Building a Feedback Loop for Your Aesthetic Practice w/ Analytics and Training

Dr. Grant Stevens

Hello and welcome back to the Technology of Beauty where I have the opportunity to interview the movers and shakers of the beauty business. And today is no exception. Today I have the opportunity to interview Izhak Musli. Sorry, Musli. And Izhak actually is a good friend. So full disclosure, he also is married to Renato Saltz's daughter.

Let's just get that out right now. And all of you know Renato, who's been on this program. So welcome Isaac. So great to have you here. You flew out here today from Miami. Thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. I can't wait to hear about your new technologies that are gonna affect all of us in the field of aesthetics.

Izhak Musli

Thanks for having me. I'm so honored. I'm excited for that.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Good. And we are honored that you're here. So first of all, tell me a little bit about yourself. You have a very interesting story. You didn't grow up here in America,?

Izhak Musli

No. I was born and raised in Israel. Pretty much been in computers most of my life. That's really my technology side. I start 13 years. [What city were you born in?] In Israel, in Farba. It's near Tel Aviv. So if you think about Israel, it's divided into three. You have the north center, South. In the center most people know Tel Aviv, so it's really close to Tel Aviv. It's like center. Good city.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And your education was there in Israel?

Izhak Musli

Yeah, I did, like every good Israeli, did my mid school, high school army. So then I served in the Army for three years. I got a reward for excellent performance, and it's very common after the Army in Israel to just go travel.

I had a girlfriend at the time, she actually convinced me to come here to the US just for a little trip. And then I was planning to go to India. It's a very common location, destination. Cause during the army you don't make a lot of money. So you just want to try to maximize the coins. Came here. Originally planned only to stay for three months, work a little bit, travel, and then go back, I'm still here. Still saving after the Army.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I never made it back to India. Never made it to India. Oh my word. That's cool. And where did you come first when you came to the States? Where'd you start? Curious, where does an Israeli.

Izhak Musli

First place I land in the US was Lake Charles, Louisiana. End of the world.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Welcome to America.

Izhak Musli

That was shocking. Yeah, and I started in so I got a work permit when I came here. That was what my girlfriend was organizing at the time. That was part of the convincing, let's go to the US, work for a little bit, save and then go travel. So I came here, started to work in the malls, like a lot of the other Israelis that you probably meet. Tried to sell cosmetics, different stuff like. And at the end of the three months I did pretty well and the owners of the company extended the Visa for another year.

They took us all to Vegas. We were partying and they were like, do you wanna stay for another year? And I'm like, ah, I have plans. I don't know. I'll stay. And long story short, yes, that was 15 years ago.

Dr. Grant Stevens

so when did you get to Miami?

Izhak Musli

So while I was working in those malls and later I became a manager and I had my own stores.

At some point I interacted with another guy, Israeli guy which we share apartment together. He was also working, managing an area, and about two years later, after we got the chance to know each other, and we knew that I'm very technologist. I always like technology, always computer and. I got a call and he's listen Isaac, I know you're really good with computers.

We're starting a startup in Miami. I really want you to interview. I really want, I think you're gonna be good part of it. And at the time I had like retail stores about like 20 of them. I was doing well, but I didn't have the satisfaction. It wasn't my cup of tea. I liked technology. I, yes, built my own computer when I was 13.

And I'm like, that sounds interesting. What is it? And it was a point of sale, revolutionary. Like a disruptive for those little stores, mom and pop. before Clover, before Square, taking them from cash register and move them into computer. And I pick up the phone, traveled to Miami, did an interview, loved the team.

I was the sixth employee in the company. Grew my way up, became the general manager of that company. We sold the company to an American cooperate in Texas. And at that time, that's really when I started Atlas. After the settle.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Okay. What he said is he started Atlas. So tell us about Atlas. That's a great story in and of itself. Before we get to the next one, yes it is. Tell us about Atlas.

Izhak Musli

When I ran the company, the Point of Sale company, I found myself using so many different softwares, like the ticketing system. I was a Salesforce admin as well, so I had Salesforce and I had a dashboard in Salesforce, but it wasn't speaking with the financial system, it was so many different programs, and I found myself spending so much time crunching data in Excel to get reports so I can make data driven decisions.

That's really what I always wanted. I don't like guessing. I decided, okay, I'm gonna solve it. We got acquired by American Corporate. We started to fly for quarterly meeting in Texas, everybody sitting weeks to prepare their presentation and present to the board and speak about their performance.

