Q&A with Dr Sach Mohan, Founder & Clinical Director of REVERE Clinics

Aesthetic Medicine editor, Vicky Eldridge, chat to Dr Sach Mohan about his Aesthetic Medicine Live Business Workshop on How to Build a Successful Practice – 12pm Sunday April 26  

Vicky Eldridge: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about what you will be covering in the workshop?

Dr Sach Mohan: “Many medical practitioners lack the commercial skills it takes to make the leap from an NHS guaranteed salary or from working on a mobile basis to running their own business. The stark reality is that if you build you are practice there are no guarantees people are going to walk through the door. You are the one that is going to have to drum up the business.

“There are a number of things you need to consider when running your own practice. What are your competitors like? What are your operator costs? How long will it take to break even and how many patients is it going to take for you to reach that point? People often underestimate what is involved in running your own clinic. For many people when they are first starting out they cant afford to hire a business consultant or a clinic manager to help them with the business side so they are struggling to do it alone.

“The aim of my talk will be to look at how to create a business plan, feasibility, break-even analysis and what it will really take for you to have a profitable business.”

VE: Who would benefit from taking part in your workshop?

SM: Anyone who is thinking of making that step and setting up their own clinic or anyone who wants to grow and develop an existing business.

A lot of aesthetic practitioners work on a mobile basis. If you are a working as a mobile practitioner, you have a buffer – lead generation is not dependent on you, it has usually been assigned as a third party. The minute you then decide to set up your own clinic, there is a potential conflict of interest, where you could be perceived as a competitor and find that the people who were your lead generators for you, are now your competitors who may be bad mouthing you.

If you think about it, as a mobile practitioner, to earn a living, you really only need a hand full of patients because you have none of the overheads.

As soon as you build your own clinic the fixed overheads are yours. You have got to staff it, equip it, go through CQC regulation if you are using lasers. Basically you now have a clinic that will gobble up £15-20,000 a month and takes up all of your time so you wont have time to generate a supplementary income. All this leads down to the fact that you have to make it work and to do that you have a sound business plan.

V.E: Do you think it becomes harder for people as the industry has become more competitive, to not be price driven and does this end up damaging businesses?

It really does depend on what your brand is? What are your ethics? We do not engage in price wars at Revere just because we want patients to come to us because they want the expertise of the staff or myself. I want them to come to us because we have done an amazing job. I want them to know that they get the extra value added; the extra service. You are in a losing battle if price comes in to play, particular if you are having to utilise discount vouchers. Consumers will think, “why does this doctor or this clinic need to use these voucher sites? They must be in trouble or they must not be that good.”

Dr Sach Mohan will be speaking at a Business Workshop at 12pm on Sunday April 26.