Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: You're listening to the Doc Lounge Podcast. This is a place for candid conversations with the healthcare industry's top physicians, executives and thought leaders.
This podcast is made possible by Pacific Companies, your trusted advisor in physician recruitment.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Welcome to the Doc Lounge Podcast. I'm your host, Stacy Doyle, Senior director of marketing at Pacific Companies. Today we're thrilled to have Dr. Flora waples with us. A pioneering forum in the field of medical aesthetics and longevity science. Dr. Waples, founder and medical director of Restore Medical Spa, has an extraordinary journey from emergency medicine to the fast paced world of entrepreneurship. After 15 years in emergency medicine and a stellar education at the University of Chicago and Weill Cornell Medical College, Dr. Waples Co founded Restore with her sister Dominique. Together they built one of the fastest growing aesthetics companies in the country, with locations spreading across colorad beyond. Dr. Wapels is passionate about helping people transform their lives through personalized wellness and regenerative medicine. Let's dive into hearing more about her inspiring journey. Welcome to the doc lounge podcast, Dr. Waples.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
[00:01:21] Speaker D: We're excited to have you on and we want to learn all about your journey from, you know, being a physician and ER physician to then becoming a really amazing entrepreneur that's founded your own aesthetics business. And I know it's growing and expanding. So first tell us a little bit. How did you get into emergency medicine? What made you pick that specialty?
[00:01:44] Speaker C: Well, you know, it was. It really was kind of love at first sight. When I did my first rotation, you know, in med school, I did my first emergency room rotation. The first shift I was there was pretty much, I was like, well, these are my people.
This is exactly where I belong. But the story that I always tell people, I think this applies to entrepreneurship as well. You. When I was in school, high school, college, med school, all throughout school, whenever there was a test, I would always score in the top quarter. Maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower, but somewhere in the top quarter. But I would always finish the test in half the time. So you could give me an infinite amount of time. I'll never score higher than the top 75%, but if everyone had to take it in the time that I finished it in, I would score the best I can do a solid job in half the time. And I was like, well, where is that a benefit? You know, like there, there are fields where that is worthless and there are fields where that is like, exactly, you know what you need to do. And so. So emergency medicine really is a place where that ability to make quick decisions, to pivot, to just make a call and move on was, was really, really useful. And that's kind of what drew me to it.
[00:02:54] Speaker D: I love that. Well, that makes a lot of sense. You're like, I'm quick on my feet. I can, you know, get things done in a very acc.
Successful way. So that, that makes a lot of sense. Now tell us a little bit more about, you know, your journey as an ER doctor. How long you were, you're. I mean, I think you're still, you're obviously still a practicing physician, but tell us a little bit about that and your experience there.
[00:03:17] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Of course I did after, after residency I came out to Colorado and I did about 15 years of emergency medicine that served in a variety of settings. I love, I love all of them. I've worked in sort of that larger academic setting where you got all the residents around all the time and all the specialists and everyone's there. And I worked some with a company that staffs like rural ers where I would drive out to different parts of the state and do like a two day or three day, like just 72 hour shift and then drive home. And that was also really wonderful because in the larger, more urban settings, you have all of this support and you have all these people around you and it feels really safe and you can do amazing things. And then in rural settings, you're in the situation where it's like, it's you and you got two nurses and there's a snowstorm, so you have no helicopters and you have no ambulances and if someone comes in, like it's, it's you and that person for as long as it takes the roads to open. So I've worked in a bunch of different settings. I've loved all of them. It was a wonderful career.
And you know, I was just, I'm really, really grateful to have been able to have the experiences that I had. But you know, the thing I'll tell you, you know, sort of where that journey kind of came to its natural turning point. Part of it I was doing these 72 hour shifts with this rural location. Loved the medicine, loved all the people I worked with. Just absolutely adored the patient population. But I was gone for these long chunks of time and I'd come home and my kids, their hair would be ratty and they'd be crying and my husband's crying disaster.
I was tucking my daughter to bed one night and she was five or six and she said, well, Mommy, she's like, when I Grow up. Do I need to be a doctor? Because my husband's a physician, too. So this, like, her whole parent base, this is all she knows, right? And I was like, well, no, sweetie, you don't need to be a doctor. You can be anything you want. I was like, but what? You know, tell me. Tell me more about that. And she's like, I don't. I don't want to be a doctor. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. Like, tell me why. And she says, mommy, I don't want to be a doctor because I don't want to make my kids sad because I'm gone all the time.