And every time we were there, I realized that we're speaking about things that happened last quarter, a hundred days ago, and I'm like, that doesn't make sense. I want real time live dashboard so we can speak about what happened already. Everybody needs to know it and let's speak about the future. And that's where I started to take the challenge.

I started to develop this business intelligence dashboard for myself, for my own purposes. And and over time I got the chance to visit Renato and he's Isaac, I know you do all this data stuff. Why don't you help me here? Look at my numbers. And I'm like, no problem. Show me your sales reports and all the reports that's coming from the hr.

He's I don't have it available. It's in the office, it's remote, it's on the. I'm like, okay, show me the financial. He's ah, that's the end of the month with my accountant. He send me the reports. I'm like, that doesn't make sense. Your practice make almost the same amount of revenue as the software company that I'm working for, and you dunno your data.

I'm like, there's so much more potential here. So I started to dive a little deeper into the challenge that really most of the physician have. The data is not available. They're not on top of it. They don't maximize, they leave so much money on the table. And I completely decided to shift the target instead of building it for myself.

I'm like, okay, I'm gonna build it for the aesthetic. And I realized that there isn't anything like that at that time in the industry. So we were really the first business intelligence dashboard for aesthetic practices.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Wait, I have to interrupt. Were you dating his daughter already? [I was married to her.] Okay. I just wanna get that out on the table. I would never get interest. So you had invested interest here. You're helping your father-in-law.

Izhak Musli

I have to make him happy. We know how politics works.

Dr. Grant Stevens

No I want to get that straight. So out of that, you grew which company? Wait a minute.

Izhak Musli

So that was Atlas KPI.

Dr. Grant Stevens

So that's how Atlas started. I did not know that. To help Renato Saltz.

Izhak Musli

Help Renato Saltz and other physicians. So we did a little of interviews. To visit a couple of practices and we figured that everybody have the same challenge.

And that's absolutely, we all do everybody. So that's when now we decide, okay, this is like I can help here so much more than helping SaaS companies. Cause there is solution for SaaS companies. Salesforce and all of those. They're really not available for aesthetic practices. Aesthetic practices are stuck with antiquated EHR systems that really holding them back from maximizing potential. And that became to be my mission. I want to help the practices to maximize the potential. And we went to the practice to understand how it works from the inside and everywhere I looked, I just saw opportunities.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And what year was that?

Izhak Musli

That was 2013 or 14, I want to say.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Unbelievable. So you kept developing Atlas, and then I met you.

Izhak Musli

That's when we met, one of my customers. Perry was one of my customers. Yes. That's right. Back to that. We'll get to that. We did pretty well.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yes. Plus I feel, and then you left us.

Izhak Musli

Then I solve it. I feel it. We and I don't regret. I look back and. It's still missing in the market. And that's gonna go into what we work on APX. But we had a couple of challenges that we were probably because we were ahead of the time, that's what I want to believe, because the EHR system just at that time wanted to move to the cloud.

Nobody wanted to integrate. That's right. The software world in SaaS companies, everything is integrated. Everybody work APIs, everybody understand that. You can just be a master of one. and if you want to really service your customers, you want to have everything integrated, speak to each other so they can have better experience.

Dr. Grant Stevens

But they did not want to do that. An EMR, they didn't want to share. That absolutely was a problem. That was an obstacle. So with that in mind, you ditched Atlas.

Izhak Musli

We didn't ditch, one of our investors came with opportunity and he was working with another company that he invested in the automotive for loan risk management.

They needed the analytics, they needed a dashboard. A lot of our intellectual property. And the opportunity was, it was great. We sold it out. We decided that we're fighting against the wind. Like they don't want to integrate, everybody want us to become a more consultant. And I didn't feel ethical to give consulting.

Like, how do you hire a nurse. Or your patient care coordinator, or we will show the data like your conversion rate. And people are like, okay, so how am improving it? I, I just show you the data you need to know how you're going to improve it. So we were not consultants and that was a missing piece.

And long story short, the opportunity came. I'm like, okay, next. We sold it out and I was looking around and I realized that there is a much low hanging fruit than that. Let's focus on leads management. That's when I started medical PRM. So right as we sell it, as we go due diligence and start to sell the company, I'm already working punching code, creating this medical PRM lead management platform for aesthetic practices.

