Leveraging Technology to Create the Optimal Patient Experience

Dr. Grant Stevens

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 certainly no exception. Because with us today, not one mover and shaker, but two. We have Carrie Strom and Jasson Gilmore from Allergan. Welcome Carrie. Welcome Jasson.

Full confession. They're my friends also and they've come up from Irvine home of Allergan Aesthetics. Thank you so much for coming up. I've been waiting for this for over a year, Carrie.

Carrie Strom

I know, but better late than never, right Grant?

Dr. Grant Stevens

You bet. You bet. And Jasson, that goes for you also. Well, thanks for having us.

We get both of you. Movers and shakers. Okay, let's start with you Carrie. Where'd you grow up?

Carrie Strom

I actually grew up in Irvine, California.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And where'd you go to high school?

Carrie Strom

University High school, home of the Trojans.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I went to Katella High School. K high State High.

Jasson Gilmore

Oh, I think we played each other.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah, my parents went to Anaheim High School.

Carrie Strom

You're a local guy too.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah, my grandparents went there also. Yeah, I was born in St. Joe's Hospital. Where are you born?

Carrie Strom

Hoag. I was born there. Then I had my son Henry there too.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Well, I was born in St. Joe's, where my mother was born, my 89 year old mother who lives in the Balboa Bay Club.

And my nephews and nieces were born there also. So three generations there. A strong legacy in the OC. How about you, Jasson? Where are you from?

Jasson Gilmore

The East Bay area, Northern California. And then I went to UC Irvine. That brought me to the Irvine community.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Did you guys know each other at Irvine?

In that area?

Jasson Gilmore

No. No, she's, she went to Colorado. I went to UCI.

Carrie Strom

I'm much, much older than Jasson.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Well, I'm not gonna get, I'm not gonna touch that cause I'm, I'm the oldest here. I'm not gonna touch that. So you grew up in Irvine. And you went off to Colorado? And then what brought you back to Irvine?

Carrie Strom

Well, after Colorado, I took my first job in pharmaceuticals at Pfizer. It was a sales rep job in Providence, Rhode Island. It was in the year 2000. And they weren't hiring too many places. And so I was very lucky to get my foot in the door in New England in Providence. And that's where I started my career at Pfizer.

And then after a few years in sales, I moved into marketing in New York City. And it was after 11 years at Pfizer that I decided to move back to Irvine, just personally and professionally. It was time we were having babies and wanted to be closer to home. And I got an offer I couldn't refuse to move to Allergan, which was based in Irvine.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And what year did you come back to Allergan? 2011. Were you with David Pyatt then?

Carrie Strom

Yes. He was the CEO at the time. And a great CEO then. And still beloved now.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Absolutely. And a dear friend of ours, all of ours. And what did you do initially when you came back to Allergan? Working with Davis?

Carrie Strom

Oh, I was so excited. The job that I came back for Allergan was a huge part of why I left Pfizer. It was to launch Botox for its first indication in the bladder. And I had worked at Pfizer in the overactive bladder market. And so it was a nice transition. Although Botox was new, the category was familiar to me.

Okay. And I knew many of the customers and the technology is so, it's so important for patients and for the urologists. And so that was a lot of fun to be able to launch Botox therapeutic for its first bladder indication. And that's how I fell in love with Botox. And the rest is history a few years on the therapeutic side.

And then we transitioned to the cosmetic side around 2014.

Dr. Grant Stevens

So you went to aesthetics in 2014? Which is only eight years.

Carrie Strom

Yeah. Well, it feels like a long time in some ways. But in other ways, there's people like you who've built this market and this business, and still so much to learn from.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Well, thank you very much. But I think of you as being in the aesthetics market for like 20 years. So that's news to me.

Carrie Strom

Well, I take that as a compliment.

Dr. Grant Stevens

No. You've been in it and now you're the boss. What is your proper title? I always call you Your Highness.

Carrie Strom

Yes, that works. At work, they call me the President of Global Allergan Aesthetics, and the Senior Vice President of AbbVie.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Okay, cool. How about you? Where'd you went to college? Where?

Jasson Gilmore

UC Irvine, UCI. Yeah, that's how I came to orange County. Political science. I wanted to be a lawyer. And I fell into a startup company while I was still going to college. And that took over my life. As work as work can do.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Tell everybody the name of that startup. I remember it well.

Jasson Gilmore

Oh, that was, that was actually before we met. This was two startups before I met you. Oh my. It was a little tiny company. I was actually employee number one that was doing digital media platform websites and worked there. I was basically the general manager, although that wasn't the title.

I probably wasn't even making a thousand bucks a month doing that job. But it was a great job cuz I learned a lot about business. I bookkeeping to sales, to accounts payable, accounts receivable, all those fun things. And that business got sold and a colleague of mine from that company and I started a, another business, a startup business that was a, another digital media business.

And that the rest was history. I never went to law school.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And that was why you were still in college, the second business. So you had graduated in.

Jasson Gilmore

I had graduated, I had graduated in '04, and obviously had no interest in the law at that point. Was much more interested in startup companies and yeah, then we started that business.

I think we properly founded it in '06. And then ran that for really the next 10 years. And we had a couple of businesses that spun off of that. And I met you during the course of that. And part of our business was in aesthetics actually, and in lead generation in particular.

And it's, it's interesting. Allergan actually was a client of mine, never a substantive client. I think our, it was about aesthetics is maybe about 20, 25% of our business from a revenue standpoint. So it was meaningful but not huge. And it got me interested in, in, in the technology and digital media world. So never would've imagined I'd be a pharmaceutical executive.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And then, how did you then get to Obalon?

Jasson Gilmore

So that's a, that's a very good question. So after I sold my startup company I went to work at the acquiring business as their head of sales and operations for about a year.

And thought that's, it was this big giant corporation based in New York. A lot of travel wasn't really my, wasn't my jam. And I thought I wanted to go back and start up. So I did some consulting and Obalon actually started as a consulting contract for me. A friend of mine was the head of marketing there.

