Live at MSS 2026

Terri Ross

We full-on audit. I'm like, you know, look, it's like a diagnostic of the business. We open up the hood. We pick it apart. We write businesses like a formal business report. It's everything we find that's wrong. I say all of the areas of opportunities for them to grow, and then basically work with them over the length of time to make those reviews happen.

Max Baybak

Okay, we're here in Vegas at the Med Spa Show 2026. And this one is — this one is a special one, because it's been a minute since I've sat down with my good friend and absolute industry final boss, Terri Ross. Hi, Terri.

Terri Ross

Hi, honey. What's up?

Max Baybak

I'm so glad that we're getting — one of the things I love about doing this podcast is I get a chance to catch up.

Terri Ross

I know.

Max Baybak

I used to write down questions that I was going to ask in advance, and now I don't. I just sit down. Sometimes I make new friends, or I sit down with old, very good old friends like yourself, and I just want to catch up. And you're doing so much these days. I see you really blowing up, and I want to hear about that. So this is just you and me catching up in real time.

Terri Ross

I love it.

Max Baybak

How you been?

Terri Ross

I've been good. We go back so long. I mean, I almost feel like it's been like — how long? Jeez. Fifteen years.

Max Baybak

Yeah, we are aging ourselves. Before — um, yeah, I think — and I don't want to speak for you, but I think it was one of your first clients as a consultant, when you went out on your own, stepped out on your own as a consultant, right, that we did the marketing for.

Terri Ross

Yeah, you did. Well, you were —

Max Baybak

We built the website.

Terri Ross

We built my — yes. You built my first —

Max Baybak

But you and I worked very closely on that. Came out for the photo shoot, and that's how I first met you, in Beverly Hills.

Terri Ross

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. God, that was like 201—

Max Baybak

Ten, eleven.

Terri Ross

Yeah, like 2011.

Max Baybak

Yeah. So about 15 years ago.

Terri Ross

Right? Look, look at us now. Look at us now. And you guys, too. Like your booth, everything you guys are doing, your new launch. I mean, I'm so happy and proud of you guys.

Max Baybak

Thank you, Terri. I appreciate that. Also, by the way, I'm really excited about this shirt that I got yesterday.

Terri Ross

Oh, we should be sporting this shirt.

Max Baybak

I should be wearing it, but I'm definitely going to be wearing — making some content. What does it say again, too?

Terri Ross

It said, "Who's the — who's —"

Max Baybak

"— the boss?" Terri Ross. I saw — um, is it Cat from Boulevard? Did she make them?

Terri Ross

She did. Do you want to know how this all came about?

Max Baybak

That's what I'm wondering. I just saw her with a handful. I'm like, "Please, do you have a size medium? I want it right now."

Terri Ross

Okay. This is how it all started.

Max Baybak

Okay.

Terri Ross

And there's, um, a video on my Instagram. You have to check it out. There's a woman who's an attorney in San Francisco, and she has a billboard, you know, on the — and it says, "Got something wrong? Call Ann Fong." And —

Max Baybak

Oh, it's like the classic billboard.

Terri Ross

And so — and she was like a die-hard for her. And I was like, "Well, wait a minute." And then at the last, for us, Cat was just like, "Who's the boss?" Terri Ross. And it was a whole thing. And now I'm like, "This is a catchy tune. I love it. I love it." So she — yeah. We just dropped the shirts.

Max Baybak

Drop merch. Drop one, and I got in on it. I'm on it.

Terri Ross

Absolutely. It's my new revenue stream, I think.

Max Baybak

Okay. Here's —

Terri Ross

I agree. Yes. Don't you think?

Max Baybak

And I promise you, here's a promise I'll make to you. I will be wearing that in Boston.

Terri Ross

Will you please?

Max Baybak

At ASAPS, at The Aesthetic.

Terri Ross

Yes. All right. We got to sport it, right? I think it's a catchy thing. I know. I'm excited.