I realize that if the practices will start to follow up on the leads, as they come get notifications, make sure that they actually following up more than one time, which is against all statistics of aesthetic practices. Normally a patient calls, if he didn't schedule the appointment on that call, you're never gonna get a follow.

And it's statistically, actually, scientifically it takes five times to convert somebody if you didn't convert them the first time. So I develop it with a lot of knowledge of Salesforce in mind. So I wanted to come and take and manage the campaigns so people will understand cost of acquisition and the referral sources and the conversion by referral sources.

And I built it very nice. And I started beta and I had a couple of customers, and then Simplest came and they were like, we love what we, we won't acquire that. And while I was still in beta, I merged it into Simplast again, the deal was good. I felt like maybe together with an ehr. Cause again, right away, even with the beta, are you gonna integrate to our EHR?

And, again, the Atlas kind of like flashback. And and I was like, okay, there is opportunity here to merge it with EHR and really change this industry and help the, and that's what we did. I merged into Simplast I did a good run with them for about a year and a half. Started as a chief product officer, helped to like solidly solidify the roadmap for what is missing, what are the gaps right now, what practices needs from ehr.

It's very advanced, it's mobile. It do a lot of very cool things, but it was missing some fundamental other stuff that I know that practices are really relying memberships, gift cards, stuff like that. So I was helping to focus on, Then the focus changed into let's focus on growth. And I changed position into Chief Revenue Officer operated as Chief Revenue Officer for a little bit.

And I felt I like what I do, but I'm not fired up. Like when I was in Atlas or medical prm. And then one of the conferences I met Terri and. She showed me what she's working on and it was APX.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Wait, you met Terri. Who's Terri?

Izhak Musli

Terri Ross. Ah, she doesn't need an introduction. She was on your show.

Dr. Grant Stevens

That's right. So he's referred to Terri Ross? So you met Terri at one of the shows?

Izhak Musli

Yeah, one of the shows I was presenting c plus. She was presenting APX and I was like, show me what are you working on? And she's it's analytical, it's training, it's this platform. It's amazing. And during Covid I was overloaded with work.

I just democratized everything I do on consulting and put it into a software platform. And I was like, started to look around into learning more about what she does and I got excited. I was like, this is an opportunity to do what I intend to do all the way from the beginning. The analytics, the training, and really maximize the potential.

So it's not just the analytical tool. If somebody ask me, okay, now what do I do about it? How do I improve conversion? I have the answer in the same platform, you do the trainings. So it was the yin and yang. I was so excited about it.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And what year was that?

Izhak Musli

This was like few months ago.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah. It was in 21, wasn't it? And and you guys came together under the same platform and you're co CEOs or something?

Izhak Musli

Yeah, we're co CEOs. And the people that knows us understand how it works really well. I'm very analytical, more on the technology side. Terri is more on the sales side, more on the training side, so he was really like complimenting each other's.

And again, Terri, I know her since the days of Atlas. She was one of my customer when she used to run her own MedSpa. Up in Beverly Hills. She was great client of ours. She loved the analytical side. She did amazing performing and we always stayed in touch. We were presenting together in conferences.

We were on the podcasts together. We stayed in touch all the time. We stayed really good friends and yeah, and when the opportunity came, it was, I felt that it's the right move and I'm not looking back.

Dr. Grant Stevens

So do me a favor, you have a number of audiences actually, but explain to say the physician audience.

Explain to the physicians what Atlas can do to improve their lives or their practice. And then we're, APX, not Atlas, beg your pardon. I'm gonna ask you about strategics in industry also. Okay? But for the physician person who is watching this right now or listening, what does APX do for that practice and for that physician?

Izhak Musli

So think about APX. Think about three main modules. It start from training, analytics, and community. And that's also the way that we implementing it, everything starts from the foundation of the practice, the train of everyone, from the doctor to the front desk, how to answer the phone when somebody calls, how to follow up on the leads, all the way to how to set up your QuickBooks, how to convert patients in the consult room.

How to really manage your business from the different aspects of financial, operational, and sales. And we'll get to the other partners opportunities. And there is very interesting things, even with influence, and that's on the training side. Then from there, once you understand all the foundations and everybody's set up, then goes into the fin, into the analytical side.

And then under analytics we have the financial and operational calculators that really help to do almost like aha moment. It shows you profitability by service, by provider, by room, by machine. Then they also show you also capacity, so you know what you need to maximize. And a lot of the times what we see, and especially recently, Numbing creams and stuff like that, instead of keeping them in the same room that can generate money, you move them to a separate room so the room can continue to generate more revenue.