And knew some folks that were, were there in sales, some, someone we share a mutual relationship. And ended up looking at that business and thought health is interesting, healthcare is an interesting space. It's, it's an interesting space for someone with my background.

If we can help patients find solutions to their problems using digital media and technology solutions that seems like a problem we're solving. So Oblon was interesting to me because obesity as, is the largest chronic disease state on the planet. It's upstream of a lot of more serious illnesses, heart disease, cancers, other things like that.

So it felt like if I can be part of a, a small team that helps solve that problem, I thought it was worth, worth doing.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Indeed. And then you left Obalon and then took a little hiatus. And then next thing I know you're with Uncle Al, Allergan.

Jasson Gilmore

It's this improbable landing spot. I was looking at a, a few different ventures doing some consulting work, and Allergan was looking at doing a digital innovation project. And so that, that was interesting to me. I live right down the street from Allergan. Obviously they have a suite of products that are just market-leading, unquestionably market-leading.

Really enjoyed the aesthetics market. When you look at the potential size of the market there's over 65 million people in the United States that are interested in receiving aesthetic treatments. We're, we're connecting with fewer than 10% of those people on a routine basis.

There was just, as we were coming up here, there was an economist article that said that the current size of the aesthetics market globally is 60 billion, and it's projected to triple over the next 10 years. So you see this ex incredible growth in this space and the potential of it. And I thought, well, it's an interesting project.

I don't think either of us, she hired me unfortunately for her, but I don't think any of us really anticipated that the work would evolve as it has. But we've been very lucky to have customers and, and relationships with people like you. You were actually my very first customer visit on this job, which was very appropriate, obviously. And you were the one that told me, you gotta fix brilliant distinctions. This is a nightmare having to check people out for 15, 20 minutes. Do you remember that visit? I absolutely.

Dr. Grant Stevens

He, he brought me and let's talk about that. So you wanna talk about, okay, that was a pain point for all, for not only myself, right, but for all the practices. And then Carrie hires you.

Carrie Strom

And I'll tell you, Jasson's skillset is so important for what we do. And it's a great example of how the profile of the talent that we need to drive our business moving forward continues to evolve. Jasson is a small business owner and our customers are small business owners.

And so who better to understand the trials and tribulations and problems to be solved of our customers, right. Than somebody who has, has been in those shoes. And even better in aesthetics, like he said, about a quarter your business was in the aesthetics market. So we understood the unique nuances of aesthetics.

And also the customers had great relationships with people like you and other very influential customers and aesthetics. And so I think that really was a huge opportunity for us to, to bring someone like Jasson on and. what he's been able to do. You mentioned brilliant distinctions in Allé. We always joke that when I hired him I said you need to fix there.

There's this program called Brilliant Distinctions, and you need to fix it. We'll deal with everything else later. And and it ended up being much, so much bigger than we ever thought and in all the right ways and all. I never forget when you went to his office in Marina Delray and it was first week on the job and you were parked in his office.

And you were sitting there with the office staff helping the patients check in and check out. And that's no better way to understand firsthand, what needs to be solved than seeing it with your own two eyes.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah. And he saw how painful it was. Or how laborious.

Carrie Strom

And in hindsight we could because, and we should talk about Allé, the progress that we've made there.

I would say in brilliant distinctions defense, it was still a great program with million, absolutely. Millions of consumers that were part of it. It's an example of what worked 10 years ago isn't going to work now.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And you've streamlined.

Carrie Strom

And we have. But we can't accept 2010 technology in 2022. Just because, as you know running the technology of beauty, it's at such a rapid pace moving forward. And so what we have now is such a better solution for brilliant distinctions. Like I said, it worked then, but it doesn't work now. And now we have all and I'm really excited about how Allergan Aesthetics is looking at technology moving forward from a product pipeline standpoint.

We will launch more new products via our Allé technology platform than we will through our R&D pipeline. And of course that doesn't, we, we will still have some very significant R&D products that we'll be continuing to launch in the next five and 10 years. But I'm really excited when people ask me what's one of the things you're most excited about?

It is this Allé technology product pipeline. Because in the next year or two it will, you're gonna launch multiple new products. So maybe Jasson could talk a little bit about Allé and how it's different than brilliant distinctions and what we have in store for the future.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And we all wanna know.

So take your time. How is it different? How is it better? And brilliant Distinction. Distinctions at the time was the state of the art. Right? Right. But we've moved on. And to your. and now we have something that's streamlined and you're gonna introduce new products and services. So yeah, let us know.

Yeah, give us a look under the hood.

Jasson Gilmore

Yeah, no, happy to. I think well, I think Carrie said it well if you look at the legacy of Allergan. And you look at these amazing products we have, we have an, an amazing sales and marketing organization, great leadership, R&D and credit to AbbVie, really.

I think post AbbVie. We've been part of AbbVie now nearly two years. I think our I think it's correct that our R&D investments nearly doubled in aesthetics over the last couple years. So that will continue, obviously be the lifeblood of our business. Without question, what I learned watching your staff there with, with brilliant distinctions was that as, as Carrie said, having run a small business you have to.

A thousand hats and maybe I'm exposing, you were, right before this podcast started. You were always being your, your own chief marketing officer looking, looking at an email that you're gonna send to your patients and coordinating with your team around that. And if you think about all of the jobs that have to be done by a small business owner, a medical professional one of my best friends is a dermatologist.

You look at these are very, very highly educated, extremely passionate people. They're providing care to their patients, but they're also having to do bookkeeping. They're also having to, think about email marketing templates. They're to show are all kinds of, all the wonderful joys that come with running a business.

And, and it's your business. At the end of the day, you're on the hook financially for, for all of the obligations you sign up for, you sign up for a lease, you're buying equipment, you're doing all this stuff. And as we've looked at ways to help truly partner better, more closely with our healthcare providers one of the things you can't ignore.

is the operational inefficiencies that technology can address. And when I was sitting there watching your staff checking out in brilliant distinctions and, and to Carrie's point, look, brilliant distinctions was very successful. You're, you weren't using it. there was a reason you were using it.