I was like, oh, right. In the field. So.
So, you know, it is a wonderful career, but it is a career that can be. That can be hard, you know, on. On a family life. So that's when I was like, well, I gotta do something different. So I.
[00:05:37] Speaker D: Well, I. I appreciate that personal story and journey of, you know, hearing that. And obviously that kind of, you know, started something in your mind or the gears turn and like, okay, what. What. What else is there for me? You.
Then how did you kind of take that and pivot into becoming an entrepreneur and into wellness and aesthetics?
[00:06:00] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and that, you know, from that point, it took many years, you know, to get out, because building. Building a business that can support you takes a really long time. Like, that is. If it was easy, everyone would do it, right? So at that point, you know, my sister was an attorney. She was a practicing prosecuting attorney for the city of Denver. I was working in the ER here, and we had always had this idea that maybe we could, like, be business partners and work together because we get along really well. Our strengths complement each other just really, really well. Also, like with a sister, you've had it. Every fight, like, every fight that's ever going to happen, you've had them.
There's no questions about whether or not the relationship is going to last because your sisters, you're stuck.
So we always had this idea and we kind of tossed around, like, what is it that kind of a doctor and a lawyer can do together? You know, what. What can we do together? And, you know, we were both getting into our sort of, like, mid to late 30s, and we were both starting to have wrinkles.
And I went. I. First time I ever had Botox, I went to the spa that was owned by a dear friend of mine from residency. She did my Botox. I'm sitting there, I'm like, you know, I can do this. I could do this. It's not. I could totally do this. And so Dominique and I kind of talked about it and we decided, well, you know, we're going to go ahead. And we, you know, we, you know, I wanted out of sort of institutionalized clinical medicine. There's a lot of things about that that can be very, very, you know, difficult.
And both of us are morally and emotionally and physically. I wanted to do something different. I wanted to be able to take care of people in a different kind of way. Dominique wanted out of law. And so we just, we just quit our jobs and just did it. And it was, it was a tight and very scary couple of years in the beginning. But yeah, there was really not a whole lot of preparation or planning or anything like that. We're just like, well, this is where we're going. And we rented a spot and opened up and that's where we went.
[00:07:50] Speaker D: I hear that a lot about entrepreneurship. It's, you gotta make that leap. And, you know, once you feel confident to do it, you just gotta go for it. So it sounds like that's what you and your sister did. So kudos to you both because that's an exciting pivot.
So tell me, I mean, obviously, I'm assuming, you know, there's many things that you kind of. We had to consider, but what about like, location and, and how did you, you know, go about that? As, you know, your background was more medical versus business.
[00:08:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, there was, it was a steep learning curve. You know, the first location that we opened was four blocks from our house. We, we lived in side by side duplexes at this point. So it was about four blocks from our house. And the reason we chose that location is because we're in a neighborhood where everyone was very much like us, women, kind of, you know, late 30s to mid-50s, you know, professional careers, families. You know, it was, it was a demographic that we really knew and understood. And so the first time we had, we had no market research, we had no demographics data. We had absolutely nothing. We just looked around the neighborhood and we're like, everyone here has crow's feet. We can do this. You know, and opened up now we have, you know, we have this absolutely wonderful company called, called Buxton, which does, does demographics research. You know, for. They basically you say, here's, here's my patient population. And, and they will find street corners for you where they say, okay, there's 300,000 people within a mile that have exactly your perfect demographics for you. So now our location selection is much more professional. The first one we opened, it was, honest to God, it was just a good guess, and it's gotten better ever since then. But now we have someone say, okay, you need to be at the corner of these two streets, or here's four locations where you could open up and be wildly successful. And that helps a lot.
[00:09:33] Speaker D: Love that. That's very insightful as to like, okay, location, location. So that you got lucky at first and it was strategic. Also, you were thinking about it from the right way, and then now you're partnering with somebody where you're getting that data real time, which sounds amazing.
