Essential Legal Strategies for Med Spa Owners with Expert Attorney, Danielle Stead Blanton - Ep 6

Episode 6: Legal Must-Knows for MedSpas with Expert Attorney Danielle Stead Blanton | The Aesthetic AF Podcast

In this episode of the Aesthetic AF Podcast, hosts Sam Varner and Tara Dotson Riley welcome Danielle Stead Blanton, founder and owner of DSB Legal and Strategic Advisors, to discuss the crucial legal and strategic elements of running a successful med spa. Danielle shares her expertise on various touch points, including the formation, operation, and scaling of med spas, and highlights the importance of legal protection and strategic planning. The conversation covers critical topics such as forming business entities, creating custom consent forms, compliance with employment laws, and the pitfalls of personal financing and trademarking. Danielle emphasizes the need for med spa owners to seek expert advice and ensure their business practices are legally sound to avoid costly mistakes and ensure sustainable growth.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Introduction
01:07 The Importance of Legal Protection for Businesses
02:00 Working with Med Spa Business Owners
03:07 Key Legal Touchpoints for Med Spas
05:11 The Critical Role of Industry-Specific Knowledge
05:53 The Cost of Ignoring Legal Advice
07:09 Starting a Med Spa: Essential Considerations
10:42 The Pitfalls of DIY Legal Work
16:32 Manufacturer Waivers and Legal Liability
18:15 Understanding Liability in Med Spas
19:31 Financing and Legal Repercussions
23:53 Scaling Your Med Spa Business
25:02 Legal Considerations for Hiring and Employment
31:22 Trademarking and Branding in the Med Spa Industry
33:28 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

🔗 Connect with Danielle Stead Blanton
Website: https://daniellesteadblanton.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielle.stead
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-blanton-79109a47
Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/1IvcNlAEVZfprY7PhdHrIM
Blog: https://daniellesteadblanton.com/blog

Join Our Community of MedSpa Owners: https://www.facebook.com/groups/salesandmarketingformedspas

Learn More About The Podcast or Apply to be a Guest: https://aestheticafpodcast.com/

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About The Hosts 🎙

Sam Varner –
A profit strategist with over 16 years of experience in financial services, public relations, and business coaching. She helps service-based business owners create sustainable, scalable, and highly profitable companies.

Tara Dotson Riley –
CEO of Tara Lynn Media (TLM), specializing in digital marketing, social media management, content creation, premium brand growth, and client acquisition strategies for medspa owners looking to establish authority and dominate their local market.

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Looking to attract high-value clients, increase revenue, and scale your medspa? The Aesthetic AF Podcast is your go-to resource for marketing, sales, and business growth strategies tailored for medspa owners and aesthetic professionals.

🎙 Hosted by Sam Varner (Profit Strategist) and Tara Dotson Riley (Marketing Expert), each episode delivers real-world insights and actionable strategies to help you build a thriving, profitable aesthetic business.

✔️ Stay ahead with the latest medspa...

Transcript

riverside_copy_of samantha, samantha, da... _ apr 14, 2025 _danielle_stead blan

[00:00:00] So we're gonna start out by welcoming you to the podcast and we'd love to have you introduce yourself a little bit and tell us who you are. Hi everyone. My name is Danielle Stead Blanton. I am the founder and owner of DSB Legal and Strategic Advisors. We are a full service, legal, and strategy firm for female founded businesses.

And we particularly love working with those founders in the health and wellness space, the aesthetics, medical, aesthetics, creative and service providers. So if that's you, we absolutely wanna be your best friend because we wanna make sure you are legally protected. The strategy of your business is supporting you and your growth, your operations are flowing, and you are able to truly have the business you want to then also be able to step out and live the life you want.

Because we here are moms. We are former collegiate athletes. We are bakers. We want to live our lives and we want our businesses to [00:01:00] help support that. So I'm so grateful to be here and thank you both for having me. Yeah. I was so excited for this conversation. Mm-hmm. Because the legal side of running a business is so important, but I often think we get so busy that it gets overlooked sometimes.