Patient loved it. Patients loved it. We had over six and a half million consumers in that program. It had over 10 years. We had tens of thousands of providers that were using it in the US so it was clearly doing something right. Now, of course, the technology had become antiquated over time.

And as we looked at that, we thought, okay, well that's unacceptable, as a market leader, we can't put the burden of administering our program onto your staff. That's not appropriate. But then what are all the other things that our customers need us to perform here? What are the, some of the things that they want?

We, one of the things that came through loud and clear is the, the desire for promotional capabilities that extended beyond just simple points. And recently, just literally in the last two weeks, we launched a new capability called Allé Flash, which that's right, is a personalization tool for consumers who walk into your office to scan a QR code and then based on their treatment history, can earn additional promotional dollars towards other procedures.

And the purpose of this is very simple. It's, it's a way to enable your, your folks, your injectors, your cool sculpting specialists, to give them an upselling tool to help introduce and educate consumers who might be interested in other procedure that are a little shy about, about asking about it. And I've seen some interesting data on this where we saw some market research recently where three quarters of injectors.

Even experienced injectors wait for a consumer to talk about what they want. If you're looking at a neurotoxin treatment, but you're thinking about a filler product, the injectors wait for the consumers to bring it up, and guess what? The consumers wait for the injectors to bring it up. So what are the tools that we can provide to help make it easier to have those kinds of conversations so patients ultimately get the best outcomes they can.

So Allé Flash is really designed to help do that. And I think that ultimately the, the, the project of Allé is really reflective of a larger ethos in our company. We've had, for example, Allergan practice consultants for many, many years. Way before Allé was a twinkle in anybody's eye.

We have always, I think, looked at ways that we can help build durable businesses with great patient outcomes. When you think about Allergan Medical Institute and its training services so we've always done that and I think the extension of all into technology to make the operational efficiencies of our provider's offices better is really just an extension of a long history of Allergan doing that type of work.

So it's a great, it's a great opportunity. I love what I do.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah. And that comes through. And when you started, you weren't you employee number one in your division. And now don't you now have well over a hundred people in your division?

Jasson Gilmore

I've some, some of our sales leaders like to joke around that there's 9,000 people in my employee. It's not, it's not exactly right.

Dr. Grant Stevens

What is your title? What is your technical title? I've been asked this many times.

Jasson Gilmore

It depends on who you ask. I'm asking you. I well, well, I can ask your boss. Yeah, she would know. She would actually know. So I'm the senior Vice President of Global Consumer and Digital marketing for the, for the aesthetics business.

So what that means in practices, so, things like social media, for example. Our TV commercials it has a number of different flavors. As you said, it's a fairly large team now, and I was the first person in the team. It was fun. it felt like a. Like when I indeed, when I was doing the original hiring I'd interview people from startup backgrounds.

Most of the folks that work in my group are not from pharmaceuticals. And when I would interview them and they look at my background, they say, well, you spent 15 years in small startups this, isn't this like a culture clash? I said, not really at all. I feel like Allergan is the, it's like Reno.

It's like the biggest small, it's like the biggest small company in the world. Like when you meet these people and you go to these meetings your sales meetings or customer meetings, it really feels like a family reunion. It doesn't feel like a giant, faceless corporation at all. The, the, the closeness and the intimacy of the relationships, not just inside the business but also with the customers is very, very tangible and palpable.

And so I, I enjoyed that very much. I think if that wasn't the culture, I think it would've been hard for somebody with my background coming from small 15, 20, 25 person company. That, that would've been very difficult. But it's been great. It's been fun. But yeah, I was employee, I was employee one.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah, that's what I always tell everybody.

Jasson Gilmore

And as far as my job, I think there's, there's different facets to it, obviously, but I think the simplest way to characterize what I do is my job ultimately is to bring. Consumers into this market and keep the ones who are in it. In it. That's how I think about it.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And when you talk about flash, which is relatively new. For a lot of our listeners and watchers watching this program, they maybe haven't heard of Flash. And I know it's second nature to you. Could you elaborate a little more from the user experience, what they. They come in the office, they have the QR code. We talked about the QR code. They scan it. So tell us a little bit more what Flash looks like to the consumer.

Jasson Gilmore

So it's very, very simple. You're right. We make everything complicated. There's been a ton of work. No, no, no. We do. Well, it, it's just like anything.

If you're doing a, a surgery on a patient you have decades of training and, and research and understanding and you've spent the time to learn it. But to the, to the end patient, It should be relatively straightforward. they don't need to know all of that.

That's where your expertise comes in. So obviously there's a ton of work that went into developing the personalization engine that is underneath it. because obviously if the, if we're, if you walk into my office and you see a little QR code and the front desk person says, Hey Grant, why don't you scan that and see if Allé will you'll win anything.

And all you do is you take a picture of that use just, no, because of covid. Now we're all very familiar with QR code technology. Sure. Absolutely. It, it will look up your Allé account if you're a member. If you're not a member, that's fine. You can register, and it will, based on your prior treatment history, match you with a potential promotion based on that.

So, if you've never treated with us before, it may or may not deliver a promotional offer to you. Okay? The whole point of it is that it gives your office an opportunity to have an educational discussion about some of the other services that you provide. That's really, it's, it's, so, it's very, very simple if you're a consumer.

Dr. Grant Stevens

So the patient comes into the offices, is in the front office, is in the treatment room, is upon it walking into the office.

Jasson Gilmore

So our intent is that they check in with it.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Okay? So I take my phone, I scan the QR code, and now I hit the lottery, I win something. And it's based on, it's probably something I haven't had before. Is that correct?

Jasson Gilmore

Right. It may be. It may be more likely. May likely be. It depends on certain things by cross-selling. Yeah, that's right. And it, well, and it could be, it could be other things too. It could be non-financial things. Points. We're looking at other kinds of constructs to provide.

Carrie Strom

The point is that, unlike Allé, which has been traditionally a checkout. You get your procedure done and then you check out and you get your points, which we'll continue to do. This now also introduces a check in component through Allé Flash. So I come into Dr. Steven's office, I do my QR code, surprise and delight.

