Future-Proofing Your Aesthetic Practice: Decisions You Must Get Right in the Next 18 Months

Sorry. Right. Good evening, everyone. Welcome. Who do we have here? Okay, we got Arthur. Welcome back, Arthur. Great to see you here. We got Kristen Bradford. Welcome, Kristen. Nice. Everyone's joining in. We'll get things started here. Good evening, and welcome to tonight's Business of Aesthetics webinar, "Future-Proofing Your Aesthetic Practice: The Decisions You Must Get

Right in the Next 18 Months." I'm Don Adisha, and I am honored to host this expert panel with five incredible voices from marketing, clinical innovation, profitability, safety, training, and of course, business model transformation. So, tonight is not about chasing hype. It's about identifying the decisions that aesthetic practice owners must get right so that the next 18 months become a foundation for stability, growth, and long-term relevance. Now, before we begin, a few quick housekeeping notes to help you get the maximum of this session. First, yes, we are recording. And you will receive a

replay link after the event in your email so that you can share with your partners and colleagues. But please, do not let that make you passive. The real value is happening right here, right now, live. So, use the Q&A button down below if you have any specific questions for the panelists, and use the chat to conversate with your colleagues here. I'll have my eye on both the feeds and weave in your questions and comments as we go along and keep it very engaging throughout the session. Now, before we do dive into the content, I do want to thank our sponsor for this session, Ekwa Marketing. Ekwa is the marketing growth partner trusted by aesthetic practices and

industry leaders across North America and beyond for over 15 years. Their work focuses on three areas that matter deeply to our audience: SEO and visibility so that your ideal patients can actually find you, conversion-focused websites that turn those visitors into consultations, and content and social authority that builds trust before the patient ever walks into your clinic. Now, Ekwa is led by Naren, Naren Arulrajah, the very same founder of the Business of Aesthetics community. We'll be hearing from Naren momentarily and about Ekwa a little bit later as we go along.

Right then. Let's take a look at the flow of the program here tonight. First off, I'm going to start with the opening remarks as I actually closing it off right now. And then we will be doing a focused marketing session with Naren Arulrajah from 7:05 to 7:30, then from 7:30 to 8:50 EST. Of course, I know there are many who are from different time zones, so please adjust accordingly. And we will be opening the larger brainstorming session with Dr. Rivkin, Jessica Hunter, Sonia Ellis, and Jay Erazo. Then we will leave a few minutes for live audience Q&A at the end over there. But

I'm thinking of pulling it back a little bit more towards, let's say, 8:00 PM. We'll have a much more lively engagement session then with our audience to answer your questions and concerns. Then we'll be wrapping things out by 9:00 PM. Of course, the pace will be practical and fast-moving. It's going to be tight, so keep your questions coming in as we go along. Right then. Let us begin. So, we're going to begin with the marketing decision layer because patient demand is at the front door of future-proofing your practice. So, the next 18 months will not just test whether a practice offers great treatments, it will also test whether the right

patients can find your practice, trust it, and take action. So, Naren will help us think through how aesthetic practices can build a smarter, more resilient marketing engine for this new window. Right then. First, we have Naren Arulrajah. As I mentioned, Naren is the founder of Business of Aesthetics and CEO of Ekwa Marketing, where he leads a 250-plus team, helping aesthetic and healthcare practices build stronger online visibility, build stronger patient demand, and of course, long-term growth systems. Tonight, he will help us understand how practice owners can build a smarter, more

resilient marketing engine for the next 18 months. With that being said, Naren, welcome to the program. Thank you so much, Don, and of course, thanks, everyone here, the attendees, the panelists. I think we're going to have some fun. We started the Business of Aesthetics group perhaps five years ago. We have the podcast. We have a Facebook group with 10,000 members. Of course, we have events on a regular basis. And the reason we started this is because we found there are a lot of people who are very passionate about the business side of aesthetics. There's a lot of training and communities on the clinical side, but not on the business side. So, we wanted to become a place for people who are actively engaged in this whole industry and who want to share their ideas as well as learn from each other.

So, thank you everyone for being here. I'm really excited about the next 18 months because I think we are perhaps in unprecedented times. I know it feels like every day gets more complex and more challenging than the prior year or the prior year... decade, but it's just the fact, right? We know about AI. AI is changing marketing, changing how people find practices. AI is changing how people work. Of course, you have all the geopolitical and all kinds of rebalancing of the world and all kinds of things going on. So I know a lot of you are probably feeling uncertain, and I've seen similar things going back to 2008 when we had the recession. And I have

noticed that the ones who lean into making their business strong, like classic example, Google itself. If you look at Google back then versus today, it's 20 times bigger. Why? They leaned in. Same thing with Apple. Anybody who leans in in those tough times tend to come out on the other end much stronger and bigger and more successful. I think this is a golden opportunity for practice owners who are looking to lean in, who are looking to turn a problem into an opportunity or this uncertainty into an opportunity. So, I'm glad I'm here. Thank you so much, Don, and let's jump in. Absolutely. Thank you very much for that opening there, Naren, and what a great reminder that it's a cyclic process, right? So things