Um, so I was really excited to have this conversation with you today. Yeah. Yeah, this is good. I'm so excited. And I, I loved that it was like moms and bakers. I'm like, yes, yes. We're both, we're both moms. I don't bake, but I am a mom. Yeah. No, my husband baked sourdough occasionally. I'm, I'm not a big baker.

I'll, I'll do birthday cakes in a, in a pinch, but that's kind of it. We're, I'm an aspiring sourdough, but, um, I've, at this point just been like, you don't have time to wash your hair every week. So I think the, the sourdough is like, not for you right now, so. The good thing about sourdough is you can leave it in the fridge and kind of ignore it for some time, and it, it's still robust enough to manage to do something with when you get time.

It's my kind of girl. Okay. Okay. Yeah. [00:02:00] Perfect. Okay, so let's start out kind of by talking about how do you work with med spa business owners specifically? So what, what do you know they need to do? What do you help them do? Give us the rundown. Yeah, so I am fortunate enough to get to work with Meds spa business owners at a couple different touch points.

And I'd say the most common are there's usually three. The first is that you wanna start a med spa, or you are maybe a doctor who is really interested because you've read the Wall Street Journal article, how lucrative it is to start a med spa and you wanna learn about it. Every state has different requirements.

Um, we are licensed in so many various states here, and we're also certified to do HR employment work in every state in the country in my firm. And so usually people are approaching us about licensure requirements, understanding how to open it. Do I open an LLC? Do I open an S corp? What about equity? What about fund funding?

What about loans? And so we walk with 'em through the formation process to ensure that they're legally. Compliant because [00:03:00] it really isn't just enough. That's like, you're not Al Woods, you're not just gonna go to law school one day and open a med spa. Like there's so much that goes into it. So that's really touchpoint number one.

Touchpoint number two is when you realize, oh. Heck, sorry. I use my full vocabulary. Oh heck um, I don't wanna get sued here and I don't have great consent forms, and I just downloaded this consent form of off of Etsy, and now this person's not happy because they had a reaction to appeal or an injection or a this or a that.

Right? We've all been there. We all know exactly where I'm talking about, and so we help. Them custom draft consent forms for every modality, every treatment. Maybe you're bringing in a bunch of new machines or treatments. Maybe you're bringing in a new practitioner who offers something that you never did before.

And so we're custom drafting both the consents. Maybe you have a membership or making sure you have a membership is rock solid and steady with FTC requirements. And it's all the business contracts that go to owning, um, a business in general, but particularly in meds spas. But there's a lot that goes into it that we wanna make sure you're covered.

Third touch point is you have people who work for you, whether [00:04:00] they're employees, whether they're contractors, whether it's a business to business service provider. We make sure that you're legally compliant on the employment front. We make sure that you have a compensation plan that is fair market, and also people wanna work for you.

And we help you really step into that CEO role of being a boss and having a team, and that's where you really see your business growth. As you two both would know and speak to. So, mm-hmm. Yeah. I. In, you know, this podcast, we're, we're kind of in the early stages of it and really in the early stages of diving is deeply into the med spa industry as we are.

Um, we've both kind of had touch points and experiences. I love the word touchpoint, but like before this, but now we're really diving into it and all of the things that you just said are things that keep cropping up in all of the research that we're doing, all of the investigation, um, either. Coming to us as, oh crap, like something terrible has happened to this med spa.

As a result of not having this stuff straight, or as a [00:05:00] result of conversations with some of these owners that are. Either new to the business or have been doing it for a little while and they're like, I don't really know about this, or I haven't really thought about this. And yeah, it is, it's so critical to have somebody specifically knowledgeable about the industry, I think, to help with these pieces because it is different than if you're running a donut shop or if you're running, you know, something else.

And I feel like a lot of people get so worried about. It's like finances, like we like to pretend it doesn't exist until we have to do our taxes once a year, and then we're really uncomfortable. Why don't you just look at it every week and feel like we're flexing that muscle of discomfort? So it becomes something that we are all like, this is just the price of doing business.

I need to understand my numbers. I need to understand my liability. I need to understand what it means to actually own a business. And I think there's a whole philosophy there. But the other part of it is it's really not that scary and it's really not that expensive unless you decide it is and you ignore it and you don't do anything [00:06:00] right.

