advisory firm

Mergers and acquisitions exist in the healthcare industry too, and just like in any other industry, there are a LOT of concepts to consider, one of them is business valuation.

In selling a business we ask, what is the value of this business? In what position is this business in a wide scope of the business industry? What methods can we try to make this business more valuable than it has ever been?

In this episode, Mike White gives fresh insights about these questions we pondered and shed light on concepts that could help sellers appeal to their potential buyers while understanding these buyers’ perspectives.

In this Episode, You’ll Discover

• Mergers and acquisitions in the healthcare industry
• Effects of inflation, recession, and layoffs on mergers and acquisitions in healthcare
• How are businesses usually valued— and how to increase it
• The different components of a deal, such as cash at close, rollover equity, and earnouts
• Long and complicated process of selling a business
• Significance of having the right partner
• Importance of understanding the tax implications and legal considerations when selling a business

 Episode Insights

• That’s one of our big struggles— quality of data. Because if there's not good quality, it's very difficult to propose to a buyer that the seller has everything handled in their business and therefore makes it more valuable. - Mike White
• You're gonna take things personally. You have the emotional side and the reality, as we all know, we still have to run our business day to day. So having somebody run alongside you will help you through. - Benjamin Hernandez
• Always build your team internally and externally to your organization. Hold the team accountable but make sure you have the advisors that are helping you through those conversations. - Benjamin Hernandez
• Make sure we're not just spending everything because our CPA told us to do that. There are good ways to get the same tax impact with better-looking financial statements. Make sure you're looking for those opportunities to improve your cost structure, whether it be staffing, advertising, or supply and look for those opportunities to pick up your own multiple valuation. - Benjamin Hernandez
• I think, for me, it would be, if you're thinking of selling, do your homework early on. Really think about what it is that you need. Envision yourself in that position and go down the line of “what is my number?” “Am I willing and wanting to work at least four years or at least longer than that?” If not, make sure you reconcile that. - Mike White

About the Guests:

Mike White holds a BBA and MSA from Texas Tech University. He has spent the majority of his career in public accounting, helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals and vision. He has had the opportunity to work with many different industries, including lawyers, consultants, and marketing and media companies. 

Recently, they have spent most of their time working with DSOs and MSOs, along with individual dental and physician clients. His primary focus is on telling the right story within the financial statements and helping to set goals to drive performance within the business.

Connect with Skytale Group:

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• LinkedIn

Being an entrepreneur is an exciting venture, but it can also be daunting. They face numerous challenges that sometimes, it becomes too difficult to find the right way to move forward. They’re left with an impending question: Do my decisions make sense? 

But with the right guidance, entrepreneurs can turn their vision into a profitable and sustainable business.

In this episode, Neekan Rivera will be sharing her journey with us as she grows from being an aesthetic leader to a successful entrepreneur who has scaled her company from a single location to multi-location practices through Skytale.

In this Episode, You’ll Discover

• Neekan’s journey of how she became a leader in the aesthetic industry
• Motivation to keep going on your business
• Why transparency is important in business
• How do we remain profitable amidst dealing with the recession
• Knowing when to ask for help in making decisions 

 Episode Insights

• If I don't have someone guiding me, holding my hand along the way, and saying we can help you get there, this is what you need to do, I might have made a lot more smaller-scale decisions. – Neekan Rivera
• It's great to have someone that you can talk to, have honest conversations with, and then we'll take the information to heart and make the necessary changes. – Eric Pastan
• To stay in the realm of motivation, keep following your dreams. – Neekan Rivera
• An entrepreneurial life can be lonely at times. – Eric Pastan
• It's important that we never stop looking at new services and new companies that we could partner with. – Neekan Rivera

About the Guests:

Neekan Rivera is a Physician Assistant with advanced experience and knowledge in both clinical and cosmetic dermatology. She specializes in full-face rejuvenation and passionately provides a wide variety of aesthetic treatments for her clients. Neekan prides herself on her comprehensive knowledge of anatomy and safety, her honesty, her strong attention to detail, and her keen eye for recognizing each patient’s natural beauty. 

Neekan serves as a trainer for Allergan Medical Institute, Galderma, and PDO Mint Threads and spends much of her free time traveling around the country training other injectors. She uses a variety of techniques to help patients feel lifted, restored, and highlighted while reversing the signs of aging and maintaining natural-appearing results that are true to each individual’s unique beauty.

She is constantly advancing her own skills by seeking the best training programs in the world to ensure that she always delivers the highest quality and most effective treatments.

