Turning Practice Data Into Action

Ben Wolber

The owner uses this as a coaching opportunity, where it's like, "Hey Ben, you're the lowest performing provider in terms of retail sales as a percentage of your total revenue." It's like, "Hey, here's three action items that you can take." Or, "Hey, here is what the other injector is doing that's actually doing really well." Um, so it allows you to get very quick, um, and very clear insight into like performance within your practice.

Max Baybak

We're back here at the Aesthetic Meeting Boston, and I am sitting down with Ben Wolber, founder and CEO of Illume. Ben, how's it going, man?

Ben Wolber

Good. Good. How are you?

Max Baybak

Good. So, Ben and I, uh, fun facts for the audience here, for our listeners, met just a few weeks ago in Fort Lauderdale.

Ben Wolber

Yeah.

Max Baybak

Um, Enterprise Med Spa Connect, which I'd never been to. It was a cool show. And we've been in touch since, and we agreed we'd meet up here, and he was going to tell me a little bit more about the platform. So, true story, I just said, "Why don't we do it in real time on the podcast?" Cuz what I like to do here is learn about the different products and services that are complimentary to what we do in marketing, which is obviously why you want to talk.

I mean, there's a lot of partnership conversations that we have here, which is really constructive for us in terms of meeting people in the industry, finding more ways that we can help our clients, and being ready to help them with the problems that they— strictly speaking, you know, we are their marketer, and that's what we focus on. But so often the conversation turns to, "What do I do about this?" And if we have a solution for them, that's great. So I really do have questions kind of on behalf of representing our client base.

Ben Wolber

Yeah.

Max Baybak

And I would love to kind of pick your brain, learn more about Illume. So, for starters, will you just kind of give me a high-level of what Illume is?

Ben Wolber

Yeah. Yeah. So the whole idea of Illume is, we're at— at its core, it's a reporting and analytics software. So we allow the end user to plug in all of their data sources, and then we have pre-built dashboard templates, but everything is customizable within our platform. So, think most practices will have like an EMR, a QuickBooks, like an accounting software, Gusto or something for like payroll, CRM, so like a Grow Stack, Go High Level, whatever they're using, they can plug all of that in. And then we have templates pre-built for them, but then they can also customize that as they see fit.

Max Baybak

Awesome. And I think I fully track. I want to slow it down and back it up for people maybe not as familiar with all these different software solutions.

Ben Wolber

Yeah.

Max Baybak

How did you phrase it? I've been saying a business intelligence tool, but do you use that framing?

Ben Wolber

So we're a little bit different than a traditional business intelligence platform in a sense. We're almost like practice intelligence, in the sense where, um, like a really interesting— I know we talked about this the other week, where we're rolling out role-based reporting as well. So now everyone within a practice gets a specific login to our platform. So like an injector, aesthetician, front desk staff, they all have specific logins, and they also have like performance scorecards, they get access to Ava, our chatbot, um, and they have access to like our business insights hub as well.

Um, so I like to frame it as like practice intelligence, cuz— I know we mentioned it before, my background is healthcare consulting, but I mostly worked on the hospital side doing Power BI consulting essentially. So, um, we're just a little bit more robust than business intelligence.

Max Baybak

And more robust in that you're more focused specifically on practices and the metrics that these practices need to track, and more tailored to them. But in essence, it is sort of understanding what's going on under the hood of your business, right?

Ben Wolber

We're that layer that sits on top of everything.

Max Baybak

Okay. That makes sense. And are you focused on aesthetics, or what— who are you targeting in the medical space?

Ben Wolber

99% of our clients are med spas. Now, we have plastics, we have dermatology practices as well, but we get in at the med spa level. That's how we usually get introduced to people.

Max Baybak

Okay. And so here, you're talking obviously almost all of these surgeons will have a med spa component to their business. So that's kind of the conversation starter.

Okay. And then I know there are other platforms that live in this data world, and they have different approaches. So, um, the— that I was just talking to is a little more focused on the enterprise, the multi-location. And I think, um, Michael Figueroa from my team was telling me you guys focus a little bit more— but tell me if this is accurate— a little more on the independent practice. Is that true?