And this is what I always tell people, it's gonna cost you five times more for me to clean up a mess than for you to come to me and do it right the first time. And I'm gonna remember the people who come and are just like, I don't wanna do this right now. It's too expensive, it's too this. It's to that.

When you come to me in a few years and we have to clean it up, I'm gonna be like, I'm not giving you a discount for this. We're not doing this, we're not gonna do shortcuts so that we can make this cheaper and faster. We're gonna do this correctly so that you can never do this again. You can never get sued again.

You can never have a problem again. Yeah, it's, yeah. We're, we're both like, oh yeah. Okay. Alright. It, it's so true. It's so true, and I think the avoidance is. Is no joke. Yeah. Just because you pretend it doesn't exist and it's not a problem, doesn't mean that it's not a problem and it might not be a problem.

Like you might not have somebody that has a problem with your consents for five years, 10 years, but when it comes up, it's gonna be very expensive and you don't want to ignore that. Um, yeah, [00:07:00] I can't sleep at night knowing I There might be something that would pop up, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So. What do you think specific to this industry?

If I am a brand new med spa, so I am just contemplating, maybe I'm not even, not even open. Don't even have a location like I am in the, this seems like a great idea stage. Mm-hmm. What do you, what do you think they need to know? What do you need to be like, okay, no matter what. These are, whether it's, these are the actions you take, or maybe more importantly, these are the questions you ask of whoever you're gonna deal with so that you know you're getting it done right to the best of your abilities.

Yeah, no, this is a really great question 'cause I think a lot of people, I. See like the shiny lights of some of this industry and they don't realize like it's like any other business, like how much hard work goes in go, goes into a successful business that you feel comfortable in, that you are not like Tara's like [00:08:00] staying up at night.

You know, like, oh my God. So I think what's really important is if you're gonna open a med spa. You need to understand either, do you get to legally own it? Do you need a business partner who needs to support you based on state requirements? Can you even actually open a med spa? Like I think that's the most important thing ever is that so many people are like, oh, I'm a nurse practitioner and I have this doctor that's my medical director, but he doesn't have an ownership in it.

And I'm like. You can't do it right state specifically, but a lot of them are like, you can't do that. And so it is also like, what are you defining as a med spa? What are you offering? I mean, it's the pretty typical like injectables, lasers, like where does your state allow you to do certain treatments? And then I think there's a huge crossover into what you do, Sam.

It's like. Is this a, can you actually make money off of this? Like what is your business model? And please don't tell me you're gonna be buying like fake counterfeit Botox. That's like such a scandal in Los Angeles right now, by the way. And like you're gonna do it like six, $6 a unit. Like [00:09:00] how much are you really able to profit?

What's your spend gonna be like? Are you gonna sell membership? What is your business model? How are you gonna pay people? And I think what, when you're just like, what's my one piece of advice? It's like be really freaking prepared. And you know, as entrepreneurs we're so used to like quick action, quick decisions.

I'm gonna go do great stuff tomorrow. And I love that. Like I'm a manifesting generator in human design. I'm all about that. But this is one of those industries where like you cannot like F around and find out, you have to like. Pause, take a beat, get your ducks in a row. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's such good advice, um, because I think specifically, especially where I, I think you, you end up having those conversations where somebody's like, oh yeah, my friend owns a med spa in California.

Okay, cool. And I'm in Texas and I wanna do it here. And I just assume that chit chat we've had. It's the same. And I think even just understanding how [00:10:00] different the legislation is state to state, to state, mm-hmm. Um, is really important. And I think there's probably people that aren't even checking that before they get going.

And arguably probably operating. In not the best way I would be willing to bet. Yeah. Or they're having that chit chat and looking so far ahead at, oh, my friend in California had this med spa and they make a million dollars a year. I can do that. I wanna do that. And not looking at, okay, well what did they do to get to that point?

And what were that, all of the steps that they took? Um, 'cause I think so often it's easy to just see that end goal and not really dive into the little things that go into building that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and it's like social media is the most amazing thing and it's also the worst thing as you're starting a business because you start one, the Facebook groups, like the Facebook groups are like, the chatter is just crazy.