Connect with Neekan Rivera:

• Website
• Linkedin

Connect with Skytale Group:

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• LinkedIn

There are various reasons why we create businesses in the field of medical aesthetics. But at the end of the day, we could all agree to this—we want to give the best service to our customers.

But how can we do so? Of course, we need them to stay. We need them to keep wanting our services.

Setting up a membership program is a proven way to keep our clients loyal. But creating one could be tricky. There should be a delicate balance where both the clients’ and the business’s objectives are satisfied.

In this episode, we are visited by Judy Kozlicki and Ashley Carter once more, both proficient when it comes to medical aesthetics topics, to give us their tips about structuring the membership program that fits you and your clients.

In this Episode, You’ll Discover

• What a membership program is in the medical aesthetics space
• The reason to start a membership program from the perspective of a business owner
• Tips and advice to implement a membership program
• Pitfalls to avoid when setting up a membership program
• How to measure the success of a membership program

Episode Insights

• An aesthetic membership program is similar to any kind of subscription. It's where a patient has the option to break up payments across the period of time to receive specific services and treatments rather than paying all upfront at once. - Ashley Carter
• Providing these memberships really can help patients who want to obtain their skincare goals. - Ashley Carter
• One of the key benefits of a membership program is really building loyalty and then rewarding this loyalty in a way… It's also a great way to really promote a full comprehensive skincare regimen. - Judy Kozlicki
• Med spas should totally be results driven. - Ashley Carter

About the Guests:

Judy Kozlicki is a Strategic Advisor of Aesthetics for Skytale Group. Judy Kozlicki’s extensive experience gives her a deep understanding of the aesthetic space. She gets to know each client’s practice individually, identifies the opportunities for growth, adapts best practices, and works alongside owners to bring their vision to fruition.

A trailblazer in the business of aesthetics, Judy has held executive-level positions in solo practices, small group practices, and large-scale national med spa operations for over 16 years.

Ashley Carter is a consultant at Skytale Group. She has worked in the medical field for over 10 years and provides her clients with a wealth of knowledge and expertise in the aesthetic world. She has a deep understanding of both the clinical and financial sides of the med spa business. Her experience has taught her how to navigate the ever-changing landscape of the industry.

Previously, Ashley worked in plastic surgery and quickly became their Lead Nurse Practitioner and Cosmetic Injector. She has also had experience as a Lead Nurse Practitioner and Clinical Director overseeing nine Medspa locations, maintains her registered nursing license, and is a certified Family Nurse Practitioner in several states. She also holds one of the most challenging certifications in the aesthetic industry as a Certified Aesthetic Nurse Specialist (CANS), held by less than 1% of aesthetic nurses in the US.

Connect with Skytale Group:

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Recently, the medical aesthetics world was filled with buzz, excitement, and anticipation as the new neuromodulator that promises youthful-looking skin that lasts longer is now FDA approved—Daxxify!

Is Botox really out now that a new and better promising competition has arrived? How will Daxxify change the medical aesthetic market and how should we approach this lead?

In this episode, we talk to Judy Kozlicki and Ashley Carter to hear their thoughts and assessment about Daxxify and how it will revolutionize the world of medical aesthetics.

In this Episode, You’ll Discover

• What Daxxify is
• What Daxxify’s edge is in comparison to other neuromodulators like Botox, Xeomin, Jeuveau, etc
• How medical aesthetics businesses should approach the implementation of Daxxify
• Why Daxxify is a great investment for clinics and medical aesthetics businesses
• Early concerns for medical aesthetics business owners and how to tackle these
• The community’s response to Daxxify
• Addressing the fear of consumers

 Episode Insights

• Each neuromodulator differs in formulation and has different components that hold their peptides to create a stable, active, complex absorption... So one of the main reasons for the longevity effects is the peptide it's made up of. - Ashley Carter
• Comprehensive consultation, how important that is, and really educating your patients on a full good skincare routine—it involves all those elements. So, I think there shouldn't be a worry about not seeing your patients. - Judy Kozlicki
• Providing your med spa with education, even your front desk being able to explain, that is going to be essential to being successful with this new neuromodulator. - Ashley Carter
• Make sure you are working with a very experienced, knowledgeable injector, somebody who has not only experienced this product and had training on this, but also someone with highly advanced injectors. - Judy Kozlicki

About the Guests:

Judy Kozlicki is a Strategic Advisor of Aesthetics for Skytale Group. Judy Kozlicki’s extensive experience gives her a deep understanding of the aesthetic space. She gets to know each client’s practice individually, identifies the opportunities for growth, adapts best practices, and works alongside owners to bring their vision to fruition.

