnaround, right?
From a practice that's already doing well to a practice now that's doing extremely well, and there's still lift to go.
It's because they chose to bring in an operator who has the time to sit in front of the computer and analyze data, KPIs, systems, and processes, and actually look at this stuff for five to eight hours a day, and then implement change.
The practices that do that are the ones that are investing in the future, and all of a sudden, they leapfrog their competition.
It's pretty extraordinary.