If you're, if you're listening to this and you're one of those people that's like, well, I'm in a Facebook group, I'm gonna ask you like to just pause for a second and [00:11:00] just say like, you're gonna get a thousand different opinions and none of them may be actually fact or maybe actually apply to you. Yeah.

And so like take that energy and just take yourself out of it and just find one person and just have them really help guide you. And I'm not saying it be me, I'm saying find one person that you actually trust and know versus you're like, well Sam 360 on, you know, whatever. It's like, no, like guys, like in any other field.

What is the advice you would give if you're an injector, go to an expert, go to somebody that has experienced doing this, get testimonials, look at before and afters. Why would you preach that to your patients? And then go to a Facebook group or for that business advice. Like that's where the disconnect to me as I'm like, you, you hear what you're saying, right?

Like you see what you're doing here. We see it in business development all the time where people don't, don't. Project or plan for the investment cost. And I think when people think about that, immediately, they're thinking like the financial [00:12:00] investment. And yes, of course that's super valid. You can't start a business without a financial investment, but you also can't start a business without.

Time investment. And I think we're willing to kind of like, well, I paid for the space and I did the big build out and I got all that stuff done, and the decor looks amazing, all of which is great. But if you haven't figured out what the profit margins are on your offers or you don't have your contracts in place, it's kind of like, it's just a house of cards, right?

So we're not getting very far, probably. Oh my gosh. Like I was telling you this, Sam, when you and I first were chatting and I was at a conference and this woman was speaking about the membership she offers in her spa, and she was bragging how it's like a multi seven figure revenue stream for her, and someone was like, well, how do you put together your membership contracts?

She's like, I'm just very smart. So I just did it myself and chat. GPT helped me and I looked at other people's on the internet and I copy pasted theirs and rewrote it. I swear to you, this is not, this is not fabricated. This was like my [00:13:00] life. And I was at this conference to actually speak on like law and medical practices and all this.

And I'm sitting in the audience and I'm just like biting my tongue and, and people start chiming in about like, oh yeah, it's just like, it's such a waste to spend money and invest money in like your membership contracts. And the funny thing is, is the biggest thing happening right now in, in business is like the FTC is called a click to cancel rule.

But the FTC came out with a rule all about memberships entering into memberships, contracts, and cancellations. And if you violate it. It is a statutory $51,000 fine. Which means if you offer memberships in your med spa, and a lot of us do, and they're called banks, right? You all know what I'm talking about?

Like you guys have these money banks, you get free Botox once a month because you put in $150 every month. By the way, that's not free guys. It's just, it's just putting money to savings account. Sorry to burst that bubble, but. When you do that, whatever you wanna call it, a bank, a membership, a glam squad, like whatever it is, there's laws about how you have to do that.

There's laws about how you withdraw money. There's laws about all of what you have to disclose and what people have to sign, and if you don't have [00:14:00] it done, there is literally, this is like so sad. There's like literally just a tip line that people can call and be like, Danielle's Med Spa didn't do it right.

If they go look at your contracts and you're wrong, it is a statutory $51,000 fine. What a dumb way to lose 50 grand guys. What a dumb way. But, but it is that thing where it's just like, well, I don't wanna, why would I do this? It's the last thing I wanna think about. I know everything. And so I give these examples not as like a, we're better than you, or, we know all this or this.

It's literally like, let me save you $50,000. You can invest $1,000 with me to avoid a $51,000 penalty. Look, the scales to me are pretty obvious. Yeah. Well, I think it. Of course, like you do need to hire somebody smarter than you, right? I'm not gonna get you to do the injections. That feels like maybe not something you're super excellent at, but I will get you to do the contracts, right?

I will get you to help me on the legal side, but hire the experts and we talk about this constantly. [00:15:00] DIYing pieces of your business is a necessity at certain points. For some of it and some of it is DIY able and some of it is absolutely not. And you have to be really hyper aware of where you're choosing to decide you're excellent at things.