And that's one of the examples of people like just realizing that putting somebody there for half an hour, wasting they're leaving money, they can generate. So once you start to measure times and capacity and revenue and profit, you start to connect the dots. Obviously it goes beyond it.

Cause compensation and goal tracking and in the forecasting, a lot of those kind of things. So it's all those gap reports and insight that you cannot get from any EHR in the park, in the static. So they can stay with the antiquated. But we are taking that data and we say, okay, if you look at sales report today, you know how much sales you made, but you don't know what to do about.

And that really was the challenge. How do we take that and say, what is it that you can do about it? And it's not the number of sale, but it, what was your sales potential to get? And then the training to get you there. So that is between the training and the analytics. Then you have the community. We realize that a lot of practices go through the same challenges.

I wanna do open house, what do I need to know? What offers should, what can I do to get more people in my practice? Or I want to increase price. How do I break it down to my patients without losing them? All of the, every pa, every practice go through the same thing, but they don't speak with each other, so they don't share that knowledge.

So we decided to get this community, which is weekly calls. It's coaching. We let practices interact with each. ask questions live on like a zoom almost, something like that. When they can speak with each other. We have consultants on the call, so they can always be guidance if they don't know how to solve it.

Or if it's something like crazy my employees don't want to get injections right. Or stuff like that. And it's amazing to see how they interact and help to each other. It's we learning from it. Even like some practices are very creative with the way that they overcome, like increase of pricings and stuff like that.

So we learn from that. We help to advise. We have forms that is exclusive to our users where they can also feel free to share. Everybody can be a little bit vulnerable because that's your opportunity to ask the right questions and get true answers from people who went through that. There is no one smarter from the person who already went through that and end up successful. So that is, those are the main three areas, if you think about it again, it's training analytics community right now.

Dr. Grant Stevens

That's fantastic and I can't think of a single practice that can't benefit from that. It's just so obvious to me. Now, Put on another hat. You're now a strategic, you're Allergan, you're verse your Revance, your Galderma, you're elastin and so forth.

Keep on going. Obviously, to the extent the practice utilizes more of their product, they benefit, correct? Correct. If more RHA is sold by Revance, Revance benefits, and likewise, and all the companies, So it seems intuitively obvious that to me, that if the practice do be does better than the strategics, the providers of the products do better.

But could you address a little bit more on a granular level, like why would any of these companies want to get involved with your company?

Izhak Musli

Yeah. Let's take, I think one of the best example is Allergan. Very well known with all the consultants. A lot of money that they spend in practice management, from the understanding of exactly what you said.

The better the practice perform, the more they consume from them. And one of the things that we really teach during inside our platform is to do treatment plans. So for a lot of surgeons, it's not obvious when a patient comes in to also sell them some creams before, or creams after, or some laser treatments in addition to just the p.

and that's really where a lot of those companies can benefit and benefiting actually. Cause there is so many practices who are underperforming today. And like we said, the better those practices scale up. And you probably know your practice performing amazing. You get services from Allergan, they want to help you to continue to grow when you already get to that level. But so many practices are not at that level and don't enjoy from all those benefits. From consulting to help them to work. So we want to take those practices all the way to that level where they can start to consumer, whether it's Allergan, whether it's elastin.

Adding those creams into every purchase. You don't wanna send your patients to Walmart to buy their cream after they get surgery. It just doesn't make sense. It's not service it, you don't do them justice. The full service is really what the patient want. They come to you, they want the full. Don't tell me, go there to buy the cream and then go there to get the laser and then come back. I'll do you the operation and then you go back to buy the same, no. One stop shop.

Dr. Grant Stevens

But how does your company do that? How do you coordinate that, integrate that?

Izhak Musli

That's what we teach them. We teach them to teach them all the way from the front desk, how to service with the retail products, all the way to the doctor, how to speak about treatment.

You don't just speak about procedure, you speak about results. What do you want? I want to look better. I wanna look younger. I'm not coming. I maybe schedule a consult for facelift, but it's a lot more than just a facelift. It's, I need a full service. You need to tell me what is it that I need, and that's what we teach.

Now it's not, of course, just increase the revenue per patient, but it's also service your patients better. They become a lot more loyal. They understand they're happier. They get the results that they really came. Because just a face lift, not always gonna give them, take them to really where they want to be.

