How a Nurse Turned $30K Into a Medspa Empire

0:00I actually withdrew my 401k to start perfect dose. And I was making great money as a nurse in the ER. So my family was like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? Yeah. I just knew I could do it. Failure is really not an option for me. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to make this happen. It wasn't easy. It was a grind every single day. It was tight to do it all with $30,000. But I did. Kristen Hursog is the founder and CEO of Perfect Dose, a luxury medical aesthetics brand based in Scottsdale, Arizona. What started in a small salon suite has grown into a multi-location med spa business, offering injectables, skincare, regenerative aesthetics, and wellness treatments, with the brand now entering its next stage of expansion. People don't understand. They think, you know, filler fixes everything. Or Botox fixes everything. And that's not true because we age in our skin, our muscle, our bone, and our fat. So it makes sense if we age four layers.

1:01That's too much. I know. We have to do multiple things in order to get natural results. What are the changes in the bone structure? It's like so. Facials, bone structure changes as well. Yes, our bone actually thinks and loses its structure. I'm learning all the time. I know. There's so many things. And so... Today, Apple is going to reinvent the bone. It's not over until I win! The Living Your Legacy Podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. It's extremely rare and possible. Oh, that is sensational! So open. She's covered with the lead. You said Paul is the box is not on the planet. You can live your dream. Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host again, Jace Langen.

2:01And we have the privilege to talk to some of the best entrepreneurs, the taste makers, disruptors, and the women in power like we have here today. And so we have a special guest here at the top of a game in the beauty industry and the aesthetics industry. So why don't you have an introduce yourself? What's your name? Where are you from and what's your business? Hi, I'm so excited to be here today. So my name is Kristen Herzog. I am from Scottsdale, Arizona. I own a luxury medsfall called The Perfectos. We have three locations and we are expanding nationwide. Awesome, like The Perfectos. That's the perfect name. Yes, it is. Yeah, I saw your logo also. And I mean, yeah, the branding is great. I saw the locations on your Instagram. The locations look amazing. How many locations do you have? Thank you. So we have three locations. Our brand is very luxury. It's bougie. It's Chanel vibe. So that when you walk in, you feel luxury. And it's also warm and inviting.

3:03It's welcoming. So it's not scary or stiff. It's like you're walking into your best friend's house, but leaving with Louis Vuitton back. Yeah, perfect. That's the kind of perfect feel that you want when you walk into an aesthetic place, right? Yes. So Scottsdale, Arizona, right? How big of a city is that? So Scottsdale's huge, actually. I'm not quite sure exactly how big it is, but it's big. All right. I've never been, right? So you're talking dry heat over here. We've got the humidity, right? And so you kind of tackle that. You don't have that Miami humidity puffiness going on. Oh my gosh. You know what? I had glam this morning. And they sprayed my hair with lots of black to keep it looking good for the day. Well, they did a good job. Because yeah, some people, they come here and they're just like, oh my god, I got to tame my hair with this humidity, right? So a little tip out there, you know, plan for the humidity with your hair, right?

4:03But yeah, I mean, so you scaled this, right? With kind of nothing. You bootstrap the whole business. So what's that look like? Yeah, so over the last six years, we have scaled to three locations, over $5 million of revenue. Hey, congratulations. Thank you. It was very small humble beginning. Because I started in a little salon suite, marketed myself on Instagram because I didn't have an ad budget and kept telling people, tell your friends about me. My husband and I passed out our business cards at the mall. So humble beginnings. And when you do that over years and years, it works. And it's grown. It's evolved. And here we are. Yeah. And so how was it kind of taking that entrepreneurial leap and betting on yourself, right? What was that story like? So people thought it was crazy. I actually withdrew my 401k to start perfect dose. And I was making great money as a nurse in the ER. So my family was like, what are you doing?