And if you're not good at, as a lawyer, you're not a great injector, cool. Maybe that's not what we do. If. You're not a lawyer. Maybe you're not writing the legal documents that are supposed to support you in court. If necessary, AI is not a replacement for your lawyer. Obviously, like in marketing, AI has come up a lot too about it, trying to replace what like a marketing agency does, what a lawyer does, what, trying to use it to replace all those things, but it's not there yet.

It's not there in the foreseeable future either, because you still have to know what is. Crap. Like you still have to weigh through that. Like you can use it as a tool, but you still have to know what is right and not right. And [00:16:00] also chat. GPT makes stuff up. I've heard of all sorts of things. Um, the other day I heard of a lawyer say that they knew someone that used AI to help write a brief for a case.

And the sources they cited, AI had just made them all up. Yeah, that's true. Whoopsies. Yeah. And so it's not your lawyer. Don't, don't do that. Don't AI your lawyer. That seems like good advice, just in whether you're a business or a person. Don't do that. That seems bad. Oh, okay. I feel like, um, I feel like there's another like point with contracts that people get really stressed out about that comes up that I wanna like chime in on is Yeah, I know.

And I'm not trying to throw any manufacturer under the bus. I'm not trying to, I'm not gonna name names about that. However, you are gonna get certain products. From your reps and from manufacturers, and they're gonna give you waivers. And if you actually read the waiver friends, what people are signing is they are disclaiming liability against the manufacturer, not you [00:17:00] as the provider.

And I see this a lot with, there's a very. Very, uh, popular brand right now of Peel, and they provide you a consent waiver as part of your packet. And it is, uh, one, it's a terrible waiver for them, and it's on like a really cute, stylized piece of paper. And they say, oh, have all your clients sign this or patients, excuse me, sign this.

And if you actually read it, you're, you, as the patient are saying, I agree not to sue. Peel company not, I agree Not to sue or hold responsible practitioner. And I think that's a really important thing to know is even if you get a form from a manufacturer, they are trying to cover their butts ly extra.

They don't care about you as a practitioner. You are a dollar sign to them that is like the, the source of, you know, their revenue. And so I, I share this because a lot of people are like, well, I got forms already from. Injectable. I got forms already from laser company and I'll be like, let's walk through this together.

I'm going to, I'm going to give you like a free education and I'm gonna explain to you what it says, and then I'm gonna ask you if in, in anything I shared with [00:18:00] you, do you feel protected? And they're like, no, there you go. And so I think that's a really important thing to know also is like, yes, these brands.

Quote unquote support us, but at the end of the day, they're out to make money too. And you are their medium for making money. Mm-hmm. So don't forget that. Yeah. And their, their bottom line interest in liability is getting it as far away from themselves. Right. And having it be spa specific, not product specific at any given time.

Yep. Yep. And so that's a good one. So for example, like if you were to do that peel and your patients had already signed that waiver and let's say their skin got burned, the manufacturer would be like, guys, we've, you know, we already have waivers. You signed a waiver with us when you signed up for a, a bulk account, your patient signed a waiver before they got it.

So like, really, like we're not responsible. It must be user error as you, the practitioner, and you're just like, uh, but wait, I, and you realize like you are kind of a sitting duck and. I, I don't say [00:19:00] that to scare you. I say that 'cause I want you to understand where you fit into this chain so that you are now protecting yourself.

You're making sure your liability insurance is strong. You're making sure your consents are there for you, but you're also then making sure you're giving people the right instructions. You're following the right protocols, your staff and your team, the communications you have with your patients before and after treatments.

Like all of that goes into legal consideration. It's not just the act of signing a contract. It's everything that you do in the entirety of a procedure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That just made me think of, let's talk about financing and the legal repercussions of personally financing everything and or putting all of our personal items up for collateral or other alternative pieces of financing from the legal perspective.

Because I think there's a lot of med spa owners that maybe start out small and then start to be. Feeling like they [00:20:00] have an obligation to have more equipment and more offers. Yeah. And there's a lot of very enticing financial programming around purchasing these pieces of equipment. So from the legal side, what, what are your thoughts?

'cause I am sure you have them. Oh my gosh. I always giggle when I think about how much some of these machines cost and you know, your reps will then tell you, you have to charge at least this much money per session, et cetera, et cetera. Right? So like they really do start putting so many. Guardrails on you.

