About This Episode
In this episode, host Don welcomes back Nikki Plourde, nurse practitioner, aesthetic injector and co-owner of NurturHer Aesthetics, to unpack what actually breaks when a practice grows from 75 patients to more than 5,000. Nikki explains why owner-run operations hit a wall, and why the "master injector" title is a credential providers spend real money chasing even though it doesn't officially exist.
Nikki walks through the inflection points: hiring a manager after five years of owners doing HR and inventory, the 12-employee tipping point, splitting the front desk into two part-time roles, and staffing two locations. She also shows how to vet tox and ultrasound training by what happens after the course, and how a GLP-1 program priced for long-term affordability, with in-person refills, became a growth engine for the aesthetic side.
Her closing advice: stay authentic, know when to put your hands up and hand things off, and make care affordable enough that patients keep coming back. Retention, not volume, is what turned NurturHer into a two-location community fixture.
Read the full conversation
Introduction & Episode Setup
The episode opens on a credential provider that spends real money chasing that doesn't officially exist: the "master injector" title.
Host Don Adeesha welcomes back Nikki Plourde, nurse practitioner, aesthetic injector and co-owner of NurturHer Aesthetics, a two-location Wisconsin practice with a team of 12.
The conversation covers what broke as the practice scaled, why Nikki skipped the master injector chase, and how GLP-1s became a growth engine; the episode is sponsored by Ekwa Marketing.
[View Transcript]
There's a credential in this industry that providers are spending real money chasing, and it doesn't officially exist. Welcome back to the Business of Aesthetics podcast. I'm your host for this session, Don Adeesha. It's great to have you here. Joining me today, and back on the show, is Nikki Plourde. Nikki is a nurse practitioner, aesthetic injector, and co-owner of NurturHer Aesthetics in Wisconsin, a two-location practice with a team of 12. Today we're getting into what actually broke as the practice scaled, why she steered clear of the master injector chase, and how GLP-1s turned into a real growth engine rather than just another service on the menu. This episode is brought to you by Ekwa Marketing. Nikki, welcome back.
Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be back.
Starting With 75 Patients and the "Skinny Shot"
Nikki joined Ericka's practice when it had just 75 patients, working evenings after her full-time family medicine job.
Marketing vitamin injections as a "skinny shot" revealed how much patients cared about weight loss, which led the practice to add weight loss as a service.
Early growth came from partner "parties" in hair salons, where women already spend hours in the chair.
[View Transcript]
Great. So, Nikki, let's go back to when you had 75 clients. What did that practice actually look like day to day, before any of the growth really took off?
Yeah, I think I'm like most injectors and providers in that I didn't just inherit an abundance of patients or a well-established network of patients who were willing to dive right into things. It took a lot of work. I remember meeting with Ericka, who's the owner of NurturHer Aesthetics. Back then she had 75 patients, and my friends were like, "Are you crazy to go into business with 75 patients?" And I just did it. Way back in the day, I would work my nine-to-five family medicine job as a nurse practitioner and then go in for a vitamin injection. Ericka would say, "I can't pay you to come in for a vitamin injection." But we just did it. Then I started marketing vitamin injections, and the "skinny shot" is what people call it. Ericka had told me you can't just come in for a vitamin injection, and then I used a term like "skinny shot," and I realized how important weight loss was aesthetically to patients. So we brought on weight loss as a service, which was huge for us. In the state of Wisconsin, coming from traditional insurance plans, it's often not a service that's covered by insurance. So I found that gap between what was missing aesthetically and medically, and how we could bridge both. I think that was really key to us as a business. Back then, we were just trying to do parties and coming in any hour of the day to develop patients, really building good relationships with those patients and figuring out what they truly need and how we can provide that as a full-scope practice.
What do you mean by trying to do parties?
We would collaborate with other people, like hair stylists, for example. They have women in their chairs for hours at a time. So we would come into their space and offer parties of sorts, so women could get together, learn what services we offer, and receive some of those services. That way we could provide the service they're looking for in a convenient location. That's what we did.