Dr. Grant Stevens

It sounds like you're talking about patients for life. It's patients for life and it sounds like you're talking about the icing on the cake.

Izhak Musli

It is.

Dr. Grant Stevens

How to optimize. Yeah, that's exactly, and somewhere I've heard about both those concepts.

Izhak Musli

You know them. My God.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Very well. So if we incorporate your methods, your analytics, and your counseling and your education and so forth into our practices, we'll have happier patients.

Correct? They'll look better. They'll feel better. They'll continue coming in and industry will sell more products. And everyone benefits. What's the downside? What's the cost? Walk us through what that looks like. Do the patients, excuse me. Do the doctors pay for you? Do the industry pay for it. What does it look like, feet on the ground?

Izhak Musli

Okay, so most of practices today, just by our service, they pay yearly upfront. They use it. They create users for older users in the practice. Really everybody that works in the practice needs to know their stuff. We train them by the different, So there is things that maybe the front desk don't need to know.

They don't need, they don't really care about the QuickBooks, but your patient care coordinator potentially care about cross all the operation and the sales. So you really fit the different trainings and you get them certified. So you get standardized training across your practice. That takes, I'll say commitment because we, I like to compare it like going to the gym.

I can sit and say, oh, I want to get skinnier, I wanna get better. I want to. You're also gonna need to go to the gym and you're gonna need to work out. And it's not always fun sitting learning. It's not always fun. Once you get it, then you have the knowledge, then it's makes sense. Once you start to work out, then you learn how to enjoy it.

But the beginning, it's a little hard. You go through exercise data that maybe you didn't think about it before. You don't have it accessible. I need to go and look for it and find it and go through. and that really, that's the commitment that they need to do. That's the kind of I'll say the downside.

If we look for, it's, it takes work, it's not magic, it's not you put it and boom, suddenly everybody start. You need to make sure that you're, everybody in your staff go through the training. You need to take the training, you need to do the data analysis. And then you need to do something. and that's, I'll say the work that they need to put in once they buy it.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Okay. And your company is called APX, but it's APX, is that correct?

Izhak Musli

It's spelled APX platform. And, but we, the nice way to say it is "apex".

Dr. Grant Stevens

So if we want to learn more about it, we look for APX, correct? Is that right?

Izhak Musli

Apxplatform.com.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Have you networked with any of the strategics any of these other companies out there helping you provide this for practices?

Izhak Musli

I'm curious. So we speak with a lot of the different companies and they understand the win between the practice will do better. They will do. and we starting pilots with few of them. We actually have very deep conversation with laser companies and once things will get signed we're under nda, so right.

Not gonna give the names, but we're speaking with role in the APX sponsor for the practice their first year of using APX. Understand that now that you generate for them leads, because a lot of those laser companies are cutting off craving like 10,000, 15,000, 5,000 even to generate leads.

They're promoting the practice that now sell their. And people call the practice, but if they don't know how to speak about their laser, they don't know how to sell it. They don't know how to convert. They're really wasting money and wasting the practice time. So once they wrap their head around it, then it makes a whole sense.

Instead of me investing 10,000 getting in leads, I can invest 5,000, but it will do so much better, and my service. So everyone benefits. Exactly. So that part of the conversation that we have, and very soon we're gonna start some pilots and it's very exciting.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Very exciting. I want to thank you for coming out here from Miami. I've learned a ton and I'm sure our viewers and listeners have learned a lot. It sounds like you're just at the beginning.

Izhak Musli

And we are 150 practices using already.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah, I can see the day coming we have 15,000 practices. That is the goal. This is a quite a great opportunity for these practices and for industry.

I can certainly see where industry would wanna support you. To maximize these practices and their growth and their conversions and so forth. A hundred percent. So again, thank you for sharing this with us. No, thank you. And we wish you nothing but the best of good fortune. You and Terri, thank you and have a safe trip back to Miami.

Thank you so much. I really Terrific. Appreciate it. And I want to thank all of you for joining us once again on the technology of beauty where I have the opportunity to interview the movers and shakers of the beauty business. And as you can see, I had the opportunity to interview a disruptor and a mover and a shaker, someone who's moving people's cheese and educating and optimizing practices.

And I want to thank Isaac for coming today, and I want to thank you for joining me and listening and watching. Every Tuesday we're on, you can go to the technology of beauty.com and look at. Shows that we've done and you can watch us or listen anytime. Take care.