Tell us a little bit about. I mean, what else? You know, you guys have grown significantly now. You have, you know, I think, over 25 employees through locations, and you're continuing to expand. What factors do you think brought, you know, this rapid growth?
[00:10:08] Speaker C: That's a great question, because that always has so many factors in it. I would say the biggest.
I'll say a couple things. The first thing I would say is if speaking to physicians, if you're a physician thinking about opening up your own practice, you need to have a partner who's going to dedicate themselves to the business side. Right. Because we are trained to. You know, we are trained in medicine. All of us got into medical school because we're very smart. We've always been the smartest person in the room. Right. But being the smartest person in the room doesn't mean that you have the knowledge necessary for every decision in the room. Right. And if you're going to be in the. In the patient care rooms, you know, delivering care or coordinating care, working with patients, that's. That's my specialty is medicine. That's what I do. That's what I love.
My sister, she runs the business side, and it's been absolutely. I mean, she. You know, I could not have succeeded without somebody helping manage that business side, because I know nothing about it. I'll just give away all the care for free. And that's not a good business plan, as it turns out. So it's really important there be somebody who is able to dedicate themselves to the business. I see. You know, people go into aesthetics all the time. It's a field that people see as a escape hatch, you know, commonly. And what happens is they open up one place and they're seeing patients all the time. And because they are seeing patients all the time, they don't have any energy or time with which to grow the business, and they stall out at one location. What they have done is they have given themselves A new job. It's not. They don't have freedom, you know, they're not an entrepreneur. They just have a different job where they're still putting in the same hours. So you've got to have somebody running the business and whether that's a partner, whether that's a practice manager, you've got to have somebody who's doing those things. Because a doc, you can't see patients and do that at the same time. The other thing that was really, really important for the growth of RESTORE is when, you know, again, speaking two docs as a doc, when a doc opens up a practice, you can do it in one of two ways, right? You can do it where, you know, it's the Flora show and I'm the amazing injector and I'm going to do all the procedures and it's going to be amazing. Right.
If you decide to run it in that way, you will never be able to grow beyond one or two locations because there's only a certain number of hours you're available. Right. I decided really early on that I didn't want it to be the Flora show. Right. Everyone's listening, Dr. Waples. That's not the point. The point is, am I smart enough to figure out everything that happens inside my brain when I look at a patient, decide what I'm going to do and teach that to someone else, and make that something that is sort of protocolizable and delegatable so that Now I have 20 people who are making the same decisions that I would make, obviously asking me questions when they need to. Now I have the ability to scale. Now I have the ability to expand and to change my scope. If you make it a. Your practice and it's about you, there's a, there's a limit to that, you know, and there's nothing wrong with being having a one location. That's really awesome. You have a job you love. Nothing wrong with that. If you want to grow, you have to take yourself out of the treatment room because otherwise you're going to be always kept.
[00:13:09] Speaker D: Great advice.
And tell me, I mean, I'm assuming a lot of the background from obviously your days as an ER doctor and, you know, your aspects of, you know, what patient care, you know, should look like. Helped when she made this pivot. So is that, you know, tell us a little bit about that journey because it sounds like that has gone into the training of your team now.
[00:13:33] Speaker C: Yeah, it's, it's, it's tough because, you know, when you go into one of the established Branches of medicine, you know, orthopedic surgery or er, internal medicine, whatever you do. There's, there's a residency program, right? And all the training is set up and you go through the residency program. When you come out the back end, everybody who looks at your resume knows that you have the skills and you have the training to take care of anything that happens inside that branch of medicine. Right? The thing about aesthetics and sort of rejuvenative medicine and wellness is that this is a field which is just, it's in its early stages. It didn't even exist 15 years ago. Like it wasn't a thing, you know, 15 years ago. And it's just exploding in size, exploding in terms of what we can do and what we're capable of. But there are no formal training programs. Programs. There is no way to say, okay, I'm going to go to this university and get this degree and now I'm an aesthetics practitioner. So you really have to put together piecemeal and that takes a lot of time and it's difficult to do. So for me personally, the way that I sort of got the training that I needed, I started attending meetings. The first thing I did is start attending big national meetings and listening to the lectures.