Right? Looks like I got an opportunity to add to a hundred dollars off of another treatment as long as I'm in here for the first treatment. And then the staff is saying, oh, congratulations Carrie. This is great and we'll make this happen. And when you come in, you can get these two treatments instead of the one and use.

These points that you just got? And then after the treatment, I Go ahead as usual and check out with the, based on the procedures that I got.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Okay. So we've gamified it in a sense. That's it. It's fun. You don't know what you're gonna get. It's kinda like an Easter egg hunt.

Jasson Gilmore

Do you have the Starbucks app?

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yes, absolutely.

Jasson Gilmore

The 3:00 PM little promotion they send you? That's right. Have an ice drink or whatever. It's the same thing. It's, it's just another way for our providers to engage their consumers, to keep it fun and interesting to keep patients coming back.

Retention's a big part of our strategy. Ally is a massive program from a investment standpoint. We look at things like patient retention at the practice level. Our APCs do a lot of this work with their. Do you have an APC? I hope so.

Dr. Grant Stevens

What is an APC?

Jasson Gilmore

An Allergan practice consultant.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Of course I do. So you, I don't call 'em an APC.

Jasson Gilmore

You probably call them by their first name at this point. You hopefully have known them a long time. So that type of analysis. One of the great benefits that that team provides to our customers is they'll come in and they'll actually take a look at how long are your patients with you on average, and what are things that we can do, simple things that we can do.

To help keep patients happy and keep them coming back. And so this is another tool to help do that. The whole Allé loyalty program, the ability to earn points is really about bringing patients back and keeping them happy. So this is just another step in that direction.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah, I think it's brilliant. I'm really happy you're doing this. The flash program seems so, like, so much fun and the front office likes it, so.

Carrie Strom

And it is for sure fun and surprise and delight, but it's also, like Jasson said, grounded in strategy. And based on insights that we know are important to our customers and our patients.

Like you said, if there's an opportunity for a patient who's getting treated with toxin to also get treated with a filler and that conversation isn't happening because neither one is bringing it up, flash can help to prompt that discussion right. In a way that is is easy for everyone to have. And you mentioned patient retention.

Patient retention is another great example of something that's important to everyone. And unfortunately right now with toxins, about half of all consumers who start with a toxin don't get their second toxin and or their second treatment. And we know that that opportunity could be up to 70 to 80%. So why is it at 50 and how can we use technology like this if we can leverage our personalization engine to help nudge somebody to get that second treatment?

Via flash or via our other efforts to communicate with our consumers. That's great for the consumer and it's great for the customer.

Dr. Grant Stevens

So in the customer's home, and she has been away from the practice for a few weeks or months, does she get nudged via text or email or do you nudge her? Now that she's part of Allé?

Carrie Strom

Jasson, as a part of the team that Jasson's built, he's brought a whole new discipline and function into organ aesthetics called personalization.

And there's, I'll let him speak to the really important work that this personalization team has done to do just that.

Jasson Gilmore

Okay. Part of, part of our job really is to keep patients Carrie Mason, the Reten. Keep 'em engaged and patients who have a good experience but otherwise get busy.

If you think about who our patient population is. is it working professionals? Life my poor dentist has texted me for five years to come in. Teeth, Gleaner. It's remind and I always intend to do it and I never do it. What we want is to make it easy to, to remain for aesthetics, really to be top of mind for our consumers.

We've been working towards this through personalization, which is you mentioned a nudge. It could be a text, it could be a social media ad, it could be an email message, it could be all of the above over the course of a period of time. We don't want to be harassing our consumers, obviously.

But we wanna make it easier for them to continue that engagement with their hcp. So this is really the work that we're doing. Flash is part of that and it, and it's working. We're looking at our retention metrics over the the Allé database and we're seeing meaningful.

Year over year in our retention rates, which I think is great for the industry. And really we do think about it at the industry level. we don't really think about it at the Allergan level. And I'll give you an example. So when we launched Allé Rewards last year.

Carrie Strom

When Brilliant distinctions turned into Allé.

Jasson Gilmore

Yeah. When we evolved from Brilliant Distinctions to the Allé program we had a few innovations we wanted to make sure. One was check out how to be dead simple. And 94% of our, we've done a bunch of surveys on this as you'd imagine to make sure we got the job. 94% of customers say that it's a, a good to excellent experience.

So I think we've nailed that job. That's good. You can check out now in under 20 seconds. Seamless. Now it's easy. It, it should, it should be easy. If you think about this industry we, we have a, a strong conviction that the market really hinges on value. It doesn't hinge on price, it hinges on value.

Right. So and values is the whole experience. It's not just the outcome that you see in the mirror, it's also the experience of doing these procedures. And we had to make it easy. And sitting there watching your staff, it was unacceptable. Right?

Dr. Grant Stevens

Right. And value can be expressed a lot of different ways, one of which is time.

Yes, absolutely. Cuz the most important asset valuable is time. So if you streamline it, then you're making it more valuable because you're conserving our time.

Jasson Gilmore

That's, that's exactly right. And we want to conserve staff time and patient time, right. Both. So they, they enjoy that.

And so we also have, have made other improvements. We started to offer points for all procedures, I think, well not maybe all, but 55 additional non Allergan procedures where patients can earn points on a whole slew of other things. And the reason we did that was very simple is that this retention question exists for all products, for all companies.

And the root of it is that patients get. They, they forget, they move on. Life gets in the way. Life gets in the way. And so if we can provide incentives for patients to stay engaged with their healthcare provider, if we can provide those nudges as you put it for them to come back I think that's good for the whole industry.

And so those are, those are some of the improvements that we're work. We're still working on it. We haven't figured it all out yet. When we get to 80%, then I can ride off into the sunset.

Carrie Strom

And I'd say that the team has also dug up some very interesting, actionable insights that our healthcare providers could implement to increase retention.