And so you're effectively not buying a machine, you're just licensing it from my perspective, because they've already given you so many guardrails. And now the next thing is you're just like WTF, am I gonna afford this a hundred thousand dollars? Let's call it a laser, right? Yeah. And. What's gonna happen in traditional financing, because I'm sure you, you talked through with all of your clients, is that you're maybe gonna say like, oh, I have an LLC, so I'm gonna finance it through the LLC, and they're gonna be like, that's cute.

Your LLC was born three weeks ago. Your [00:21:00] LLC technically has no business credit. So fun fact little education here. The part of the reason you have what's called an EIN, you're. Employee identification number related to your LLC or S-Corp, et cetera, is it also helps you build business credit. And so it also, it helps you establish how long you've been in business.

And if credit cards that are tied to this EIN get paid off, you have better business credit. If loans that are tied to your EIN get paid off, you have better business credit. If you're a baby business and you open an LL C3 days, go on legal Zoom, you're like, I have an EIN, I'm not liable friend. I'm here to burst your bubble.

I'm so sorry. I love you all, but that's just not true. So now they're gonna ask you to personally guarantee it. So now, even though I have an LLC and an EIN, and I think all of my cares and worries are gone, they're still gonna make me, Danielle personally guarantee this a hundred thousand dollars laser.

And what's gonna happen from that is they're gonna say that you, Danielle, are now responsible, which means the roof over your head and your shoe collection in your closet and your kids. Preschool tuition are all now up for grabs if you are not able to pay off the monthly [00:22:00] loan amount on this laser. And so from a legal perspective, it's really hard to protect yourself.

Mm-hmm. Because even if you do have a corporate, excuse me, an entity an LLC or a corporation that is giving you that legal liability protection, it's not giving you the financial incentives that you think it is. And so you are taking on huge risk. By just accruing all of this and, and then you kind of think about your debt and you're like, well, I don't really mind if my business has debt.

It's still technically being run through your credit. And so if you are somebody who maybe is looking to buy a house and you're just like, my LLC has 17 different machines and all the loans are through that, again, it's still gonna impact your personal credit. And I don't think people. Recognize this. And so I see businesses go bankrupt, unfortunately regularly, and they're like, oh, well I'll just take the L on the LLC.

And it's like, that's just not what happens, friends. So. No, it's not a [00:23:00] clean break. It's much more complicated. Good cautionary tale to be like, Hey, again, something worth having this discussion with your whole advisory team, which you don't, you're not gonna have to have in-house counsel. You don't need to have a CPA on staff, but you do need to have a relationship with somebody that you can say, Hey, can you please review this and give me the rundown of what.

What am I getting into? What does this look like and what's your advice with the experience and knowledge that you have in the industry? That's the other piece, right? Is somebody who's been doing this for a long time with multiple clients that are in that similar boat gives you a much better, um, informative decision to be making those.

If you do choose to do it, you're doing it informed instead of without the knowledge that you need flying in the wind. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I'm trying to think of the other, I think the other main question I wanted to ask you [00:24:00] about was as med spas. So okay, we're past the point of a baby med spa.

We're not just at the the new stage anymore, but now we're scaling, things are going, we are generating revenue. And we did talk a little bit about the memberships, but at that point of scale, is there something that you see for those business owners that. You think we need to be careful as we're getting bigger, as we're, maybe it's from the staffing side of things.

What do you see on the legal front there? Yeah, so the word scale to me and med spas really implies people, it really implies growing your team. Um, and I think that we, the, the, actually, let me say there's two things. There's two things that I see happening a lot right now. One is mentorship and like. Um, advanced training, right?

And that's a really great revenue stream for your business, but that's not necessarily a way to scale your business. So I guess I'll make that distinction. The second thing is. Which segues into it is expanding through teams and people. And I think this is [00:25:00] where the industry is really having a reckoning right now.

I think the entirety of aesthetics and wellness and personal service providers are really having a reckoning. Um, here in Los Angeles or California, excuse me. We have what's called AB five. It was the big rule about what's an employee, what's a contractor. Mm-hmm. And making those huge distinctions. And I think what's really.