There's sort of private individuals kind of all over the country who will hold trainings and they'll show you how to inject and you bring in models and they'll show you the procedures. So I did a bunch of those things. You sort of have to kind of put it together, little pieces like that, to get the expertise you need to do the medicine. So it is difficult because there's no one centralized source. But if I was speaking again to somebody thinking of coming into this field, the first thing I would do is say, okay, the first thing you have to do is go to first year, go to three separate conferences put on by three separate companies, go listen to the lectures, watch the demonstrations, everything else like that. And then when you have that background, then start pulling, you know, start calling up. The way that you typically would do trainings is you call, you know, somebody who advertised themselves a trainer and you set up a day where you can go to their office, three or four of your best girlfriends go in, you do a bunch of injections, you learn how to do the hands on piece and you kind of go from there. So yeah, there's no, there's no one centralized place, you gotta do it yourself.
[00:15:33] Speaker D: And it sounds like, because I know that you, you know, and your locations of RESTORE are known for their expertise and, you know, regenerative medicine, hormone replacement therapy, you know, in longevity. So can you share a little bit how all of these, you know, specialties really contribute to a holistic approach to aging?
[00:15:53] Speaker C: Absolutely. Well, we started, you know, when we restore started, we did only aesthetics and this again, I was in my late 30s. That was all I needed. And so those. That was the thing that I was really thinking about. So we started off with aesthetics, and we did only aesthetics for about 10 years. And then I hit menopause and I was like, oh, my goodness, this is terrible. And so I went back to school and also I kind of.
The goal has never been to drape healthy skin over a sick body, right. The goal really is for someone to look as good as they feel and feel as good as they look. We want healthy from the inside, healthy from the outside, both. So I went back to school and I did a fellowship in hormone replacement and sort of menopausal care, which was fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. It took me about a year. And I had this deal with myself. I was like, okay, I am not allowed to write myself any prescriptions until I finished the fellowship. Because there's nothing in the world that's worse than a doc who thinks they're smart going off half cocked, right? I was like, I have to finish it before I can do anything. And then I treated myself and sort of friends and family for about a year just to make sure that I kind of had some experience. And it was just, I mean, absolutely transformational and wonderful, wonderful medicine. And, you know, it filled such a hole, you know, in my heart. Because in, in hospital medicine, you're always fighting a losing battle. Always, always, always, right? Something horrible happens and you try to fix it, and then something horrible happens and you try to fix it. And every time that happens, the patient loses a little ground, you know, like, like you can get them back. Hopefully you can get them back 99 of what they were before, or maybe like 80% of what they were before. But you're. You're losing. You're losing all the time, and the patient's losing all the time. And that's hard. That's really hard. I think for all medical providers and in sort of hormone replacement and optimization care, what happens is someone comes in and I can make them better than they were before. And each time they come in, I can make them stronger and feeling better, and they function better, they feel better. And that's an amazing thing. You never get to do that in medicine to actually did for you and your patient to actually Win a battle together is really cool. So it's kind of a long, rambling answer. I hope, I hope I covered what you were asking me, but that's how it came to be.
[00:18:07] Speaker D: I find that fascinating. And it sounds like you really, you know, you studied and got, you know, did a fellowship to learn more about this. And it seems like it's a field where they're just starting to get more advancements and there's more of a focus on, you know, women going through menopause or perimenopause. So it sounds like you're kind of on, you know, you're leading there, which is, which is amazing. So how does, how, with all that knowledge and all that wisdom, how do you approach creating, you know, these personalized treatment plans for your patients?
[00:18:40] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, the first step for me is it, you know, it always comes back to education, right? So there's two different kind of ways that you can set up a medical practice where the physician is, you know, the medical director is not going to be the person seeing the patients. Every single patient, every single time.
One way that you can do it is you take your mid level providers, your RNs, your NPs, your PAs, whoever you have, and you write really, really tight protocols, low levels of education, tight protocols. And the protocols limit what they can do. And the protocol protects the patient. Now, the benefit of doing it that way is you can train people really fast, right? It doesn't take very long for you to say to someone, hey, here's the protocol, follow it, go. You know, it's a fast and cheap way to get people up on the floor. And the protocol protects the patient.
