In this high-stakes episode, Dr. Dia Burger, Founder and CEO of The MedSpa Method Academy, shares how her blend of technical prowess and empathetic care makes her a beacon in the MedSpa domain, mentoring the next generation of doctors and professionals.

You will discover:

– Why the stakes of leading your team are so high
– How doctors (and other professionals) need to think differently about their practice to allow it to truly succeed
– One simple hack to dramatically reduce the amount of time you have to spend training while also increasing the knowledge retention of your staff

Episode Transcript

Scott Ritzheimer

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach. And yeah, you bet I am here with yet another high demand Coach. And this episode is gonna be really, really neat because here with me today is Dr. Dia Burger, you heard that right Dr. Dia Burger, she knows what she’s talking about, both from her skills as a doctor. And you’ll see here in a moment her skills as a practitioner and a consultant. So who is she? Well, with 28 years of experience as a medical doctor, Dr. Dia Burger moved into the medical cosmetic field 18 years ago. Now she’s labeled as a specialist injector, professionally, and she’s known as the Face Sculptor by her clients now beyond her role in patient care. She’s also a sought after injector trainer committed to elevating industry standards. And she’s developed a formula that teaches spa owners how to obtain cohesion in operations and training methods and skill sets that are needed to build and operate the ultimate or stiletto Med Spa. Now, her goal is to ensure client safety first to optimize injector technique and to create a unique team approach that ensures that med spas earn multiple millions annually, and she is here with us today. Dia. I’m so excited to have you on the show. Welcome, welcome. I’m wondering if you could mount this experience for us a little bit cuz I know you help other med spa owners? How did you go from being in that world to seeing a need and ultimately stepping into the role now that you have as coach and consultant as well?

Dr. Dia Burger

Hello, Scott, thank you for having me. My beginnings in this was actually quite humble. And I’ll take you back maybe a tiny bit further than that. I grew up in Namibia, which is the country just north of South Africa. Very, very rural, I literally climb trees were no shoots, because it’s hot, and you can’t climb trees with shoes. My father was a GP surgeon, and his district surgeon area was about the size of Belgium, which means he flew he was a doctor who flew a small plane. And they called him the Flying Doctor. So I actually followed this man, every moment that I could. We lived across the street from the hospital. So you could hear the back door squeak, and then the back gate squeak and I would be right there with him. So I followed him everywhere he went. And when I was eight, I actually made him show me an autopsy, which would be shocking to most people. And he’s a very, very gentle man. And he tells the story that he was waiting for them to freak out. What happened is I ended up on the table, literally, on all force wanting to know what’s going on. And that is where I decided I’m going to be a doctor. And it happened. And I also got my pilot’s license, I literally modeled this man. And then partway through med school in South Africa, things got really unstable politically, and it became quite dangerous. The the decision was made to leave. And we emigrated first to New Zealand, then to Canada. My parents kind of followed a year later, my brother about eight years later. And Canada has been very, very good to us. But I’ve always wanted to specialize actually sort of specializing in anesthesia when we were in New Zealand. And moving to Canada, there was no way you could get into the nicer specialties as a foreign grad at that point. And I missed the surgical aspect of it. And literally connected with a South African friend who was a cosmetic injector. I had my second child, and I couldn’t see myself going back to family practice full time. And I found this guy up and I said to him, how do I get into spa world? Right? And he said to me, it’s very interesting that you’re asking that question, because he had just gotten himself into trouble that I now now know, most spa owners get themselves into. He was 80,000 Doubt at the beginning of each month, using his medical practice to subsidize his Med Spa. And yes, and got a business man from Toronto, literally, from a business perspective to get him out of it. So I was lucky enough to kind of enter this world, watching someone doing the wrong stuff. Watching someone saved him. And with my connection with these two men is kind of where I got launched not just as an injector, but also into the business aspect of it.

Scott Ritzheimer

Right. Well, so for those a lot of our audiences from the Med Spa world to I’m wondering if we could just lay a little bit of a groundwork for them. What is a med spa? What does that business look like? How is it different from a traditional spa?