Max Baybak

Okay, good. So, like I said, I see you doing a lot. I feel like you're like taking over the industry, and you've always been a force within the industry. Genuinely, truly mean that. I think everybody knows that. But it feels like there's like a lot bubbling, like a new —

Terri Ross

Yeah.

Max Baybak

— a new rate of change happening with the things you're cooking up.

Terri Ross

Thank you. I appreciate that, Max. So much. Um, yeah, you know, I mean, look, you and I go way back, and, you know, I've always have a passion for the business of aesthetics, and, you know, grateful to be lecturing everywhere at these conferences. But, um, yeah, after — you know, after the — uh, after APX was, you know, acquired by Engage, went back on my own about two years ago. Um, and it's just taken off, like, literally to the next level.

Um, and I'm just bringing on — I'm bringing on team to help me get to the next level, you know. Um, yeah. So, got a, you know, new COO, a new VP of sales, a new CMO, and —

Max Baybak

Yeah, heavy hitters. So cool. I don't know all of them, but you've got a couple of gems, good friends of mine from the industry that have recently come on board with you. So, I'm really excited for them and for you.

Terri Ross

Thank you so much.

Max Baybak

That's amazing. And then — okay, so let's talk about the offering. It's TRC, Terri Ross Consulting, right? Has — your primary offering is, I guess in a word, is consulting, right? But —

Terri Ross

It's two things. I mean, honestly, Max, truly, like, I'm known for sales training. So even just in Q1 of this year, we have done 23 physical onsites at practices. Like, it's not scalable. It's — right — but it's what people need to know how to do.

And I'm like, you know, even being here at shows, people can talk about, you know, marketing and acquiring patients and, uh, you know, getting new equipment and all that, KPIs till the cows come home. And I'm like, not if you don't know how to do it. Like, if you can't convert — you know what I mean? If you can't convert callers, if you can't master the consultation, practices wonder why they're not making money. So the offerings haven't changed. People retain us to do private consulting — um, and many have been with us for years — or sales training. That's really what we do.

Max Baybak

Okay. The consulting obviously is embracive of sales training, but then can be so much more within the practice.

Terri Ross

We full-on audit. I'm like, you know, look, it's like a diagnostic of the business. We open up the hood. We pick it apart. We write businesses like a formal business report, and it's like the Bible. It's everything we find that's wrong. I say all of the areas of opportunities for them to grow, and then basically work with them over the length of time to make those changes happen.

Max Baybak

Amazing.

Terri Ross

Yeah. Um.

Max Baybak

How are you thinking about AI in terms of sales training specifically? Are clients asking about it? Are they trying to use it? Do you think there's a way to bring it in, or should we stay away from it? What do you —

Terri Ross

No, I love that. Um, and look, we're even as a company really trying to embrace Claude and Copilot, and it is helping, for sure. I am working on something. I cannot — I don't want to say —

Max Baybak

Okay, cool. That's exciting.

Terri Ross

— where it's almost like a, you know, talk-with-Terri kind of thing. Uh, you know, like a — you know, like a Google, like —

Max Baybak

Yeah. Like a chat. I get it.

Terri Ross

Um, and I think it's — yeah, I —

Max Baybak

Yeah.

Terri Ross

— something that will help, you know, again, us be able to reach more people in a scalable method.

Max Baybak

Yeah.

Terri Ross

Um, and something that, you know, these practices need, where it's just not taking up so much of my time flying around, or where we can't help as many people as we want.

Max Baybak

You're a wealth of information, all that experience, and if you can distill that into something that can help you scale that information out to people, that'd be huge.

Terri Ross

Yes.

Max Baybak

And then the other side of AI is actually people using AI to maybe do the sales, and — candidly, so there's a number of ways to do it. We have a tool within our platform where there's a web chat, and that can be fueled with AI up to a point and then hand it off to a human. You can train the AI on the practice. So if they have a couple — or in the services that are provided, you can say don't talk about price, or you can give price ranges. You can train it.