Yeah. In their own practice. There's three very simple best practices that we have found that our customers with the highest patient retention do. Do you wanna hear what they are? I sure do. We all do. Number one is full fa, this is on the injectable side, a full facial assessment with optimal dosing, meaning the customers that have the best retention are usually dosing and treating in a way that they're getting the, a full outcome and not being afraid of, well, I'm afraid they not wanna pay for this. We'll just put so many units here and, and do less. They're not afraid to do optimal assessment and give the patient full outcome.

Okay? Number two is the whole dentist model rebook before you leave. It seems simple, but not everybody does it. And so I know for my appointments that I at least know that I've got another one on the book. If I have to change it, I can, but at least I have a. an appointment change. And then number three is the option of a touchup and this communication at the two week mark.

Now imagine if you're a brand new patient or brand, this is your first time getting an aesthetic treatment. You don't know what to expect. Right? And that piece of mind, knowing that my healthcare provider's gonna check on me in two weeks, if for some reason something's not quite right, they're gonna fix it for me.

And often they don't take advantage of it cuz they don't need to. But it's that peace of mind that they know they can. And that all plays into this value equation and this customer experience that drives higher patient retention. Again, great for the patient because they're getting more consistent, better outcomes over longer time.

And very valuable for the customer to retain that patient.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And what's your recommendation regarding the cost of the touchup? Every practice does it differently. So what's the most successful, if you were starting your own practice today, you had your own practice, Carrie Aesthetics.

Carrie Strom

Which I'm not doing, but what I have, when I've talked to customers who are doing this really well, they bundle it all in to the, they don't wanna feel like the patient has to pay again.

Yeah. And often it's a unit here or there, or maybe it's nothing. And it's just looking and saying, okay, this actually looks great, showing a before and after. But I think it's about making them feel like it's all taken care of and they're getting that white glove treatment.

Dr. Grant Stevens

What if it's a syringe of filler?

Carrie Strom

Then I think that there's an opportunity, there's a few opportunities there. One is you're, which is even better because, if they're in this case, they're not a toxin patient, they're a filler patient. So you're able to take good care of them. You're able to do all those other things, rebook them for the next appointment. You're engaging them in Ally. And seeing, and then, so there's opportunities to take that a lemon to lemonade moment. And I believe that, and I found as a consumer myself, when this is the way that the, the people I'm working with treat me, that endears a lot of loyalty in the long term.

It's a short-term investment upfront. But it's a long-term payoff on the other side.

Jasson Gilmore

Yeah, I totally agree with Carrie. I think you know this better than we do this is, a lot of, this is psychology. Absolutely. And it's that, it's that sense that the provider cares about me as the patient.

And that two week touchup, whether it's filler or toxin, oftentimes they don't even end up. a product at all. It's just that talking through how do you feel about this? Especially if you're a new person and you've just jumped into this you've never done an aesthetic procedure before.

And we have a historically high number of, of net new patients coming into our category now as everybody knows. And, and there's many, many places you can look to, to, to prove that those patients require a higher touch earlier on than patients who've been with you for 15 or 20 years.

And so just having that, that two week touch point, it could for, for some of these patients, they're too busy. They're not gonna take the time to physically come back or, I've heard they do it over Zoom. They'll do it over zoom, they'll even do it over text. or text. It's just that, it's just a touch break.

How are you feeling? And, and, and practices that do that will increase their, those three things that she mentioned will increase their retention by 16%, which when you look at the lifetime value, every 500 neurotoxin patients of practice retains. Is is a million dollars in free cash flow over the lifetime of those patients.

So if you just do those three things that she's mentioning rebook, two week touch up proper dosing, that that adds up very meaningfully for a practice over the lifetime.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I couldn't agree with you more, and that's why I started a long time ago with the idea of patients for life.

Patients for life. And that whole patients for life concept. And the lifetime value of a patient in a plastic surgeon's office is much higher than what you just said, because we typically do up to three operations in a 20 year period. But all of 'em have at least two.

And we've documented this repeatedly over, over 25 years now. Cause I did the first study, I had 20. follow up and I started with my first 200 patients and I've done it. Now I've tracked it all the way to 35 years. Wow. And the lifetime value of a patient in a plastic surgeon's office is between 80 and 120,000 per patient.

And we have hard data to show it, not just isolated here and there. It's funny, yesterday I did two surgeries and one patient had been with me 20 something, and the other one looked at me and said, I've been your patient for 30 years. I said, please don't tell anybody. She said to me when I was 70 years old, you did my breast reduction and I told you I would never have another surgery from you again.

Today, yesterday. She's 85 years old, 15 years later, and she had her breasts re lifted. And I said, remember I told you when you're 70, if you care how you look when you're 70, you're gonna care how you look when you're 80. And here she is, 85. Her back was hurting a little bit, her neck and so forth, but mainly she want perkier breasts.

And you know what, I have a lot of 70 to 80 year old patients who care how they look and so forth. Now Jasson, you shared something with us. That I want to re-emphasize, because I, I think some of the viewers and listeners didn't hear what you said. And I want to go back because what you said, if I heard you right, is with Allé, you have 55 other products from other companies, non Allergan companies.

Correct. Would you please state that again because I don't think people know it. And I don't think they believe it, it's true. To tell you the truth. So Allan, Allergan sets the, the whole tone for the industry. Let's face it. Sure. Right? The best of the best, right. And yet here you have this rewards program and all the different things that Allé does, Allé, sorry.

But no one would ever believe. That you actually reward and incentivize people who consume other products. Correct. So can you tell me again, and I'm not editing it out. I want you to look at me, tell the consumers what you said, because this is huge.

Jasson Gilmore

Yeah. It's, it's actually a, a relatively lesser known feature of the Allé program.

We offer points earn to earn points it on procedures that are not Allergan procedures.

Carrie Strom

So, so give a couple examples.

Dr. Grant Stevens

So yeah, the examples, let's say I have a Restylane product injected in my face, do you reward me?

Jasson Gilmore

Yes we do.

