For 6 years, Dr Sofia Din served as medical director of a large nursing home in New York. She came to believe that America had a problem aging well. Too many elderly people were battling age-related diseases with poor nutritional support, dwindling energy and lots of medication. And she became determined to do something about it.

How do you rebuild your practice, after a significant setback? Dr Patrick Treacy is an unlikely person to answer that question. He is one of the best-known aesthetic doctors in the world.

Dr Jonathan Kaplan is owner of Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery in San Francisco. After completing his plastic surgery fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic - where he was trained by the team that performed the first face transplant in the US - he practiced in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for six years.

Every clinic owner wants to build the best possible team around them. Often this means recruiting great aestheticians and reliable doctors, while the clinic owner remains the star of the show. Oculofacial plastic surgeon Dr Sean Paul went one step further, joining with other top surgeons to build what he calls a boutique, “super-specialist” practice in Austin, Texas.

The largest clinic groups in the world all manage their data in a way that gives them an advantage in the market. So how can smaller aesthetic clinics keep up - and even use their own technology to compete?

Dr Manjula Jegasothy is founder and CEO of the Miami Skin Institute. In addition to being known for its natural-results approach, her practice is also known for its extraordinarily loyal staff. The key members of her team have all been with her for 7 years - or more. Attracting and keeping top talent is critical for the success of your aesthetic clinic or medspa. Yet many clinics struggle with high turnover of staff.

In her 50s, Michele Garber decided to get a neck- and facelift - and bitterly regretted her decision. She wasn’t satisfied with her result, her recovery was difficult and she had questions about the integrity of her surgeon. She realized that she could have used a guide to help her pick a more appropriate surgeon, manage her expectations and help her recovery.

Brandon Robinson is an unusual aesthetic clinic owner. He isn’t, nor has he ever been, an injector, surgeon or medical practitioner of any kind. Instead, he’s an entrepreneur, who also owns a real-estate investment & holding company and most recently founded Tipsy Putt, an indoor mini-putt gold Pub chain.

Less than 5 years after founding Esthetic Solutions MedSpa, Emily Tryon’s clinic in Arizona was already generating $1 million a year. She was also in the top 1% of cosmetic injectors in America, according to Allergan Benchmarking.

Dr Brad Calobrace is one of America’s best-respected cosmetic and breast surgeons. He travels the world speaking on aesthetic surgery, has participated in multiple FDA clinical breast studies and has been a consultant and speaker for Allergan, Mentor, Galatea and Sientra.

Dr Erum Ilyas built a thriving chain of three clinics in Pennsylvania. So why did she decide to sell them to a much larger group, Schweiger Dermatology, at the peak of her career? While staying on as an employee in her own practice?

Hair loss is a fast-growing market. So how can aesthetic clinics and medspas make the most of this opportunity? Misti Barnes shows one way. She’s carefully niched her California clinic, providing non-invasive skin treatments and hair loss treatments. And she’s gone one step further, as founder of Cellustrious Hair Follicle Rejuvenation, a patent-pending, non-surgical treatment for hair loss, which uses plant-derived peptides and growth factors to target hair follicles.

Many aesthetic clinic owners have different arms to their business… You might typically combine a medspa with a laser center, a plastic surgery center or dermatology practice. Dr Jonathan Johnson’s combination is unique. He runs both an aesthetics practice and a wounds care business in the same building in Washington DC.

Nearly all aesthetic clinics say they offer “excellent customer service” or a “personalized experience”. So how can you turn customer service into a true differentiator? Dr Gregory Buford shares some unusual tips, which he uses to build extraordinary patient loyalty in his Denver practice, Beauty by Buford.

What up-and-coming aesthetic treatments should you be most excited about? And what are the most under-exploited opportunities in the aesthetics market? Today’s podcast guest, Dr David Goldberg, has a unique perspective…

When it comes to promoting your practice, it’s a given that you have a web presence, that you’re active on social media and that you’re advertising online. But Carrie Brinton also hosts a podcast.

Since the COVID crisis started, every major aesthetic conference or seminar has had to be cancelled, postponed or moved online. It sounds like a catastrophe for the industry. Not so, says Dr Michael Gold, who is president or founder of three major conferences, including the 5 Continent Congress (5CC) in Europe and Asia, and the Dermatologic & Aesthetic Medicine International League World Congress (DASIL).

Recently, there has been a surge of practices offering both medical aesthetics and cosmetic dentistry. Often, this involves dentists choosing to add facial aesthetics to their offering. But what happens when an aesthetic doctor and cosmetic dentist combine forces - and build a joint practice, in which both sides of the business are exactly equal?

“It’s never been easier to find an aesthetic patient,” says Dr Stephen Mulholland, owner of the SpaMedica Surgery Center in Toronto. “There’s more than enough business out there for a savvy practice that has the right technology and skill sets…”

A few years ago, Kerry Hanaphy returned to her native Dublin, freshly divorced and without a penny to her name. When I spoke to her a few weeks ago, she had just opened her second aesthetic practice in the city center, and had built a reputation as Ireland’s “Lip Queen”.

Here at Brainstorm Digital, our philosophy is that you should always make the most of the leads you already have on your patient database, before chasing new leads for your aesthetic clinic or med spa, at great expense. We use email to nurture and convert those low-hanging fruit… …Graydon Ursel has found another, complementary technology – SMS messages!

Smart Lipo, Sculpsure, EmSculpt, the Madonna lift, Cellulaze. These are some of the top treatments of the last 20 years and one man has played a crucial role in, developing them all.

How can you avoid being sucked into a “race to the bottom”? The market is flooded with competitors, everyone is discounting, and the margins are tight. As we slowly emerge from Coronavirus, it’s only going to get tougher, with social distancing restricting the number of patients clinics can see. There will be a temptation to cut prices even further to woo back nervous patients. Many will close down for good. Deb Farnworth-Wood, founder of the Australian Skin Clinics has shown one way...