The downside of doing it that way is that it does not allow for much personalization, right? You write these really narrow protocols and that's what the patient's going to get. And they'll be right most of the time. I mean, the whole thing about protocols is they're right like 85, 90% of the time, but they're going to be wrong some percentage of the time. The other sort of way that you can go about building your practice is you say, okay, I'm going to write general protocols and I'm going to invest deeply in the education of my people and I'm going to create experts out of my people and their expertise is going to be what protects the patient. And then because you've got somebody who's good enough that they know when you got to change the rules, sometimes someone will need a little more, a little less than A narrow protocol would say because of something about their anatomy or physiology, what have you. When somebody has sort of that deeper level of understanding, they can make that call correctly. So, you know, the way that we have chosen to do it at RESTORE is when we hire somebody, we spend hundreds of hours and it takes between nine months and a year before they are fully trained and allowed to go out and treat all of our patients. We invest hugely into each of our people and they're absolutely amazing. Our providers are amazing.
On average, we screen about 100 people for each one person we hire. We get about 100 applicants for each one person we hire. We're very, very particular, which we're lucky to be able to be particular, but we are.
And they get a tremendous, tremendous education and they come out experts, and that's what makes us good. That's something that I just don't. Even though it costs more and it takes more time than a lot of practices do, I think it's worth it and I think it's important. So that's what we did.
[00:21:07] Speaker D: Smart, smart business approach for your clients and patients. Now let's switch to something fun. Tell us about what's the most memorable success story that you've had with one of your clients.
[00:21:21] Speaker C: Oh, goodness.
Would it be too weird if I told you about myself?
[00:21:27] Speaker D: No, we'd love to learn.
[00:21:31] Speaker C: I can tell you an aesthetic story or I can tell you a sort of hormone and regeneration story. What would you prefer? Because they're kind of different and they come from different sides. What would you like?
[00:21:41] Speaker D: Yeah, let's hear about hormonal regeneration. I think that's fascinating.
[00:21:45] Speaker C: So When I was 42, I was about 20 pounds overweight. I was pre diabetic because diabetes runs in my family. Like, literally every human in my family turns diabetic at the age of 40. And I was on that train. My hemoglobin A1C was elevated on all stuff. I was. I could run. Couldn't run a mile. Like, literally could not run a mile. My knees hurt all the time.
I was waking up at night every night, about 2 or 3 in the morning, and being awake for like an hour or two, which happens to most women when they get perimenopausal. We start waking up at night, not be able to sleep through the night. Had zero interest in my partner whatsoever. He's a wonderful man. It's not his fault. But I was just like, ugh, intimacy, Gross. You know, like that libido just came off a cliff and, you know, and I was. I was I was grumpy, I was irritated, I was angry. I was gaining weight and couldn't sleep and was losing my enjoyment of life. And this is something that happens to a lot of people, like, as we get into our 40s. This is relatively common, you know. And I had this experience where I went to my primary physician, who not only is she a great physician, she's also a personal friend. And I know her, she's highly educated, she cares, she tries, you know, And I said, these are all the things. I can't sleep, I'm gaining weight. Like, I can't exercise, I'm tired all the time. Like, you know, these are the things that are happening. What's wrong? And she sort of does all my labs. She's like, well, your labs are all normal. And I was like, she's like, you're just getting old.
This is what it feels like to be a woman in your 40s. You're just getting old. And I was like, I was like, you know, I hear you. I understand where you're coming from. We trained, you know, in the same institution. I understand what you're saying. I was like, I can't accept that that is the answer for the rest of my life. Like, I can't. I mean, I'm not going to accept that the rest of my life is just going to be just, just, just continued loss of function. That, that, that's it, that this is, this is it forever. I can't accept that. And so that's when I decided to a hormone replacement fellowship. And I did it and I started treating myself.
And the thing is, as we lose our hormonal support, the way we feel and function declines. That's what happens in our 40s. But when you replace those lost hormones, when you replace those lost instructions that your body needs to function optimally, you gain back those functions that you've lost. So last year I ran a 20 mile trail race.