5:04Why are you doing this? Yeah, I just knew I could do it. Failure is really not an option for me. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to make this happen. It wasn't easy. It was a grind. Every single day. And so how much did you have going into your business? You said you took out your 401k, right? And now you're betting it all on yourself, right? How much were you putting into it initially that you had? So I did have a lot in my 401k. So I want to clarify that. I took out what I had, which was like $30,000. OK. And I used that to get certified. So to learn how to inject Botox and fillers, I paid my first month's rent with that. Went to TJ Maxx. So we were decorating on a dime. Yeah. And I decorated. I had to place my opening order plus get supplies. It was tight to do it all with $30,000. But I did it. Yeah, that sounds amazing. I mean, that sounds like, you know,

6:05people might use credit cards to go in there. You use your 401k. You emptied it out, right? And it's a little like nerve-wracking. But when you don't have the option for failure, right? What's that do to you? It makes you hustle hard. So I was, I've always been a hustler. So that's kind of been ingrained in me. But when you don't have the option for failure, what I say is it's not like you're not going to fail. You're going to mess up. You're going to make mistakes. But you have to get back up and keep putting yourself out there and show up every single day. And that's what I did. So some days were better than others, but I still kept going. And that grit, that's a differentiator. That's where you see entrepreneurs that are successful. It's because they're consistent and they keep pursuing and they keep going. And then it works. Yeah. Do you still have that first location,

7:06that original place, or you've expanded since then? We've expanded since then. I started in a little salon suite. So, oh my gosh, it's probably the size of the bathroom at my location now. So like the salon suites, those are like, I don't know, a place that has many different small suites that you rent out and they're kind of quite small. Yes. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I literally rented out a little suite. It was in a last studio. Yeah. So I started there. And those aren't that bad. They're kind of nice. Yeah. It was great. It was small. You had to find where my room was. And then I graduated to a hair salon. So I moved my little suite to a hair salon. Nice. From there, it's now in a 3,500 square foot location. And we're actually outgrowing that. Okay. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. And that brings kind of foot traffic. And people are getting the hair done. They're looking at, you know, what else can I get? Right? It's either there's like nails there, the aesthetics, like yours, right? But that was a good stepping stone. Would you recommend that to others that are kind of just jumping into this world?

8:06Oh, yeah. You know what? It was how I built myself. I was literally knocking on other people's doors in the building. And I was like, hey, I'm Kristen. Nice to meet you. Comey Botox, a filler with me. And when people come in to get their hair done, I would stand up in the front, introduce myself, give them my business card. So it gave me the opportunity to put myself in front of so many people. And that was instrumental in building my business. Amazing. So going to your first big location, right? From your small little bathroom size stall, right? Yeah. How do that feel to re-gamble on yourself? I mean, because there's a lot more expenses. There's a lot more kind of, I guess, marketing that you have to fill more seats and more time, right? How was that jump? It was scary. And was it harder than the initial jump? You know, I would say yes and no, different kinds of hard, right? Because initially, you're like, oh my gosh, is this going to work? Yeah.

9:07You don't know if it's going to work. And then it starts to work. And this expansion, what it really does, what's scary about it, is you have a lot more overhead. Yes. In the beginning, you're able to actually make more money, because you don't have as much overhead. So it was scary, and we did it over maternity leave. So I literally had my first baby Jack. And that was when we decided to expand and do a build out and entire location. So I remember walking through and doing the plans with my husband and my baby strapped on me. Hmm. Yeah. So that's kind of amazing. Like, it's kind of like good problems to have. Yeah. But there's still problems, right? Yes. It's like, OK, yes, we're expanding, right? But it comes with a whole other list of issues that you have to deal with, right? And you're still learning on the way as you build and grow. Yeah, it's the behind the scenes, right? Everybody sees the highlight reel the Instagram, like walking through, carrying the baby. But not everybody sees, you know, we're taking out this huge load and everything

10:08that we had to put in in order to do that, the sacrifice, the loss of sleep. Like, I took a six week maternity leave and six weeks from not injecting, but I was still working the entire time. So it doesn't come without a price. Hmm. And so with that growth, you're now hiring staff, right? What were your first hires? So this is so funny. Actually, my first hire ever was my husband's best friend's girlfriend. OK. They hired her to come work the front desk. So I really had no idea what I was doing. Now, is your husband's best friend's girlfriend? Are they still dating? No. So she doesn't work at Perrie, don't they? Are they still best for? Oh, OK. OK. She's no longer with the business, but he's actually still in our lives. So that's great. It's marrying now. It's got a baby on the way. And that's why they're homies. Exactly. We broke up, right? I got to do something for my homie, right? No, it just shows my hiring process then to now.