Dr. Dia Burger

Hey, good question. Traditional spa is what we would call a day spa. You know, manicures, pedicures, facials, massage, and it kind of needs to stop there, the moment they add the word medical, the implication to the public is there’s a doctor involved. And where I really push this struggling over a little bit is that that doctor needs to be seriously plugged in. Because in the end, you have to protect the public, the moment it goes medical, we can get more aggressive, right, we can get into lasers. And I use lasers quite aggressively because people pay you for results. And then we get into the injections, and Canada, top of the pyramid of the medical stuff, but because you start breaking skin, and that is my definition of med spa, the moment you break skin, you’re entering the world of a surgeon, which means you’re attacking the body’s natural ability to protect itself. And then you need to watch what you’re doing and make sure you’ve got everything in place to protect that human.

Scott Ritzheimer

Yeah. And there are some industries that if you get it wrong, it’s not super scary, right? So like if someone’s mowing your lawn, and they kind of get it’s a little embarrassing, maybe you might get a letter from your HOA, but everyone’s okay. This is not an area especially where as much pioneering is happening. And we’re blending this line between medical and traditional between doctor and someone who watched a YouTube video, it can get a little scary. So what’s on the line here, right for med spa owners who want to do this right? Why is it so important that they not only do good work themselves, but learn some of these fundamentals and leading teams and some of the things that you work through?

Dr. Dia Burger

Okay. You ask excellent questions, Scott, you’re knocking into my passions here, the I’ve watched this industry over roughly 20 years, and it is getting more and more flexible, which I don’t think it’s a good idea what not to scare the public completely. But if you inject botox in the wrong place, you will have a muscle do what you don’t want it to do for about three months, right, which is a brow droops or a smile is crooked. And by three months, it’s gone. If you put filler in the wrong place, which is a gel, you can put it inside a blood vessel, and it acts like a clot, which means you cut off blood flow to a piece of skin. And you can lose a nose or have a piece of skin die. And I mean, in really extreme cases, you can actually stroke out a patient because some of the blood vessels drained back into our skull. So I’m quite anal about the fact that when you start doing these procedures, because people chase them money, right, and I understand that. But you have to first of all that hypocritical oath, number one do no harm. Right, you have to make sure that your client slash patient is safe. So when things go wrong here, they can go wrong, really, extremely badly.

Scott Ritzheimer

And so one of the things that I’ve found that this leads to, and I think maybe even the crux of what you do is it has led a lot of doctors to be doctors, right. And they may be even a shoe the kind of business side of being a doctor. And then it’s let it’s left the door open for business people who think in terms of business, oh, there’s this financial opportunity here. So I want to look through the mindset of those who are doing this. Right, right, the doctors and practitioners who really, really care about doing this who who follow the oath. What, how should they think about this? Should they adopt a business mindset? Are there barriers to that? How do you help them navigate that?

Dr. Dia Burger

I find physicians are terrible business people. They, they’re horrible at it. And that that is where they where I teach the system. And the model that I do is they they run into a ceiling or they they ceiling out what they can do, because they keep thinking like a doctor. Right? So the physicians tend to not be the problem in regards to the injections, but they are a problem in regards to the business aspect of it. They think like doctors, and because we are so brain trained to be independent, right? The buck stops here. If things go wrong, it’s my fault. Right? If If staff blow something confidentially on the phone, it’s my responsibility, which means we take on all the responsibility because then at least you could control it. But when you run a med spa, I seriously teach physicians to step out of that doctor mindset and into a business mindset. You need to stop thinking like as a one man show, right? And do that team approach. So a med spa is a small business with a medical basis. Right and the medical base just needs to be strong. But I find that I need to take the medical people and push them business wise, and I need to take the business people and push the medical device. And that’s literally what I do is push them in one line.

Scott Ritzheimer

Yeah. And I actually see similar thing that’s different in different kinds of variations of this. But you see the same kind of mindset a lot in most professional services, right? consultants do a very similar thing. Attorneys and CPAs do a very similar thing, financial planners, and interestingly enough sort of churches. And what ties all of these together is that this the senior leader, if you will, the CEO, the president, the head doctor, whatever their title is, is also the head product of the organization. Right? And so that limit that you talked about many times is their own hours, right? There’s just only so much time that they can see and continue to do a good job. So you’ve got to start bringing in other team members. Now. Why is it that you find that folks are kind of reluctant to bring in team members? Do you think it’s more a misconception that thinking about it wrong, or maybe even a fear of not getting the right people?