Curious and key here is, is how we are classifying our team members and how we're treating our team members and how we're paying our team members. And this goes back to what I said earlier is I think a lot of people hear the word med spa and you hear, oh, you can make a million dollars. Okay, great.

That's your top line. Gross receipts. What's your take home? What is your net? Right? Your net might be 5 cents. Friends, like, you know, and if you're a smart owner, you're doing write offs, you're paying people, you're taking advantage of tax breaks and incentives. Like maybe 5 cents is actually the win. Right?

But I think where we're kind of missing the mark is that. To truly scale a business, you need really good people. And I'm [00:26:00] experiencing this in my own business right now. I was sharing this with you guys off recording. It's like I've just grown my team with by four people, and in that I have to make sure that every person who is serving a client is doing it to the standard and the caliber and the efficiency.

I. That our clients come to expect. And so if you are looking to scale a med spa, a lot of people automatically assume location two. That's the first thing people say, I want location two. I say, great. Do you have the people to support it? Well, I'm just gonna hire okay, but you're just gonna like grab people off the street and give them a needle.

Like are you going to put them through advanced training? What is, this is a branding question. What does it mean to work for you? What do people know your business for? Are you natural results? Are you trendy? Are you timeless? Are you casual? Like you really have to identify that, and hiring is such a bigger discussion of that, but you have to hire the people who are gonna support your business.

You're not just gonna hire the people who have a big. TikTok following. You can't just hire people who are cheap. You can't just hire people who are [00:27:00] your friend's cousin. Right. So like to me, like the legalities of what's gonna go into this is also more the strategic side of the work we do with our clients.

Then it is also saying, and every state is different, how can we legally hire this person? Can they be a contractor? What does that look like? Are they commission only? Well, in this state, this is allowed in that state that's not allowed. Commission only might be allowed if they do sales, are they selling?

Like we have to really look at every detail of your state law. And also if you're gonna do something as simple as, I want everyone to wear branded scrubs. They're an employee. Yep. I want someone to be able to work at night. They're an employee. Stop screwing around with this. I don't want to classify people properly.

Don't open a business like I, I will just die on this hill. Like, you have to pay people. Well, you have to make sure they're trained in, they're educated. And you have to do it right because one, again, like one angry employee, that's a wage an hour claim. And that's again like a statutory $10,000 per occurrence.

If you [00:28:00] misclassify somebody, they can go, you know, telling you to any sort of state employment division. We work with a lot of women, we gotta be careful with FMLA, pregnancies, maternity, like, so there's so many little things to think about and it's not just, I'm gonna scale my business, I'm just gonna hire some like Joe Schmos off the street.

It's. It's strategic, it's legal, it's ethical. It's also like, do you, if you were treated this way as a practitioner, would you even wanna work in this business as well? Oh, I love that one. Yeah. I think if you can't afford to hire someone properly, you cannot afford to hire, and there's probably a bigger conversation of pricing and just.

All of that stuff with cash flow. Yeah. It, it is. Um, time and time again, we see the same things. Like I see the same things with business owners that are arguing about their 10 99, and I'm like, they are not a 10 99. When you dictate that, you control every aspect of their job, it [00:29:00] doesn't matter. You're dictating they're an employee, period.

I don't know. It's, uh, it's something that people try and get away with and it's like. You can't grow if you're, if you're constantly trying to do the cheapest, what feels like the cheapest option? Yes. That's not feasible. I'm like a pretty woo woo person, which is a funny, like contradiction to how like, you know, like legal I am, but I'm pretty woo woo.

And I always tell people energetically, if you are holding on to that money, if you are holding on to doing everything wrong. You're, you're, you don't even realize that you are subconsciously putting that out there into the world. People feel that people feel sketchy. People feel like that did not sit well or that person is not happy working there.

When you treat people well, when you do everything above board, even when you tell your patients, I'm gonna have you sign these three documents. I know we already did some online. I'd like you to sign these. These just cover all of our bases. They're clear communication for everyone. We want you to feel [00:30:00] comfortable.