Ben Wolber

Yeah. Yeah, so, um, really the whole reason we got started was, in early 2025, I was doing side consulting projects, um, in the Cincinnati area, and I weirdly worked with a handful of sole location med spas, and then also my fiancé is a nurse injector.

Max Baybak

Mhm.

Ben Wolber

So I started doing management consulting with her specific sole location as well. Um, so I quickly felt the pain point of— I would build these clients Power BI reports, and I would essentially deliver it to them, and then, um, there was still that disconnect, like, "Hey, like this is great. It's telling me what happened, but it's not really allowing me to know like what to do next, in a sense." And it's very like reactive, not proactive. So that's what led me to launch Illume last summer. Um, and we turned a year old in July, so.

Max Baybak

Nice. Congrats.

Ben Wolber

Yeah.

Max Baybak

For people who don't know, Power BI is a platform, Power Business Intelligence, that lets you build out sort of a dashboard to pull data out of your business, out of your different systems, as Ben mentioned, out of QuickBooks, out of whatever other software you're using to manage whatever business it is.

Ben Wolber

Yeah.

Max Baybak

To visualize that data and to kind of look at that data, layer data on top of each other, and see what's happening. So you then went ahead and built the solution that's specific to the medical spa.

Ben Wolber

Yes, exactly.

Max Baybak

Awesome. Okay, so now tell us a little bit about what you feel like the advantages are of Illume. What are your— where do you have an edge?

Ben Wolber

Yeah, so I really think with our approach to the market, I think that's truthfully where our edge lies, in we're very provider focused. So, again, our thesis is keep it simple. So like when you use our platform, anyone within a practice can easily use it and understand the metrics, the numbers. Like there's definitions all throughout our dashboards. There's ways to customize the KPIs, especially as we've grown in the space, we've learned each practice kind of has their own business logic. So we've done a great job at capturing that on the front end. So everything's essentially customized to their specific use case.

Um, so that's where I— and what I mean by provider focused is that role-based reporting that we rolled out. Now everyone within the practice is getting real-time access to their specific data, which, um, we essentially found a pain point within a pain point that we're now solving.

Um, and like a very simple example I always walk people through is like, "Hey, if I'm an injector, I have a $30,000 a month sales target. Let's say it's the last week of the month. It's Monday, I check in, I log into Illume, and I see— I'm like, 'Hey, I'm at $28,000 in sales.'" You don't think I'm going to be a little extra motivated throughout the rest of the week to try to upsell a product or two?

Um, so that's the behavior shift that we're kind of implementing with our current clients, and, um, we've gotten positive feedback on that approach as well. So, um, really just focusing on how to add as much value to the providers. That's where I think we're a little bit different than other solutions in the space.

Max Baybak

I think that's a great use case, uh, and a great example of where just having the information at your fingertips can really motivate and change behavior. And it's amazing how much when it's just hidden away and you're in the dark. You know, I think a lot of times people forget that the term dashboard in the software sense comes from the traditional dashboard, the dials that you need while you're flying or driving.

Ben Wolber

Yeah.

Max Baybak

Quick, so you can keep flying and driving and not crash. But you want to kind of know where you're going, you want to know how fast you're going, you want to know if you're on target, you want to know certain key things. So helping people understand— there's so many tools that will let you track everything, but that's, at a point, not helpful anymore. It's over— it's over— it's—

Ben Wolber

Overload almost. And like even in the age of AI, um, there's like AI— I mean, I own an AI software company and I sometimes can't keep up with all the evolutions that are happening in the space.

Um, so like especially like when we're working with a small practice, we always encourage them just to pick like one or two data sources to plug in. We tell him like, "Hey, like pick three KPIs to focus on for the next 60 days." Or as you're onboard, like, "Hey, track those three specific metrics." Because what we found is, when you plug in all of your data sources at once, it's like really just information overload. I don't even know where to begin. So kind of like easing people into the idea of analytics and even just AI in general has been really useful for us.

Max Baybak

I think that hand-holding and having an opinion and steering them towards metrics, that helping them to find use cases like the one you mentioned that are actually useful, and giving them that case study—

Ben Wolber

Yeah.

Max Baybak

—and saying, "Here's how others are using it," is really important. And along those lines, are you thinking about bench— you know, you mentioned that people run things a little bit differently around this industry. And that's one thing, is that there's— I see a lot more standardization today, but it's been kind of a wild west. And there's not necessarily one model that everyone follows. So along those lines, I'm wondering if you're thinking about benchmarking. I don't know if people want that data shared, but I bet that's crossed your mind, right?