Carrie Strom

You can earn points for anything, whether it's our products, somebody else's products, whether it's a laser hair removal, something outside of even the care, our areas where we provide.

Jasson Gilmore

Microdermabrasion.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Are you guys listening to this? Did you just hear that, Allergan is rewarding you even if you're using non elegant products? Did you hear that?

Carrie Strom

So, and the intent, like Jasson said, the problem to solve there is making it for our customers to use so they can have the single platform where they can have their patients earn points for anything that they're doing.

Dr. Grant Stevens

That's remarkable.

Jasson Gilmore

It's an ease of use and so generous. Well, the, we, we, we have to believe in our products. At the end of the day, the market dynamics with retention with that, that 50%. churn rate that Carrie pointed out. That's that's true of aesthetics in general. Every company's products face that headwind.

We, we need to keep patients in our market. We need to make it easier for our providers to keep their patients in the market. And we have to, we are the market leader, as you said. We have the. Commercial capacity to do this type of work, we can do it. We have to lead from the front.

And then we have to believe that on the backside of that exercise, if more patients are staying in the aesthetics market our products will stand on their own two feet. So that, that's the whole reason for it. And if it, a cynic was sitting here just to, to, to be fair to the cynics that are out there at the, ultimately this isn't some data play, it's not some share play.

That's not how we think about it. And the, and the reason why is when you look at our market and you say, okay, there's really 65 million people. When I first joined Allergan, there was this upside down pyramid chart that every single company that's a publicly traded company has. It's that upside down pyramid.

We've all seen it. We have, we're a wi, we're widget incorporated. And 7 billion people wanna buy widgets and we have the widgets and everybody's gonna buy our widget. Right? That pyramid. So I saw that same pyramid from Allergan. There's 65 million consumers in the injectable market who are considering.

And then you look at the, the flow through, and you say, well, okay, if we're only, if we're treating less than 10%, depending on how you look at it, where are all these people? Right. The, the mark, the market. This is, this is a still a very, in spite of all of the best efforts of all of the marketing, the market's growing like crazy, but we still haven't reached of that 65 million, there's 90% of them that are still sitting on the fence.

That's all of our competition. It's the status quo bias of the potential patient. It's not fighting like trench warfare. We're not fighting trench warfare. No. We want responsible competition in this market. Any company that's gonna come with real innovation, including our own, frankly, it has to take things like training seriously, technology.

Seriously marketing serious, that is where this market grows. So, so something like providing points on other procedures is really about how do we keep those patients coming back and happy. And then over time, the hope would be, obviously from Allergan's point of view, that they'll use our products too.

Right. If you look at your patients who are spending, you said between 80,000 and 120,000 over the lifetime value. I would hope that a, a decent proportion of the, that spend was on Allergan products.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Absolutely. And you have five buckets, and I want to go into one of them right now with you, Carrie, and that's body contouring.

You acquired cool Sculpting from Zeltiq a few years back, and then you've innovated, and you've offered them cool tone for muscle stimulation, and subsequently now Cool Sculpting Elite. Tell us a little bit about the elite package, the elite opportunity. And then what do you see in the future for cool sculpting or body contouring as it relates to the Allergan portfolio?

Carrie Strom

Well, our vision for body contouring is to make it the third strategic pillar. We have toxins. we have fillers, and we want body contouring to be that third leg of the stool as they say. And why, why? Because when you think about all the unmet needs that consumers have in aesthetics, forget about the solutions that Allergan has.

Just think agnostic of Allergan or anyone else. When you ask thousands of consumers what bothers you, aesthetically the number one concern? Body fat. Number five concern, cellulite, and then lines and wrinkles and folds and volume in the face are number 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. They're important because we have really great solutions to them and we should, we should capitalize on that.

But then how do you go into these incremental areas where there's so much unmet need for consumers and so much opportunity for all of us? And that's why we are building out our, our body contouring pillar, as you mentioned. It's it's really, it's Foundation is cool Sculpting. and Cool Sculpting Elite.

And we're continuing to launch Cool Sculpting Elite as we convert our base of cool sculpting systems to this next generation technology, which inc incre as much more efficient and can help drive what we know are better patient outcomes when you're optimally treated. it's the same insight we were talking about with patient retention.

Let's not just under dose somebody where they're still paying for something but they're not getting a full outcome. Give them an optimal treatment. or treat to transformation. And we know that that usually happens over two treatment cycles. And with a technology like Cool Sculpting Elite, it's more efficient and more likely to, to get to that key outcome.

And I mentioned cellulite. So we announced the our close of the acquisition of Soluton and we're very excited to bring that technology to life. We'll spend the next amount of time understanding the technology now that we own it and working through it and looking to launch it when we're, when we're ready to rock and roll.

But that is huge unmet need. And so we're excited to have multiple technologies that can solve multiple unmet patient needs in the body space. We also know that it's often the same aesthetic patient. The same patient who's interested in body fat. Muscle toning, cellulite is also gonna be a potential patient for injectables.

And that's where we see the opportunity for us to really drive this portfolio in a way that we're taking care of the patient's needs, but also for our customers that then they, when they're working with us, they're able to make it simple and easy to just have these products to, to really convert their patients to the lifetime patients.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And that's certainly where Flash would come in to introduce new products. And cuz some people maybe haven't heard of Soliton. Or the Resonic. And I know it's not out commercially quite yet. Nope. But that will be coming for sure. And cool Tone is another example of something that a lot of people don't know about.

Right. Certainly the new Cool Sculpting Elite. I will tell you, I'm a proud owner of a couple cool sculpting elites and we couldn't be happier. Which is not to take anything away from the other cool sculpting. We love it.

Carrie Strom

All right. It's like we were talking about with brilliant distinctions, an Allé. They're all good, but it's nice to upgrade to new technology. and that's what we're doing with Cool Sculpting Elite.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Absolutely. What's going on in the breast implant business?

Carrie Strom

You're a perfect example of why the breast implant implant business is so important. It's critical to our plastic surgeons.