11:08It was so different. And that's why we have a team of incredible people now. We have a whole vetting process, full interviews. We call references. I didn't do that at all in the beginning. So things have definitely grown and evolved. Amazing. And with that growth and involvement, right? You now put in a lot of systems, right? And kind of grown that way as well, like the back end, because you're getting ready for franchising, right? Yes. So that has been actually one of the most exciting things. It was very hard. I had to think, OK, I can't just do anymore. I have to put this on paper so that other people can do. Yeah. So I spent my whole second maternity leave with my son, Lincoln, building the blueprint. So we really put together a system for everything, like as far as how to enter the phone, people don't realize. It's not as simple as just picking up the phone and saying, thanks for calling for videos. There is a system that actually gets the call to book. And then there's the follow through and follow up.

12:10So we've created this entire blueprint so that anybody who wants to open a med spa can do it. So yeah, it's not like, hey, perfect dose here. It's your funnel system, right? Yes. So there's different ways that you funnel people into kind of booking a spot or going into a package and becoming repeat customers, right? Great. It's that friendliness. And you got to say, if this person leaves, let's say my husband's best friend gets a new girlfriend. And we got to have her in the company now, right? Which oven. Correct. So the many that he's got. But she's got to answer, one girlfriend has to give those papers to another girlfriend and they got to answer that phone correctly, right? What other kind of systems that you have in place? Yeah. So there's a system, an SOP standard operating procedure for everything, even for how to post on social media, right? What kind of content we put out are system

13:12for greeting our patients. So all of the little details that you don't think about, there is a system in place for that. And that allows us to not only scale corporate side, which is now we have three locations, but to then allow others to do the same thing with the franchise. And it gives our employees a way to follow the perfect OS way. So for example, when we hire a provider, an injector, we have a SOP, a protocol for how that person's onboarding, what training they receive, how they are trained, how they greet patients, how they talk to them, how they inject them, procedures for everything. So you can ensure that when you come to perfect OS, you are getting injected the perfect OS way. Yeah. Also, it allows you more freedom, right? Yes. Because you don't have to kind of sit there, micromanage, or tell people how it is. You just say, hey, check out the SOPs. Yeah, there's, yup, we have a system. And then you hire people to implement those systems. So I have an incredible operator.

14:13That's an incredible people manager. And she is able to put the systems that I've created into play so that I don't have to. And that's allowed me to, would you say, like I can now breathe and relax? It's like, yes, but I also can grow my business more efficiently and faster because I'm not doing the day to day. I'm now focusing on the brand, the vision. Amazing. So I ask everyone, kind of, what are you most excited about, either at the forefront of your industry or what you got cooking in the background? What's that with you? I am so excited for expanding perfect OS. To be franchising is incredible. I didn't quite understand what franchising was because you think, okay, like McDonald's, like, this is a great way to get into a project for these are franchises. What does that look like for a med spa? And really like the St. Regis hotel, if you're at the St. Regis hotel, right? Everybody knows what that is? That's a franchise. Would you have known that? Yeah. Right? It's crazy. So we are going to be able to. It's also a brand.

15:13Yes. You know? That's what we're doing. We're taking our brand. We're taking perfect OS and we are bringing it to all communities. And what it does is it allows for tight brand control. So I still own 100% of perfect OS. A lot of meds-poss right now are selling to private equities. So a bunch of businessmen are taking over and looking at PNLs and everything's on a Excel spreadsheet, right? Yeah. But perfect Yos, by franchising, we stay mom and pop. It's still me making the decisions and running the brand. So I'm really excited for this era of expansion without losing what makes us perfect OS. Yeah. So you're giving people in the franchisees the perfect blueprint. Exactly. And then day two, yeah, day two can give people the perfect OS, right? Well, that's amazing. What's going on in the aesthetics industry right now that is new? I mean, you got people out there in social media talk about look-maxing, right? Which, you know, there's a spectrum of it, right? But I mean, there's so much out there in,