Dr. Dia Burger

I think it is a misconception, I think they think, from a best from a physician mindset, because I know how they think it’s hard to give over control, right? Because when you give over control, you are letting other people in a nutshell, get you in trouble, right, potentially, which means you need to make sure when you give over control that you are safe in the end. So I find it is a mindset issue. And it’s a it’s a misconception, they think I just need to work harder. But you literally summed it up, one human has two hands. And if I’m injecting, I can only inject the person in front of me, right? So and that’s where I bring in a team. And the way I control it is I have the team do the things that can’t get me in trouble. But the things it for example, if you have a we see it in family practice, right, the the GP does everything in, they take the blood pressure, they do their dietary counseling, they literally a nurse, a dietician, a physiotherapist, all of it. And what we started doing that works really well is you get a nurse in and you get the nurse or a dietitian to do some of those things. So you do the work that no one else can. And that is what I teach them is you do what you are the only one who can do it. And the other stuff, learn to delegate. So I find but it takes me a while to once they see it flow. They click it, but it’s not instinctive. Right? So I think it’s a little bit of both right? There’s fear. And you do have to search for the right people. And, for example, I hire, I don’t hire estheticians. at all, you think it’s a spa? I don’t hire estheticians at all, I hire a completely different group. But that took me about 10 years to figure out

Scott Ritzheimer

Wow, and who do you hire?

Dr. Dia Burger

I hire salespeople, right? Because if they can sell a hot tub, they can sell lipstick, they can sell, right? Whatever. It’s the people who have the inherent skill to connect with the public and with people and that extrovert without being overpowering that ability. That confidence, I find is very often unfortunately lacking in institutions. And I’ve got psychological theories about why that is. I’ve got a lot of empathy for them. But it’s, it’s putting a receptionist in front of a donkey cart, right? It’s literally just putting the wrong person in their own place. And for the business model that I run. That’s not the right person for the right job.

Scott Ritzheimer

Yeah. And so even something as simple as the word sales can can bring up all these negative connotations, right? i We almost they stayed on but we almost lost about half of our people here. We’re gonna start talking about salespeople. No, I’m just kidding. But, but that that’s a really, really big mindset shift. Right? I can’t think of a whole lot of doctors who pride themselves on their ability to hire salespeople. But effectively, that’s what you’re talking about. Am I right?

Dr. Dia Burger

Yes. And you know what in I put the emphasis on education. So when I start working with my new staff, because I train them myself, because it is that control thing again, guilty, right? But there’s, I literally teach them their knowledge and teach them how to pass that knowledge on to the public. I mean, I deal with people all the time who go to a dermatologist, and the client says to me after they didn’t bring up skincare, I had to ask them right when in an opposition when people come to me Me, and they want lip filler, they’re going to go through my staff who are going to counsel them on skincare and lasers, everything possible for their unique analysis, which means we literally take them in, look at them, go through a system with them and start suggesting things. And it’s her choice or his, what they want to do or not. But the majority of people don’t even know what you do, what you can do what is out there, what is possible. So I see it as my first line is I educate them, right. And I use these. So when I say salespeople, please don’t hit stop on the podcast. Right? When I say salespeople, I emphasize their ability to interact with the public. Right, which I find with estheticians is really underdeveloped. So it’s almost like I take someone’s ability to jump really high, and I put it somewhere else, because in that instance, I need a high jumper.

Scott Ritzheimer

Yeah, it’s so true. And don’t get me wrong, I’m 100%. And agree with you. I think, if you’re in any small business, you’re in that six figures, even the seven figures, place, your primary limiting factor is your ability to stop sales, right? Because leaving if you do it all yourself in the business world, which is very common, you only have so much time in a day. And so I love this idea. At some point, if you want to scale your organization, you’re going to have to one embrace sales, right as a necessary part maybe not the end of for why you do what you do. But the one of the key mechanisms for how to get there, and I love this approach that you’ve brought up. And then you have to educate them, right? You just can’t It’s not magic beans, you can’t just hire people and expect them to do everything automatically the right way. And I think a lot of folks going back to your earlier point who who buy into that I have to do it. And they wait, and they wait, and they wait. And then they have no time to educate their team. They hire a couple of people and they don’t train them. Well. It doesn’t work out and it reinforces the cycle again and again.