Breast augmentation always has been, and always will be a top procedure that our, our customers do. And that's why we wanna be a part of it. And and so I would just say, as plastic surgeons continue to be important to us, we want to take care of our plastic surgeons, whether it's in the hospital setting where we have multiple products for breast reconstruction.

Or in the aesthetic cosmetic setting. And that's our north star as we think, as we're looking our, through our own pipeline and we're looking at external opportunities is what else can we do to take care of our plastic surgeons in both of those settings and then in the aesthetic setting to convert to the rest of our portfolio to make them a lifetime patient.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And tell me a little bit about skincare. You have Skin Medica, correct? What, what can we expect in the future an Allergan in terms of Skin Medica?

Carrie Strom

Skin Medica is a really important part of our portfolio because of all the reasons we talked about before. It's this idea of converting from a procedure to a take home.

It's the, this idea of engaging consumers in their aesthetic self-care with products they can be using every single day at home. It's an opportunity to help our customer to dispense Skin Medica in the office and also online as we bring our e-commerce solutions to our customers. And now that we're a part of AbbVie Jasson mentioned our R&D budget has nearly doubled and that's benefiting Skin Medica as well.

And so we'll have a steady cadence of launches over the next few years. We'll be able to bring new products into the Skin Medica platform and, and do everything we can to take care of our patients. So in skincare, it's anti-aging, it's hyperpigmentation. It's sunscreen. There's so many different categories that we can help with.

Dr. Grant Stevens

You touched on R&D. and I wanted to come back to that because you can you can assume new products and goods and services as a company through R&D or by acquisition. Right? So from a corporate point of view, what's your appetite for acquisition M&A type things, or do you want to build everything internally?

Are you, do you have an appetite for going outside of Allergan and, and acquiring? Goods, products, services. What, what's your philosophy there if you can share it with us?

Carrie Strom

It's definitely both. We've seen since the AbbVie acquisition in May of 2020, we've already done a few deals. So I mentioned Soliton, which was bringing us into the cellulite category.

We also acquired a, a filler company called Lumina, and that closed in 2021. And what it brought us is a product that we didn't. In our portfolio. So to your point, we're strategic about we have a really strong pipeline internally, but if there's anything that we don't have that's complimentary, we would like to look outside for it.

And that's what we did with Lumina. It brought us into the biostimulatory space. And so the, the product that we were most excited about, Lumina is called harmonica. It is a very unique combination of calcium hydroxyapatite plus HA in the same syringe. and this new hybrid injectable ha plus Biostimulatory product is is gonna be very important in Brazil where the Biostimulatory market is bigger than anywhere.

It'll take a few more years with the FDA to bring it in the us, but we're committed to doing so. And that's a great example with Soluton and Des cellulite and Lumina into Biostimulatory fillers where we had we didn't have it in our pipeline, so we looked externally to bring it in.

Dr. Grant Stevens

So will it be called Harmonica, harmonica, like harmonica.

Carrie Strom

It's Harmonica. And you sell it, you say it like you do the instrument, but it's spelled differently and you, the way you can imagine it is because like I said, it's an ha. Plus calcium hydroxyapatite, you got the haka. Like harmonica is all, when you see the branding, it'll all make perfect sense.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Okay. And we'll have that in the states, hopefully in the next few, next few years.

Fantastic. And there are other products and services that are out there, and I know you've been looking at some, and it sounds to me like you're interested in cellulite. You just purchased the Soliton, which is using sound waves to smooth skin, if you will. It sounds like you're committed to the body in terms of fat, but also smoothing the skin.

Or of that, that business of cellulite. And you said it was a number five and you said number one was fat. What's two, three, and four?

Carrie Strom

So number one is unwanted body fat. Number two is under eyes. Whether it's dark circles or crepiness or malar edema, just under eyes in general.

Understanding that's a complex multimodal anatomy, but the way consumers talk about it is under eyes. number three and four are basically hair where you want it and hair where you don't want it. So hair for on top of your head. And then also hair where you don't want it in terms of laser hair removal. And then cellulite was number five.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Interesting. Well, I talk to a lot of women who, obviously my whole career has been spent talking to women. And cellulite, I would say is much higher than number five. I know you've done the market research, I'll defer to your researchers and so forth, but in my experience, women are very concerned about having smoother skin and smoothing out their cellulite.

And they all think they have cellulite, whatever. We can't even agree on what, what to call it. Some people, cellulite, "celluleet," and so forth. So anything you have that's smooth skin, be it Soliton or Resonic. Can you keep the name Resonic?

Carrie Strom

We are working through all of that now. And like you said, it's not commercial.

So we're, we're hunkering down on the launch plans for that. But to your point about cellulite, I do think it's a massive unmet need. And I think it's also an example of, Therapeutic area that is multimodal in nature. There'll be multiple solutions that can work complimentary. Just many different products and categories, brands.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I totally agree. And whenever I'm asked about cellulite, I'm convinced it would be multimodal. approaches to it. because it's not just one thing. And it's not one appearance. Exactly. One, somebody calls it hail damage, which I'd never heard before in my life. Ice picks. All dimples. And then waviness, there's just so many manifestation. But really what it is, is somebody not feeling comfortable in their own skin. No pun intended. Because it's irregular, it's not smooth. And that's, and it seems to be a disorder or occurrence, I hate to say disease, that is uniquely to women. Women have it. And I've heard 85, 90 5%, I think a hundred percent of women think they do have it. And anything you can provide to them and to us as practitioners to help smooth the skin is gonna be a welcomed addition to our armamentarium.

So many women are concerned about the smoothness of their hips, their thighs, their buttocks. And to that end also, they've been sold a bill of goods historically. There's been a lot of, of lotions and potions and unmet expectations. And so to the extent you can keep doing that and you can provide Allergan quality approaches to smoothing, I applaud it and look forward to you doing it.

And maybe we're gonna backfill with those biostimulators and ha's, in addition to smoothing. And that's where we're headed.

Carrie Strom

Definitely multimodal. And I agree with you completely. Grant, I know we've talked about this for a long time. And you've done a lot of work in this area. I think it's the ultimate in confidence, and this is one of the many examples of the work that we all do in aesthetics.