I have lost 20 pounds. I am no longer pre diabetic. I sleep through the night. My husband's a very happy man. You know, like all of those things, like the way that I felt and was able to function in my late 20s and early 30s, I've gotten those back. And, you know, that is a really wonderful thing. That's something that I can give to my patients, and that's something that I hear from my patients kind of every day. They come in, they go, oh my God. I didn't realize how bad I felt until I started to feel better. And now I looking at it, I'm like, how could I allow myself to live like that? You know, but, you know, unfortunately, traditional medicine is really disease focused. And if there's not a disease, you don't treat, and aging is not considered to be a disease. Right. And if it's not a disease, they're like, well, aging's natural. This is what aging is. You know, roll with it. And whereas in sort of the medicine that we're doing now, regenerative medicine said, well, not only is aging a disease, aging is the disease. It's. It's the only disease everyone gets. It's the only disease that kills 100% of people that get it. Like, yeah, you treat aging to prevent the diseases of aging. You don't wait till they come up and then try to treat, you know, the hypertension, diabetes, whatever. No, treat the aging. Treat the underlying problem, and you can make that stuff just go away. And that's a really cool concept. So that's something that I, you know, I find just really exciting and really fun. And as far as the aesthetic side, like, I'm super vein, so that's nice too.
But no, it's a very. It's an exciting. It's a really exciting time to be.
[00:25:30] Speaker D: In this branch of medicine that was so enlightening. I appreciate you sharing that with our audience. And it sounds like, yeah, it is, you know, shifting your mindset of, you know, really being more preventative and ways to actually improve.
Yeah, I love that. Now, I know you speak at a lot of industry events. What are some of, you know, the most exciting innovations or trends that you're, you know, thinking are going to shape medicine that you'll focus on?
[00:25:59] Speaker C: Well, you know, I do think that, you know, when modern medicine was invented, which was really like the early 1900s, you know, in that era, you know, treatment of disease was the crushing need of humanity. Right? Like, there was no point in having sort of rejuvenative or aesthetic medicine because we were dying in our 40s.
So you got to fix the first problems first. Right? So modern medicine really evolved with this goal of treating disease, and we've been wildly successful. Right? We've doubled the human lifespan. That's an incredible achievement.
But we are getting to at least my perspective. My opinion is we're starting to get to the end of what disease care can do. Right? And we are, you know, and what I believe will be the next major or one of the next major changes, of course, the immunotherapies, those are absolutely huge. And there's all. There's some, you know, Things that are coming there that are amazing. But we are starting to realize now we've got this doubled lifespan now. We're trying to figure out how to make those years, healthy years through the use of preventative medicine. And, you know, this is true. I see this in aesthetics, and I see this in the sort of longevity conferences I attend. They're kind of growing together like this. Because if you think about aesthetics, the way aesthetics started and the way that I would say 85% of it is done now is we are using tools to make tissue appear better, right? You inject, like, toxin. I do Botox, obviously. Like, I'm a. You know, I'm like an alcoholic that opened a bar. Like, I do all the things, right? So when, you know, when you put neuromodulators or Botox into skin, what you're doing is you're. It's a relaxer. It relaxes the muscle so the muscle can't pull at the skin and it can't make lines, right? Well, you're not solving the underlying problem. The underlying problem is that the skin has lost its ability to repair itself and lost its thickness and lost its strength. But you're making it look better, but you're not solving the underlying problem.
Over the last 10 years, and most of aesthetics is kind of like that. Over the last 10 years, what I've been seeing is more and more regenerative therapy where we're actually, instead of using something artificial to create a look that appears more youthful, we actually are starting to have these interventions now where we can actually make the tissue youthful again. And you see that in aesthetics and you see that in longevity medicine, both. And that's really cool because one, it looks a lot better, right? A lot of the problem with some of our older therapies is they didn't really look natural because they weren't. I mean, go figure, right? But we're starting to be able to do that. And that's where I think, think that this branch of medicine anyway, is going, is away from sort of synthetic interventions and towards sort of biological regeneration, which is really cool. Just really cool medicine. It's fun. It's so fun to be at the forefront of that. That is really neat. So that's what I think.
[00:28:40] Speaker D: Sounds like you're very passionate about this. And. No, that sounds really exciting and different from what we've heard in the past. So. So love that insight there.
Finally, I'd love to hear, you know, what advice would you give to other physicians considering making a move, you know, into becoming an entrepreneur.