Ben Wolber

Yeah, and within— like if you're a customer of ours, we have internal benchmarks, especially with some of our multi-location clients. Like they can easily benchmark their own locations against each other. They can also benchmark, uh, provider performance across locations. They get essentially like stack rank them. Um, but then also within our platform, we do have benchmarks from like our clients that are readily available as well.

Max Baybak

Yeah, I would think it would be interesting, as long as, you know, you're not sharing any specific data, but you're taking averages and helping people understand where they sit. I think that context would be interesting to me as a med spa owner.

Ben Wolber

Well, that, and especially like from a regionality perspective. Like, "Hey, like in the Midwest, here's the ideal revenue per hour based on our clients located in this area." Like here's the average.

Max Baybak

That makes so much sense.

Ben Wolber

Um, we do kind of break it down at a regional level. So, um, cuz again, like your med spa is probably different than my med spa if you're in California and I'm in Cincinnati, Ohio. There might be different operating models, different clientele. So it's not always apples to apples.

Max Baybak

Yeah, but that makes a ton of sense. Are there any other use cases that you would highlight for, let's say, an owner-operator of a medical spa that you've seen work really well, sort of metrics to track or pipelines that they're, uh, using?

Ben Wolber

Yeah, so the biggest thing, especially at a solo location from an owner perspective, is how do they track their like employee performance relatively easily? We found a huge time suck essentially is like calculating provider specific metrics. Like they're having to go into their data source, pull all that data out into Excel or whatever it is, and it usually ends up taking like five hours, especially if it's at the end of the month, they're trying to calculate like a commission or something.

Um, so we've allowed them to fully automate that process where, like, also within our platform, we have free text where you can essentially input your commission process, and then we fully automate that for you. So now you as the owner, you're spending more time looking at the results, and then it's like almost like a coaching tool in a sense.

That's where we've seen success with our small practices that are using it, is the owner uses this as a coaching opportunity, where it's like, "Hey Ben, you're the lowest performing provider in terms of retail sales as a percent of your total revenue." It's like, "Hey, here's three action items that you can take." Or, "Hey, here is what the other injector is doing that's actually doing really well." So it allows you to get very quick and very clear insight into like performance within your practice.

Max Baybak

That makes a lot of sense. That's really cool. Okay, last question before I let you go, cuz we're just kind of doing little mini episodes here.

Ben Wolber

Yeah. I appreciate you sitting down with me.

Max Baybak

Uh, and I actually don't— I know a little bit, cuz again, Fig from my team was telling me, but I actually don't know sort of the pricing structure. Do you want to talk about prices? Is it custom quoted? How do you charge?

Ben Wolber

Yeah, so, uh, we essentially have two buckets. So with med spas with less than five locations, we don't bill by location. So our first tier is 150 bucks a month and you get three data sources that you can plug in. So think like EMR, QuickBooks, CRM. Next tier is $350 a month and you get five data sources that you can plug in. So we essentially bill by integration. And then any additional integration is usually like 25 to like 50 bucks more additionally.

Max Baybak

That's pretty good.

Ben Wolber

Um, but then like at a multi-location, that's more custom. So anyone with more than six locations, it falls into our custom bucket. And it shakes out to like 150-ish per location. So—

Max Baybak

Even with a handful of different data sources per location. How are you on integrations with the EHRs or the practice management solutions in the med spa space?

Ben Wolber

We have eight EMR integrations built out. And then we have most of the major like business ops tools as well. We have close to 100 integrations already. So that list has been ever growing, especially as we keep growing in the space. Seems like there's a new data source every time we onboard a client. So our list is ever changing, but for most of the core EMRs we have an integration with.

Max Baybak

That's awesome. That's obviously huge. Well, I appreciate it. This was super illuminating for me. No, I was actually just going to say that organically. But I'm really glad I got to just ask you these questions in real time. These are the questions I would have asked for our clients, and I have a few more for you, but this has been really helpful for me and I can speak a little bit more knowledgeably to our clients. And yeah, we'll keep this conversation going, but thank you very much. I appreciate it.