I feel better. I feel better knowing I'm with a business owner that's taking all of this, the detail to do these things. And I would rather go to somebody like that. And I know I might not be in the majority, but I will tell you you don't want the reputation of, that's the sketchy med spa. Like you might make a lot of money, but you're sketchy med spa lady.

Like that sucks. No. Yeah, yeah. I would feel much safer signing 10 consents than going and signing a sticky note that says, okay, this is treatment. Go ahead and step my face. It's fine. Um, no, and I think on the consumer side, like they're happier too when you have all those things in place. Uh, yeah. Yeah. And I, I agree too.

What you put out will come back to you. So make sure it's good things. Yeah. Yeah, be nice. Just be nice to be, I think it's like be a good human being. Treat people as you want to be treated. Mm-hmm. I mean, that's a pretty basic one we've all heard since we were little. It holds in business just as well [00:31:00] as it does in your regular day-to-day operations.

Is there anything else that you think, no matter what, before you leave, you want to make sure our audience hears this? Is there any other piece right now that just is like. Grinding away that you're like, no, we need to talk about this too. The membership one was a huge thing for me. I think the other thing that I'm seeing a lot right now is people are trying to trademark.

I think that's a really interesting topic because there's only so many iterations of beauty. Med spa aesthetics and everyone is kind of like racing to trademark right now. And people are, and this is a general statement, so this might not be you, so don't take it personally, but like everyone is like so obsessed with being like, I need to own this name.

Instead of saying like, that's great. I want you to own that name. I want you to own that brand. I want you to have expansion. I want you to scale. I want you to also think about what that name means and what that brand means. And I also want you to think about how you want your [00:32:00] reputation to be in the community.

And I also want you to think about, it kind of goes back to what we just said. It's like I. There is so much opportunity in this industry and there's so, and and there's so many people who are doing it right, and I just wanna say that there's so many people who are doing it well. There's so many people who I look up to and I'm like, you go girl.

And then there's, there's other opportunities that we can grow. There's, there's glows and growths, right? And so really focus, like if you have, lemme just say this. If you're starting a business and you have a thousand dollars invested in financial, legal, and then start maybe looking at branding and then invested in employment and, but start always with the foundation and start with the things that you cannot do.

That AI cannot do and, and really just ask yourself every step of the way, how can I continue investing in making this business better? And that's the people who I see scaling to seven plus eight figures. It's the people that are constantly looking at this mentality of growth and improvement versus, or like even the clients that come to me every six months and are like, I just wanna go through what I'm doing with you and make sure everything still lines up legally.

Are my people still good [00:33:00] or my contract's still good? I wanna make this tweak. Like those are the people who are constantly looking to be just 1% better, whose businesses are then five to 10% better every year. Yeah. Yeah. You're only as strong as the building blocks of your business, and so make sure those are.

Uh, really strong. Make sure those are really strong. Yeah, I agree. Strong. Yeah, right. Like that foundation. I like it. I like it. I just wanna say thank you so much for this conversation today. This has been great. And I think, um, the value of this discussion for the audience that gets to listen to this and gets to get just that little bit, if nothing else, hopefully people are walking away going like either.

Okay, I'm on top of this. I feel really good. Like I'm doing, I'm doing these things. I feel good about it or honestly like the oh shit moment of I've completely kind of disregarded [00:34:00] this and now I see the reason there's enough of a poll here from this discussion today that they're like, okay, $51,000, that feels really uncomfortable for me.

I'm gonna go and make sure that I get this dealt with. Um. I'm really glad we had this conversation. 'cause I do think there's so many pieces of it that it's easy to ignore and foolish also. And I just wanna say like, you're never too far gone. Like you're never too far gone. Like, we can always fix things, we can always pull things back.

Like if you're just like, well I'm just screwed. Like that is not the case. And so please, like you're never too far gone to like, start working with a good accountant. Get your books in order. Yes. Get your legal in order, get your branding in order, like. Sounds. She's like, today's just day one. That's how you have to look at it.

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you so much, Danielle, for coming. Thank you. Thanks for having me, gal. So fun. Yeah, anytime. Anytime. We'll do this again. I'm sure we'll be able to circle back around and come up with even more questions that we're [00:35:00] like, okay, now we need to talk about this stuff.