Dr. Dia Burger

Correct. They get into and and this is where I see spouse get in trouble. They I use five pillars, and one of my five pillar is front desk, right? I watched spouse, take someone off the street and smack him into front desk. And I have to go get smelling salts to calm down. Right? Because it is I call that Ambassador or black hole, right? That person can make or break your business. So for me to put someone on front desk, she has shadowed me, she knows as much as my conscientious, right? She She is literally I create minions I create duplicates, clones, whatever you want to call them. And I love the minions, right I want to. But we we have these similarly trained people, it doesn’t matter who you ask a question. They can all answer it for you to the exact same level. And I actually have staff write tests. My husband thinks it is hysterical. But I said to him, I’ve dealt with people enough in my life to know that you give them gold. They read it they go aha. And I’m like, with the teacup learn it. Right? So I make them write tests. Right? And there’s an amazing sense of pride and accomplishment in that and it makes people plug in some of those old things just work.

Scott Ritzheimer

Yeah, so true. And for those of you who are listening, who don’t maybe lead a med spa, what’s the front desk for your organization? Because we all do this, right? The number three in the US I just heard foodstore Chick fil A will not allow someone to talk to a customer within two weeks of being hired. They work in the back they do training, but it is something as simple as taking an order at a fast food restaurant. They will not trust that privilege with somebody until they’ve worked for the company for at least two weeks. What are you doing in your organization to protect the front desk to stop that? I love that movie called the ambassadorial black hole is not cold. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just a brilliant brilliant word picture. So I’ve got a question here that I like to ask all my guests and it is this what what do you what’s the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s the one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?

Dr. Dia Burger

That this industry, which seems to be frivolous, and vain, which is how I thought of it initially as well, is the most amazing place that will bring you to tears for what it does for people self esteem, and sense of self worth. And I’m not talking about the crazy people who want big lips right and look like plastic. But to watch someone come in, ask you for something thing which you deliver and watch them come back and their hair is done. They’re dressed differently. They stand up straight, they speak differently, and their relationships, improve everything in their life improves, it can, when they look in the mirror, they feel on the outside, like they feel on the inside. So for that, for that specific industry, that would be what I wish people would understand, because I keep running into this, you know, it’s vein vein vein and like, it’s not vein, it’s, it’s maintenance. From a business perspective, the biggest secret is to have a team and it doesn’t need to be a big team. My team is three, right, but that the moment I clicked, I have to give over control is where all the pressure left. It’s like this, the gates opened, and the good stuff just came in.

Scott Ritzheimer

That is so good. And it’s so good. So there’s folks listening, particularly those that that are in the med spa space, or doctors who are thinking about starting one, where can they find more out about you and the work that you do?

Dr. Dia Burger

I’m on LinkedIn, Yeah,, and if they want to email me, I go [email protected]. It’s International Med Spa Academy. But yeah, and I am on my LinkedIn and I love to connect with people. It’s this is an industry that I’d like to take to another level.

Scott Ritzheimer

Fantastic. Well, the thanks so much for being on just a remarkable upside and honor and privilege having you here I really appreciate it and for those of you watching and listening today, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.

Contact Dr. Dia Burger

With 28 years of experience as a medical doctor, Dr. Dia Burger moved into the Medical Cosmetic field 18 years ago. She is labeled as a Specialist Injector professionally and known as “The Face Sculptor” by her clients. Beyond her role in patient care, she is a sought-after Injector Trainer committed to elevating industry standards. She developed a formula that teaches spa owners how to obtain cohesion in operations and training methods and skill sets needed to build and operate the “Ultimate” or “Stiletto” MedSpa. Her goal is to ensure Client safety first, optimize the Injector technique, and create a unique Team approach that ensures that MedSpas earn multiple millions annually.

Want to learn more about Dia Burger’s work? Check out her website at https://www.medspamethodacademy.com/ or connect with her on LInkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/drdiaburger

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