Here’s a tension most practice owners know well: the moment you walk through the door, the demands begin. Patients need you. Staff need you. Problems need you. And because those demands are immediate, they win the battle for your attention.
That’s how practice owners end up spending the majority of their time delivering care, solving problems, and keeping the schedule moving, with little left over to actually lead the business.
But owning a practice means you hold two distinct roles. One is surgeon. The other is chief executive. And that second role is responsible for growth, profitability, team structure, positioning, and long-term […]
A plastic surgeon recently told me their surgical conversion rate was 55%. My response was: “For which procedures?”
Many practices track KPIs, but few use them effectively. Measurement alone changes nothing.
When the surgeon shared that overall consult-to-surgery conversion rate, it didn’t immediately raise concern. Sure, there was room for improvement, but the number felt reasonable – until we drilled down by procedure. Then the story changed.
Mastopexy, breast reduction, and explant consultations were converting at strong rates. Abdominoplasty and gynecomastia consultations were converting dramatically lower, around 30%. The overall number was hiding the fact that something was off during those specific consultations, […]
Every practice has one.
The person everyone goes to when they have a question, including you. They know where everything is and how everything works. They remember the details that no one else tracks. They are dependable, deeply trusted, and often one of the biggest reasons the practice runs as well as it does.
I worked with a practice that had Sarah, a longtime team member who played this exact role. She was highly capable, implicitly trusted by the surgeon, and had become the person everyone relied on. Then, unexpectedly, she suffered an injury that required more than four weeks of medical […]
Most practices have core values. They may be written on the website, discussed during onboarding, or posted somewhere in the office. Something like: We value teamwork. We put patients first. We communicate with respect. We take ownership.
But your team doesn’t learn your culture by reading your values. They learn it by watching what happens when someone doesn’t live up to them.
The employee who is chronically late, but no one addresses it. The high producer who gets results but stirs up drama. The manager who avoids difficult conversations and lets problems linger. The longtime employee who refuses to follow a new […]
You finished a full clinic day, walked into a team meeting, and somehow still had 47 unread messages by dinner. Sound familiar? Owning and operating an aesthetic practice means making dozens of decisions daily, often all at once and at lightning speed. To keep up, practice leaders act quickly, but not always intentionally.
In this first issue of North Star, I pose this simple but critical question: What is guiding your decisions?
When your intention is clearly defined, it becomes your North Star in a dark, starry sky. It guides you. It shapes your goals. It informs your decisions. And it […]
One of the most common frustrations I hear from surgeons is this: “We have so many great ideas, but nothing ever seems to get finished.”
The assumption is usually that the team is resistant to change. In my experience, that’s rarely the problem. More often, they’re overwhelmed by competing priorities.
Every practice has limited operational capacity: the time, attention, and energy your team has to implement change while still taking excellent care of patients. Every new initiative uses some of that capacity. When leaders ask their team to improve ten things at once, even good ideas can stall.
I worked with […]