[00:29:05] Speaker C: What I would say, without sounding snarky, don't quit your J dub yet, you know, because, like I'll tell you, just from my own journey, generally speaking, most businesses are going to lose money for the first several years because it takes a while to figure out what the heck you're doing to get your people in place, to get your systems in place. It just. It just takes time. And so when I opened, you know, my sister and I, when we opened Restore, the first, I believe, five years we were open, I did not draw a paycheck.
I was working full time Restore during the day, and then I was working evenings and weekend shifts in the er. So I was working, you know, sort of, you know, one and a half jobs. And that's how I was able to keep food on the table for my family, you know, because the understanding was that we would have to put that in. So if you are looking at entrepreneurship, first of all, there are pluses and minuses, but whichever, we'll talk about those in a second. But before you do that, make sure that you've got a cash cushion. Whatever form that takes, stocks or whatever it is, or keeping part time at a regular job, you need to have a cash cushion for at least three years.
Do not ever listen to any kind of rep or salesperson that says that your business will be profitable, like, you know, the month you open your doors. That's not true. Make sure you have a cushion. The second thing is that there are pluses and minuses to entrepreneurship, as is true with all things, right? And you just got to pick. You got to decide whether or not you really, really want that. So the benefit of entrepreneurship and what everyone always, you know, like, thinks of is, is you have freedom, right? You have. You have the ability to set your schedule. You have the ability to set the demands that are placed upon you. You have the ability to build a practice that looks like what you want as opposed to being told how you can treat your patients, which is something that's very hard in that there's friction there with a lot of doctors, that we want to do certain things for our patients. We can't inside the existing system. So you have the freedom to treat your patients how you want. You have the freedom to build the kind of practice and the kind of life that you want. That's huge. However, the flip side of freedom is responsibility, right? There's no guarantee you're going to get a paycheck if you have a bad month and you can't make payroll. Guess who you're going to be, you know, guess who's paying your people? You are out of your pocket.
There is no safety net. And so when you're looking at entrepreneurship, you need to think about, am I a person who is going to be crushed by the fear of not having any backup, or am I a person that is going to enjoy that challenge and be able to function in that environment of fear and uncertainty without it just absolutely paralyzing me? This is an interesting statistic. There are more emergency medicine physicians running aesthetics practices than there are dermatologists.
Because emergency medicine docs tend to function very well in settings where they have limited information and a lot of, you know, and decisions need to be made, they tend to function very well. Also. Emergency medicine docs tend to be not intimidated by procedures. We tend to be very procedurally oriented and we're not afraid of the unknown. So that's, you know, it's a group that tends to match that mindset very well. But it's not all easy, it's not all fun, and it's going to take several years to be able to support you and be ready for that.
[00:32:10] Speaker D: Great advice. Love hearing both the pros and the cons there. Obviously, you really love what you do and it really shines.
Tell us how can people learn more about Restore and what you're doing? And if anyone's interested in becoming a patient, tell us more information about where you're serving.
[00:32:29] Speaker C: I think the best, the best place to go for any information about our practice is first go to our website. It's www.restoremedicalspa.com. restore is R E S T O R. It has no E because we're very hip, classy people, so you gotta have a special name. And on there is information about us, about our team, about our procedures, everything else we're doing. And I think that's really the best place to go.
I think that when you look at our sort of, our Google reviews and the things our patients are saying about us on social media and everything, I think it really speaks for itself.
I am very, very, very proud of my team. I am exceptionally proud of the results that we give people. I think we do an incredible job and I would welcome anyone to check us out. I think we're fantastic.
I think you can't get better care anywhere, but I may be biased.
[00:33:22] Speaker D: Love it. And you're in Colorado, correct?
[00:33:24] Speaker C: Yes, ma'am. Denver. Denver and some surrounding stuff. Yeah.
[00:33:28] Speaker D: Love it. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Waples, for being on the Doc Lounge podcast today. We learned so much and great tips about becoming an entrepreneur from a physician standpoint. So thank you.
[00:33:41] Speaker C: Well, thank you so much for having me. It's absolutely been a pleasure and hopefully I'll talk to you again soon.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Thank you to all of our listeners. If you would like to be notified when new episodes episodes air, make sure to hit that subscribe button. And a big thank you to Pacific Companies. Without you guys, this podcast would not be possible. If you would like to be a guest, Please go to www.pacificcompanies.com.
[00:34:04] Speaker C: Thank.
