By: Christopher Ellis

So, you’re curious how to write a business plan for a medical spa, huh? Well, the good news is you’re already off to a good start - sincerely! While not strictly necessary to start a profitable business, business plans are extremely helpful for identifying potential challenges and obstacles before you actually run into them. It’s for this reason that a lot of lenders like to see, or even require, a business plan as part of their due diligence package. As someone who has helped write dozens of business plans, here are a few tips that should make the process a little easier.

If you search for Med Spa Business Plan guides, you will get a TON of responses (probably an overwhelming amount). While there’s no definitive list of sections your business plan must include, if you can answer the following questions, you’re already well on your way to covering the most important aspects of starting your business. It just so happens that answering these questions also makes for a pretty great framework for your business plan as well.

What do you plan to do? (i.e. your “Executive Summary”)

Writing an effective Executive Summary is a skill in itself, and my advice here may sound counterintuitive: but even though the Executive Summary appears first, you should write it last. Though described as a “Summary”, you can almost think of it as your “Conclusion”, summarizing each section below into a few paragraphs so if the reader of your business plan only reviews this section, they get a feel for the plan as a whole.

Why are you opening a Med Spa (i.e. “Mission & Vision Statement”)

This helps answer why you are starting your business in the first place. What drives you to start a med spa and why is it important to you that you do so? Do not be fooled, though it may seem like an obvious answer, creating a clear Mission & Vision statement can certainly be trickier than you might think. Once written, it can serve as your North Star, helping you and your team run the business smoothly.

Who will help you run your Med Spa? (i.e. “Company & Management”)

This introduces your team to the picture. Obviously, start with your founding team. What background, skills, and experience do they have that will help serve as your ‘secret weapon’ for success? Who will you need to hire (and how much will you have to pay) to fill out the other roles of your team? Given that payroll will be one of your most significant line items on your P&L, it is important you have thought through not only who you need but how much you will pay them for their support.

How much will it cost to get started? (i.e. “Financing Requirements”)

This section helps you understand how much funding you’ll need to get your business off the ground. Obviously, this is important for a lender as they need to know how much to lend you, but this is also important to help ensure that you’ve thought through everything you will need to invest to get this business off the ground.

In order to effectively answer this question, you will first have to know how much your buildout (and rent) will cost, how much your payroll will cost, and how much your equipment will cost. Each of those questions can be tough to answer, but you absolutely cannot have an accurate understanding of what you need to open your business without answers to each of those questions. Start requesting quotes, researching, and interviewing candidates as soon as you can so you can have a good grasp on what to ask for.

Pro-Tip: Make sure you have enough working capital to cover operational expenses for at least five to six months, giving yourself time to scale up.

How will you attract patients? (i.e. “Marketing Plan”)

In addition to understanding your competitors, you will want to understand what marketing channels you intend to use to attract patients, and how much it will cost to do so. Some practices rely heavily on social media and influencers while others may invest more in Google Ads or billboards. As long as you’ve done your research and have a clear plan — including estimated costs — you’ll be better prepared to navigate those first few months when getting patients in the door is of utmost importance.

And lastly, when will you turn a profit? (i.e. “Financial Projections”)

Last, but certainly not least, you need to include some semblance of a forecast (also known as a ‘proforma’ or ‘financial projections’). This not only strengthens your “Financing Requirements” section by detailing your anticipated expenses, but also explains why you need the team and equipment you presented to generate your projected revenue. A good proforma will ensure you think through every aspect of your business because nearly every aspect of your business will either incur a cost, or bring in revenue of some sort. When you assemble all the pieces correctly, you should have a fairly accurate projection. Now my advice here is to think BIG PICTURE.

Understand that no one, not even the lender offering you a loan, expects you to be a fortune teller. You have no crystal ball and no way of knowing, with certainty, how much you will earn in month 1 vs. month 8, but the goal here is to think about this logically to have a good understanding of how long it will take you to turn a profit. In our experience, your projections may be off by a few months or so, but the overall trend tends to hold with what you initially put to paper. The best way to come up with accurate projections is to detail, to the best of your ability, how much each team member will need to produce each month to cover the costs in Month 12, then work backwards to determine how long it will take each team member to reach that point.

Obviously, service mix, experience, and patient volume will help dictate the length of that growth curve, but that’s where your answers to all the aforementioned questions will help flush this out. That’s also where hiring a fractional Chief Financial Officer, like Maven, can help. We have experience helping clients from all over the country grow and can fill in the gaps with how long you should expect your growth trajectory to take.

Conclusion

Writing a business plan can be a difficult, lengthy process - but it is certainly worth the effort. Just remember, this plan isn’t meant to be a “fun read” — forget about perfectly crafted sentences; this is very much a “substance over style” situation. By answering the questions above, you will have shown that you have thoroughly thought through the obstacles involved in the process of opening a medical spa, have a good plan in place, and are ready to tackle whatever comes up next.

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