It is about confidence. And that is our mantra and our aesthetics is about empowering confidence. And I think these solutions for cellulite are right up that.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And that is what it's all about. Actually, it's confidence. And people feeling as good as, or looking as good as they feel, and giving them that confidence to wear that garment or to throw away that garment that they're hiding behind. And that's the key right there. It doesn't matter what we're talking about, it's about restoring confidence. And you guys have done a great job, so we could have this talk forever. I know we could do this forever as we have as friends, but I want you to look in your crystal ball.

I saw you brought your crystal ball, Jasson. I saw it underneath your gear. Give it my backpack. So what I'm gonna go to carry last, but to you Jasson, what do you see in the future? You've been involved in this business for a while now. and you are certainly setting the trends with what you're doing, all the digital stuff you're doing, you actually have seen over the mountain.

I know you have. So tell us what you see over the next 1, 3, 5 years. What are we gonna be looking at?

Jasson Gilmore

If I was to think about over the next five years, where does this market really go? I think if we do our jobs responsibly, and that in a collective sense it is a real blessing to be in a market like this.

If you're on the care providing side of the equation, you know how important and how, how profound the outcome can be, even for something that might take five or 10 minutes and is injected through a needle that can change the way someone perceives themself fundamentally. And that that is really a very deep connection.

And I think if we in industry, do our jobs and continue to invest in creating those kinds of connections, whether we do that digitally, whether we do that through marketing tactics, whether we do it through our training programs, As long as we continue, I think, to, to take that relationship very seriously.

The macro trends, things like social media, things like the haning of the aesthetic patient, those trends will continue, but only so long as we, I think, treat that relationship very responsibly. So I think over the next five to 10 years, we could see you. Just an incredible explosion of this market.

You could see penetration rates triple or quadruple. You could see the elusive male patient that we've always thought your espn CoolSculpting commercials, you were, I still remember hearing them on the 405. Those, those, those trends that we have always wondered, would ever really come to pass.

I think we're starting to see them come to pass. And I know Carrie and, and the other leaders at Allergan certainly take that very seriously. So I think that what I would like to see, what I would hope to see is a continued, sustained growth in this market driven collectively by us and industry and by you is the healthcare provider.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I would agree with that entirely. How about you, Carrie? When I look into the crystal ball look into your crystal ball. What are we gonna be looking at in the next five years?

Carrie Strom

I think that in the future, starting now, that the face of aesthetics will become much more diverse. and I think that it's already happening and it will continue to happen as we make a few very important priorities come to life.

So when we think through the typical clinical trial patient right now in aesthetics, it's for the most part 80% white women. And that's the root of where it needs to change. Because if you are only studying white women, then why do we, would we expect more and more diverse people to get into aesthetics?

And to Jasson's point, that will be one of the keys to growing this market is reaching more different types of people and bringing them into aesthetics. And we're excited because at Allergan specifically, we're doing so many more clinical trials because we have so many so much more investment in R&D that we have the opportunity to reach out to different clinical trial investigators and help bring more diversity into the clinical trial patient base.

So that's one thing. I'd say also with product development, we need to have an eye on developing products that meet the needs of all sorts of different types of people and patients. And then with marketing and marketing is something that you can't just put one face of aesthetics.

That's the beauty of our business is about preserving individuality. Everyone has a different definition of what beauty is, and when it comes to representing diverse beauty, we have to make sure we strike the right balance. It's not, it's not representation or without tokenization, right.

We have to make sure that we are inclusive of all sorts of different types of people. And if we do those things, we'll be able to grow the market. We'll be able to have technologies and trainings that meet the needs of all sorts of different people. And like I said, it will drive a more diverse face of aesthetics in the future.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And as you said, you're already starting it. We're looking into the future, but I know Allergan has already started this and I seen and we have, and I applaud the work of

Carrie Strom

Allergan. Thank you. Cuz, and we have to, because this is not a one or two year program. This is something that we're committed to.

It's a generational investment. As you think through the clinical trial patients, as you think through the healthcare providers to make sure that we have diverse healthcare providers that can take care of their diverse patients. This is a, this is something that is just the way that we do business moving forward.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yes, absolutely. And I've had the good fortune of interviewing Richard Gonzalez from AbbVie and he is committed to that as our youth. The president you is the executive vice president, senior vice president. So, and I. And thank you very much as a practitioner, someone who's been in this business for many years, and I would be remiss if I didn't publicly thank you for something else.

And that is for being a premier partner for the Aesthetic Society, the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Allergan is one of the. Premier Partners supporting us and our mission for education and patient safety, which is consistent with Allergan's mission. Really, when you think about it.

So again, thank you very much.

Carrie Strom

And the Aesthetic Society has always been such a fabulous partner to Allergan Aesthetics. I know when you were president, that's when our relationship really started, and all of the presidents have been such great partners, and I'm really excited about the diverse faces of presidents at the Aesthetic Society. Dr. Weldon, and after her, Dr. Haws are able to take the reins.

Dr. Grant Stevens

That's right. So it's long overdue about time. I champion all women as the heads of all the different committees under my presidency. And I'm so happy that we have a female president finally, after all these years.

And then we have another one and another one, Tracy Pfeiffer. So we're doing great in those that regards. So anyways, thank you very much for making the drive up, both of you. Thank you, Carrie. Jasson, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And Erin sends her love.

Carrie Strom

It was great to see you. It was, was great to see Tux, the double doodle.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yes. And, Tux has been quiet underneath here the whole time. And thank you very much.

Carrie Strom

Thank you for having us Grant.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. And I want to thank all of you for joining us again on this exciting episode of The Technology of Beauty, where I do have the opportunity to interview the movers and shakers of the beauty business. And you can see today I had two movers and shakers from the beauty business. Thank you guys very much. Safe travels and I'll see you next Tuesday. And you can also watch us on YouTube at any time. Go to YouTube, the Technology of Beauty. We have over 50 episodes that you can watch.

See you soon.