And then if someone fills out the little web, uh, chat widget that pops up on the bottom right-hand corner of your website, they can have a conversation, get their questions answered, and even go into a booking.

Terri Ross

So wait, that's part of your — I didn't know. That's amazing.

Max Baybak

Yeah, it's part of Growth Stack, and it's integrated into our websites, which are the same websites we've been building forever, but we've built an entire content management system, or essentially a website management system, that — but with this platform, it takes you right in from that to the lead, to — you can either book them right there, or if they don't book, you can make sure that your sales team has an easy pipeline to view the stages of each lead and move them through. And then the third component of it is analytics, to really see how that stuff's all working.

Terri Ross

I mean, you guys have truly always been, you know, a fan favorite for me, and on the cutting edge of — same as my belief, right? Helping practices, not just from a marketing perspective, but from an efficiency and, more importantly, driving revenue. Like, you're really helping them drive revenue, not just be a service, an agency. It's so much more than that. That's — well, I want to make sure I'm demoing, right, and making sure I understand it so I can tell all of our clients.

Max Baybak

Yeah. Yeah. We're remiss if we don't take that opportunity while you're here. I'll take you over here and I'll show you right after this. But so, one thing we looked at is there are technologies — you know, and candidly, there are technologies that exist, and then we go find those that work and we bake them into our platform. And so we're not building this — certain parts, like there's voice AI we've thought about incorporating. We wouldn't be building it from scratch, we'd be using models that exist. But I've seen people use ones that exist, and, um, they're just like a little too — like, so literally it will answer the phone and it theoretically could book the person, but it just is so lacking a human element. Has a little lag on it too, which feels a little unnatural.

So I don't think we're there at all, like at all. But I'm curious — you have clients who've tried to use those systems.

Terri Ross

I do, and I think what happens is, 'cause look, I'm all for efficiencies too. I think on the flip side, it's still such a human, high-touch business that I personally struggle a little bit too, right? What is going to help a practice? And if I'm calling — you know how you can tell, even if you train it so well, that there's a lag time, or they say the wrong thing, and then, you know, you know when you call American Express and you — you know, that just really pisses me off, right? Yeah.

So I know it's here to stay, and I think people are going to have to have no choice but to embrace it.

Max Baybak

And I think — where you would probably agree — it's just going to, you know, the ability to train it in the right way.

Terri Ross

Yeah.

Max Baybak

And for the right thing.

Terri Ross

Yeah.

Max Baybak

Yeah. And then just those — I guess the right word for it is this term that was coined, I think, by someone in the '70s, called uncanny valley. Yeah, which is that concept of when something is so close to human that it actually — it creates an eerie feeling, because it's so close that you can tell it's not, and then scary. So all that uncanny valley stuff will have to go away, and the lag will have to go away.

But I don't know. I just was curious, because we're seeing more use cases for it in marketing. The next thing in the pipeline it would then be sales, so to speak, and the workflow — marketing, then sales. Yeah. And then I guess delivery, whatever you want to call it after that. Operations.

Terri Ross

And I think on the front end of the funnel it's fine. Yeah. You know, but when I think of sales, or in terms of even practices — you know, private equity's here. If they want a higher enterprise value, they have no choice but to, right, increase revenue and increase profitability. And the part that's always missing is like the consultation part, right? So these providers in the room can be amazing, but I think some of the recent stats just from Guidepoint is like, you know, retention's only 52%, 23% don't get a treatment plan. So it's like, what are we really doing, you know? So I think it'll be interesting to see what happens there.

Max Baybak

Yeah. I agree with you, though. I would maintain that we need the human element. A little bit of — at the very front end, using some AI to help you. Hopefully you're driving so many leads you can't manage them, right? So a little bit of AI assistance is better. But when it comes to the sale, I think the human touch is important.

Terri Ross

So I have a question for you. This comes up too. You know, obviously since I do a ton of training, ensuring that we qualify the caller, right? That somebody's viable to come in, I can afford the services, I'm not just a looky-loo or a price shopper. What are your thoughts if we start to go to this movement of AI on the front end, because they're not going to be able to do that.

