What determines the success of an aesthetic practice? Is it the technology and equipment, the location, the people who work there, or some magic formula that a business owner conjures up?
To some degree, equipment and location are essential, but most successful practices have a magic formula that makes them successful. This magic formula includes passion, culture, and people. And without each of these things, your practice can’t reach its full potential for success. Let’s see why these three elements are crucial to an aesthetic practice’s success.
Passion
Why did you get into the business or profession you are in? Was it your desire to help others improve their aesthetic appearance or feel better in their skin? Was it to help a specific demographic or cause? Most successful businesses and practices have a reason for choosing what they do. Or as Simon Sinek talks about in his book, Start with Why?, a business needs a reason beyond just making profits in order to exist. It doesn’t have to be altruistic or a non-profit, but you need to have something that differentiates you from your competition and makes you want to work every day.
Culture
When a new employee joins your team, what type of culture are they entering? Are they coming into a toxic culture where everyone works for themselves, gossips, and only looks out for themselves? Or is your practice the type of environment where team members feel a sense of belonging and care for one another? The kind of company where you celebrate everyone’s birthdays, take care of others when something bad happens, and where honesty and transparency are valued.
Culture doesn’t just happen automatically overnight, and it certainly doesn’t live on by itself—quite the contrary. Culture needs to be cultivated and cared for just as much as any living organism does. Without the proper nutrients, oxygen, and tending, company culture can quickly wither and die overnight. Having a solid culture isn’t something you can buy or achieve simply by slapping a slogan on the wall. Culture involves real activities and actions that are carried out over time by team members and grown into something that can’t be easily replicated or quantified. Culture is an intangible thing that is hard to touch or feel, but clients and new employees can sense when it’s there and when it’s not.
People
Now that your passion has crafted a magical culture around your practice, the last step in developing a successful foundation is to make sure you have the right people in the right seats. A frequently used example to describe the perfect team is a bus. For a bus to move in the right direction, you need to have a strong leadership team driving the bus and correctly filling the seats. Each seat represents a job function. Are there critical seats that are unfilled that require someone to be successful? Do you need to move someone to a different seat to ensure balance? Do you need to kick a few people off the bus who aren’t doing their job correctly?
One of the hardest things that leaders need to do is make sure all of your seats are filled by the best people. After all, you are only as strong as the people on your team. These are essential questions to consider, and by using the bus analogy, you can make sure you not only have all of the critical seats filled but are heading in the right direction.
In 2021, having a burning passion for your business, a strong company culture, and the right people in the right seats can help you thrive during difficult days, weeks, and months ahead as we come out of the COVID-19 global pandemic and get back to the new normal.
If your practice or company is struggling with some of the issues mentioned above and lacks direction, take a few minutes to watch this pre-recorded webinar with Scaling Up Coach, Mark Fenner, and Astanza Vice President of Marketing, Brian Hasenbauer. In this webinar, 5 Keys to Success for Your Aesthetic Practice in 2021, you will learn about the secret to finding your passion, how to keep your team engaged, and how to hire the right people.