A trailblazer in the business of aesthetics, Judy has held executive-level positions in solo practices, small group practices, and large-scale national med spa operations for over 16 years.

Ashley Carter is a consultant at Skytale Group. She has worked in the medical field for over 10 years and provides her clients with a wealth of knowledge and expertise in the aesthetic world. She has a deep understanding of both the clinical and financial sides of the med spa business. Her experience has taught her how to navigate the ever-changing landscape of the industry.

Previously, Ashley worked in plastic surgery and quickly became their Lead Nurse Practitioner and Cosmetic Injector. She has also had experience as a Lead Nurse Practitioner and Clinical Director overseeing nine Medspa locations, maintains her registered nursing license, and is a certified Family Nurse Practitioner in several states. She also holds one of the most challenging certifications in the aesthetic industry as a Certified Aesthetic Nurse Specialist (CANS), held by less than 1% of aesthetic nurses in the US.

Connect with Skytale Group:

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Even before the turn of the new millennium, the power of data and information has been apparent. But in the last few years, we’ve seen how data analytics have driven various industries to advance and scale, particularly the medical and dental industries.

Data allows DSOs and MSOs to provide the appropriate response, services and patient care, which allows for better operations management and growth projection.

In this episode, James Turcott talks with Eric Pastan, David Wilson, and Greg Mahoney about the success stories on how the power of data and how using analytics and key performance indicators drive and scale DSOs, and what it really means to be a data-driven DSO.

In this Episode, You’ll Discover

• How the quality of data input into the system matters
• The practice management system as a crucial tool to drive data
• Data tracking in different fields of the medical and dental industries
• How leadership and a culture of excellence ties into being data-driven
• Analyzing performance and success indicators
• Setting up data collection infrastructure to back up data

 Episode Insights

• What being a data-driven DSO means is creating leadership and creating a culture of excellence around what the data is saying and that everyone is all in all the time and always looking to improve and more accurately predict and forecast performance. - James Turcott
• From inside the four walls of our office, what's gonna dictate success is our people understanding what they need to do in order to create success in their role for the organization. And those are what those KPIs are intended to do. - Eric Pastan
• Typically what I've done when I've come in and looked at a situation is I've tried to simplify it and take the noise out of it. Because ultimately, companies, as they move through time, have a tendency to go down the rabbit holes and collect more and more information. Keep it simple. Keep the focus on the data on the four corners of the page and communicate that throughout the entire organization so that everybody's operating on the same page. - David Wilson

About the Guests:

Greg Mahoney is a management consultant at Skytale Group. He joins the Skytale team with broad experience in building infrastructure and strategic planning in the dental industry. Utilizing experience from individual locations, emerging groups, and a DSO with more than 100 locations, Greg expertly builds strategies and helps executive teams reach their goals.

David Wilson is a consultant at Skytale Group. David serves Skytale clients with over 30 years of vast experience and leadership in the healthcare industry. He relies on his experience to drive our healthcare clients toward operational efficiencies and to help them meet key business and financial objectives.

Before joining Skytale Group, David served as Chairman, President and CEO of a large Dental Service Organization that supported 119 dental centers across 19 states. He was also the owner and founder of a boutique DSO servicing six locations.

Eric Pastan is a strategic advisor at Skytale Group. He joins the Skytale team with vast, hands-on experience scaling businesses in the dental industry. Leveraging his years of experience building a Dental Services Organization from the ground up, Eric helps business owners strategize during crucial stages of growth to carry out their vision.

Connect with Skytale Group:

• Website
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• LinkedIn

Albert Einstein once famously said, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” As we are seeing a lot of macroeconomic headwinds brought on by the reaction to inflation and a looming economic recession, there is foreseeable growth in the med spa and aesthetic industry.

New technology in the form of digital platforms and physical equipment has brought new excitement to this space, and many private equity firms have shown a huge interest in acquiring businesses that have the right mix of assets and opportunities.

Listen as Ben and Tedd Van Gorden, VP of M&A  at Skytale Group talk about the growing demand and attraction in the med spa industry and how business owners looking to sell can strategically add value to their businesses. 