Max Baybak

Yeah. Very challenging. Yeah. Yeah.

Terri Ross

Don't you think?

Max Baybak

Yeah. So we try to build this in different ways where people can do what makes sense for them. In theory, like, the most efficient thing is they fill out a chat — they pop open the chat widget, they start asking questions, they get their answers, and then it says, "Good, book here." They pick a time and they just show up. But we know it's oftentimes not quite that simple.

Terri Ross

Right?

Max Baybak

Um, you can ask them for a deposit so that they're a little bit more likely, you know, to show up. Um, you can also say, "Book a time. We're going to reach out to you to confirm it, though," which I think is nice. That's probably the hybrid that I like the most.

Terri Ross

I agree.

Max Baybak

So it automatedly gets put into the next lane for a human to then pick it up and then call them back — just wanted to reconfirm. And I think that that's probably what I like the most right now, because then you can still have a conversation with them, because a schedule that's entirely booked up with AI leaves you with a bit of, you know, maybe a little bit of anxiety as to whether or not you're getting real appointments.

Terri Ross

Right. Exactly. And the right people, and they're going to show up, and all those problems.

Max Baybak

I think on social media, all the marketing gurus — the concept of complete AI automation is a little oversold. I think there's just some nice places where you can slot it in to assist us, but we do need to bring back in pretty quickly — like, like we're saying here — pretty quickly need to bring in the human element of, "Hey, I saw you booked an appointment, wanted to make sure you don't have any other questions."

Terri Ross

I would also feel as a patient a little more comfortable knowing that — right, someone's actually calling you back and you're just not some ghost. Yeah. Might not know if I really want to show up or what, you know what I mean?

Max Baybak

So I think that's probably — and, but it's, you know, it's built in a way where people can do what they want to do. If they don't want to use the AI to book at all and just collect some information, say, "Great, we'll reach out to you," they can do that too. No booking, just a lead, and someone has to follow up.

Terri Ross

So is this a — can people add this part onto their — so if you're their agency, if you're managing their site, is this something that they can add on?

Max Baybak

Yes, you can add it on, whether you're just a standard Influx client, which is our agency side of our business. This would be a subscription plan that we've now launched that you can also add on to. I'll tell you, our agency clients — typically it's just a lot of handholding to get them used to this concept, to have them feel confident that an AI is going to be answering questions, to train them. So, um, it's just a slower evolution to get everyone using it, but it's there for people who want to use it.

Absolutely. And it's actually surprisingly good, uh, at answering the questions and sticking to the training that you provided, if you do take the time to train it and tell it what the guardrails are.

Terri Ross

How long do you think it really does take, the training time? Like, how long does that typically take?

Max Baybak

I've noticed it takes a few months, because there's maybe things you didn't account for, and you go, "Oof, I wish it didn't say that," candidly. That's true. And then you go, "Okay, please, you know, set up a new rule, let's not do that again." And after about two months or so, I've noticed that people are feeling like, okay, they can really set it to fly on its own.

Terri Ross

Yeah, amazing. This is exciting. This is good stuff.

Max Baybak

Yeah. So if people want to — thank you, Terri, and I appreciate you coming by and sitting down talking with us, and I'd love to show you more about it. Uh, what — if people want to hear more about your services, where do they go to go?

Terri Ross

Same — Terri Ross Consulting is the website. Same as my Instagram, podcast, In Touch with Terri. Um, yeah, and, you know, I love our time together. So thank you so much for this opportunity, honey.

Max Baybak

Thank you so much for spending time. I know you're in demand here. So hopefully we'll have this out in the next few weeks before Boston, but I'll see you in Boston.

Terri Ross

Can't wait.

Max Baybak

Okay, we'll see you.

Terri Ross

Who's the boss? Terri Ross. Sport the shirts. Bye, guys.

Max Baybak

I promise you I'll be wearing it. All right. Bye. Bye, everyone. Thanks, Terri.