16:13it's just popping up in the algorithm everywhere, right? Between peptides, look-maxing, injecting this and that, it can be all overwhelming, right? But what's exciting for you in that chatter and how can people kind of enter this world? Yeah, I love that you asked that because now everybody is understanding the treatment possibilities. There is aesthetics and wellness. I think the future of aesthetics is marrying the two. So what we're doing is we're entering this regenerative medicine space in aesthetics and what that means is, for example, we now have products like sculpture. That's what it's called, where you inject it to stimulate your body's own natural collagen. So how cool is that? It's not just, you know, a filler where we're using it to put something in and enhance your structure, but we're creating change in your body. And so, aesthetics is going to continue to evolve and grow in that direction. And what we're doing is we're taking

17:15all of these different treatment options and we're creating custom plans. So when you say, like, look-maxing, facial balancing, people are hearing these terms and what it is is it's taking the person and developing a treatment plan that is custom to them based on their unique goals and their individual anatomy. And we're taking some peptides. We're taking some skull truss and filler, some Botox, like little bits of everything to harmonize the face and keep us well on the inside and the outside. I like that. Harmonize the mind body and soul, right? Esthetics is also in the confidence and just kind of knowing the rounded treatment plan. It's not just one syringe is going to cure all, right? It's kind of getting a rounded treatment, right? So what are you kind of some of your favorites treatments out there? Yeah, so I really want to touch on that because people don't understand, they think, you know, filler fixes everything or Botox fixes everything. And that's not true because we age in our skin,

18:17our muscle, our bone and our fat. So it makes sense if we age for a layer, I know, we have to do multiple things in order to get natural results. So it's not, you know, it's harmony, but it's natural. You don't want people to... So it's like the fat loss, it's the skin elasticity and what was the other one? Yes, and the changes in our bone structure. Ah, okay. What are the changes in the bone structure? It's like, so facials and bone structure changes as well. Yes. So just like in your body, how your bone density changes when your bones get thinner? Same thing happens in our face. We lose that structure. So think, when you're young, you have this chiseled jawline, like a hockey stick. As we age, it becomes less chiseled, almost wavy. And is that because of the fat or like your skin kind of like sinking and the elasticity in the fat or bone density using? Yeah, the bone density or bone actually thin. Ah, okay. And it loses its structure. I'm learning all the time. No, there's so many things.

19:19And so we develop a treatment plan that meets all of these. So filler for fat loss and structure loss. So like that bone density changes, we have the sculptor for collagen simulation. Yeah. And since we have muscle changes, that's where Botox comes in. So think like your brow lifts smooth forehead lines. So we just make custom treatment plans that have a little bit of everything. So you look natural. Hmm, a little bit of everything for your goals. Yes. Cater to you. It's catered to you. And it's not cookie cutter. It's not a one size fits all. So that's something that's really important. You may hear about Botox from your friend, right? And we'll call your friends Karen. So Karen's like, okay, I get 40 units from my face. That sounds like a lot. It's not actually. Okay, that's the one. It's not like, okay Karen. Oh, calm down, but it's not that much. It's not that much. We actually can do like 100 units is out of my average for full face. Okay. So what kind of that is this different? So Karen's a little relaxed. So Karen's a little relaxed. 40.

20:19Yes. You may need more. You may need less. Yes. So it doesn't matter what your age is. We really dozed on muscle strength. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show and also to deer session. You had an amazing session, right? But how do people find you and how can they follow you? Yeah. So follow me on Instagram. It's at the perfect dose. You can go to our website, www.theperfectdose.com. Yeah. Also on TikTok and YouTube, all under the perfect gifts. Amazing. Amazing. So yeah, I mean, thank you for joining us. And thank you guys for joining us as well. And if you want to kind of learn more about her growing by having two kids, growing her family, growing her business, but also growing into the next phase of her business with the franchising. And honestly, the perfect dose. It's such a memorable brand. We had such a good talk. But I would totally tune into her episode and start following her because she knows her she up, right? But yeah, thank you.

21:21And thank you guys. We'll see you next time. Cheers, everyone.