Disrupting The Industry: The Rise of the Membership-Based Med Spa
Hi everyone! Here I am putting myself out here, Brett Barker – the Owner of Cosmetic Culture Sport and Spa; and I’m not necessarily talking disruption like Netflix to Blockbuster, but I am referencing that we are and will continue to disrupt the traditional Medical Doctor run Med Spa.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Doctors and we have them in-house, for injections – but Cosmetic Culture Sport and Spa is not run by a doctor. To paraphrase Dr McCoy -yes I’m a huge Star Trek fan - “I’m a Businessman, not a Doctor”. When I set out on this new endeavour, I was the President and CEO of my now ex-wife and I’s Anytime Fitness gym portfolio. We operated as franchisees with stores across western Canada, which originated in Regina SK. Her sister was a RN with Medical Spa experience and was going to run the space together – what could go wrong? To sum it up – A LOT can, but most of that is a story for another day!
We opened with a fairly traditional model, albeit a unique one with a set of services under one roof. My initial findings were similar to what I had experienced in the Personal Training side of the gym business, it was transactional and a constant effort to keep a full schedule. It did NOT make sense to me to run a transactional business where each and every day we had to fill the schedule! At times we would have two providers just sitting around, with a third front culture team member who was without guests to serve. Revenues and Guests Results were suffering due to the schedule fluctuations.
To add onto this, the Covid Pandemic and our continuous failing “forward” ways lead to a big increase in staff turnover. The biggest mistake we made during the pandemic was I/We quit failing forward and to be very honest…..we failed backwards! The business wasn’t as fun anymore and during this time I lost sight of my most important goals - for this business and myself!
In times like this I’ve learnt through the years to isolate your problem(s) and start asking yourself and your trusted network/staff tougher and better questions.
I examined things like:
Is it possible to create a business where the schedule, guest results, and maybe even the revenue happens like in the gyms?
How can we build a system where the schedule fills itself?
How do our guests obtain great results?
How can we be profitable while doing these things? Predictable?
What are other industries doing to counteract these same problems?
Truth be told – it took me WAY too long to see what was right in front on me all along! Memberships, Memberships, Memberships! You’ve run gyms and sold memberships for 15 years successfully! Do that! Once you have a “Do That” as an entrepreneur, things in general get easier! Fast forward roughly 5 years from inception, by failing forward daily while constantly reminding ourselves to stay true to our core values and mission we are finally ready to be the disruption I’ve always dreamed of. We have newly curated Member Packages and an untouchable value based intro offer for new guests to try us out and see if our Value Based Memberships are for them!
I’m excited to say that our membership base and community is growing! It grew through the summer months which was by far our lowest schedule bookings and revenue over the previous 5 years.
Our Member Commitment is:
Cosmetic Culture Members will look younger, have flawless skin and optimize their health from the
inside out – for one unbeatable price.
Our flagship Membership is our COMPLETE CULTURE. ThisAll-Inclusive Membership (yes, think about an all-inclusive resort) where our members have access to all our services for one unbeatable price each month! We also 100% Fully Guarantee our Memberships because we CARE and want what’s best for our community! We strive to be a partner of choice by living up to our Member Commitment each day. From Infrared Saunas, Red Light Therapy, and Vitamin Infusions, to Medical Facials, Laser Services, Peels - and so much more.
Our schedule is full and we are now building our staff base to ensure we can continually accommodate our current and future members; each member is on a treatment plan to ensure that we are working on the most important wishes of each of our members!
We are no longer trying to be something we aren’t and don’t want to be - a traditional Med Spa. Rather, we know exactly who we are – a result focused, value based Membership Community. But we didn’t come this far to come this far! Our journey of 1000 miles is well underway, but far from over.
I mentioned my goals above, and to conclude - my number one goal is to Franchise Cosmetic Culture and allow other great operators (such as Nurses and Aestheticians) the opportunity to be entrepreneurs in their specialized craft.
As our community grows now and into the future, I take great pride in knowing that we are improving the self-esteem of our community by serving our Members profoundly so they look younger, have flawless skin and optimize their health from the inside out – for one unbeatable price.