In this Episode, You’ll Discover

• The state of the medical spa and aesthetic industry
• What buyers and private equity groups are looking for in the aesthetic space
  • Cash flow
  • Service Mix
  • Pricing
  • Scalability
  • Owner’s story/reason for selling
• How med spa owners can add value to their organization

 Episode Insights

• The market is expected to grow from 13.9 billion to 23.4 billion. So 10 billion in growth by 2027. That equates to a compounding growth rate of around 11%. And they expect it to grow an average of 11% per year until the year 2027. That's an incredible amount of growth, especially in comparison to some of these more established healthcare industries that a lot of investors are already saturated with. - Tedd Van Gorden
• Investors want to know about you as the owner. What's your story? Why did you start this business? What do you think about your business? What is your day-to-day impact on the business? What are your roles and responsibilities? They really just want to get to know about you and what you do that's unique. Why do you think your business is great and what do you wanna do going forward? - Tedd Van Gorden
• If you're thinking about selling and if you're thinking about talking with investors, they'll wanna know why you're selling and what your personal goals and interests are. Investors really dig in on this. - Tedd Van Gorden
• Med spa owners should surround themselves with trusted advisors: a good lawyer, consultant, or even an M&A  advisor. These trusted advisors are outside people that you have faith in to give good advice and perspective. - Tedd Van Gorden
• I've always been baffled by anyone who would sell their business without some help, being that it's typically your largest income-producing asset. And for most of us, if we do ever sell, it'll be one time that we do so in our life. - Ben Hernandez

About the Guest:

Tedd Van Gorden is Vice President of Mergers & Acquisitions at Skytale Group. He helps lead Skytale’s M&A advisory engagements, allowing clients to achieve the full value of their businesses and identify new opportunities for growth.

Prior to joining Skytale Group, Tedd was a Vice President at Ziegler Investment Banking, where he worked with mergers and acquisitions, strategic advisory, capital formation engagements, and agency (FHA/HUD, Fannie/Freddie) financing programs for senior living and healthcare providers and investors.

Follow Tedd Van Gorden:

• Website
• LinkedIn

Connect with Skytale Group:

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With a lot of advisory firms in the healthcare industry, it’s crucial to choose to work with one that scales and builds your business through multiple lenses.

At Skytale, we treat our clients’ businesses as our own, making sure we are developing and growing with them all the way. May it be strategic, financial, or operational, we make sure that we’ll be able to not only give advice but also become a partner in championing their challenges.

We don’t offer a one-size-fits-all approach. Our experienced team customizes our strategies for every client, ensuring that we deliver deep industry insight with a plan for execution. We work to understand exactly what your organization looks like, listen to your vision for growth, and create a roadmap to help you reach your goals.

In this Episode, You’ll Discover

• The people behind Skytale Group and what inspires them to be a part of the team
• How Skytale helps dental and aesthetics clients 
• What sets Skytale apart from other advisory firms
• How competitive Skytale is in the market
• Why Skytale focuses on healthcare

 Episode Insights

• What we do is that we take the financials and we create a plan based on our client’s goals, where they want to go, and then create that backward map to show them every step of the way. - Eric Pastan
• At the end of the day, we are team members for the groups (clients); we want to be viewed as a team member. - Eric Pastan 
• It's very important to partner with an investment bank that knows what they're doing and that is able to represent you well. - Ben Hernandez
• To maximize value, step one is that you can think from the perspective of fully understanding the organization, the owners, the people behind it, as well as educating our sellers as to what deal structures look like for various potential investors. - Ben Hernandez
• Step two is the marketing phase where we're showing the business to various investors, trying to get them the right partner for what our sellers have indicated to us is important.
• We do a combination of protecting our clients’ time to being on every phone call or dinner site visit all the way through close. - Ben Hernandez
• We walk with our team every step of the way. - Ben Hernandez
• We truly focus on scaling and building efficient organizations through multiple lenses. - Ben Hernandez
• We take deep, deep care of our clients to make sure that we position our sellers in the best possible space that we can whenever they do transactions. - Ben Hernandez
• We have partners and consultants across the country, which allows us to really offer all of that combined knowledge to our clients. - Eric Pastan 
• Skytale doesn’t send you a box and we pop out of it or plug something into your computer and boom, there's Skytale on your screen! We are the blood, sweat, and tears that we put into creating those solutions for the various organizations that we work with. - Eric Pastan 
• We are passionate about growth, and so we are excited to share what we do using both de novo growth and acquisition strategies. - Eric Pastan 

Connect with Skytale Group:

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• LinkedIn

David Dulany, Founder and CEO of Tenbound, joins Rachael to share his best strategies, tactics, and tools on how you can optimize and build successful sales development teams.