Beauty and the Business: Practice, Profits and Productivity, Performance and Profitability

New technologies and social networks have dramatically changed the way we communicate. But with this sweeping change, some things remain the same. First and foremost, treat your customers right.
In BEAUTY and the BUSINESS, authors Gregory Buford, MD and Steven House present a framework for the highly successful profitable business. They incorporate long standing essentials to customer satisfaction and connect them through the technologies and culture of today’s buyers who use the internet and social networking to make their purchasing decisions.  
Their solid recommendations provide insights on how to guide a potential customer through this process while developing trust along the way. And they do so at a pace that makes sense for the critical decisions being made by this aesthetic client. You may only have a nanosecond to prevent someone from clicking through your website or hanging up the phone and so you must have something that interests them.
Finding and keeping customers has become a critical element to survival but authors Buford and House present the good news that the beauty industry is actually positioned for strong growth based on predictable generational spending habits of the baby boomers. They make a strong case for the need to be competitive and aware of technology’s ability to shift markets away if you are not executing on client retention strategies, high quality referrals, and state of the art marketing. BEAUTY and The BUSINESS teaches you to analyze the market, engage it, draw feedback from it, and adapt at a rate of change at least as fast as the market itself is evolving.  
As a clinician, practitioner, or owner this book should become part of your strategic plan. The business of beauty is by its’ very nature a business of choice. The choice to make changes and evolve your look for a variety of reasons drives customers toward those whom they can trust. BEAUTY and the BUSINESS will show you how to keep business growing in a continuously sustainable profitable manner, how to beat your competition, and how to actually have fun along the way.

Dr. Buford is a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon currently practicing in Denver, CO.  As a graduate of the Baker/Stuzin/Baker Cosmetic Surgery Fellowship in Miami, he is one of the few cosmetic plastic surgeons in the Rocky Mountain Region to have completed formal post-graduate training. Dr. Buford holds higher degrees from the Georgetown University School of Medicine and the University of California, San Diego where he received his major in Literature with an emphasis in writing. His practice is limited exclusively to Aesthetic Medicine with an emphasis on Breast Enhancement, Body Contouring, and Minimally Invasive Facial Rejuvenation.  Because of this extensive background, he currently participates on a number of Advisory Councils for organizations such as Mentor Corporation and Allergan, Inc.  
A nationally recognized judge for the Miss America Foundation and media and industry darling, Dr. Buford has been a featured expert on numerous television talk shows, plastic surgery websites, books, magazines, and newspapers. He has published several medical white papers on plastic surgery, and is a premier expert trainer in the industry responsible for leading CME courses and training seminars. He boasts a long list of accolades and accreditations, including features in Vogue Magazine, ABCNews.com, RealSelf.com, Plastic Surgery Advisor, FOX television affiliates, healthology.com and emedicine.com as a respected industry resource for professional advice and training on plastic surgery and a number of the facial injectables.  He is a nationally recognized speaker and consultant to Lumenis in addition to an acting co-director for the only Colorado-based National Training Center for Encore Fractional CO2 laser resurfacing.  
As an advisor to the financial industry, he is a highly-respected top tier consultant to Gerson Lehrman Group on issues related to current and predicted future trends within the field of aesthetic medicine.  In 2006, the Consumers’ Research Council of America named him one of “America’s Top Surgeons.”  He is an active participant in a number of non-profits and currently sits on the CultureHaus Board of Directors and is an alumni member of the Denver Active 20/30 Children’s Foundation. Time away from his practice is spent writing, cooking, practicing photography, collecting art & antiques, and enjoying Colorado’s abundant outdoor pastimes.  

Steve House was born and raised in Fowlerville Michigan. In 1981, he graduated from Ohio Institute of Technology with a degree in Electronic Engineering Technology and later obtained the degree of Bachelor of Science in Business from the University of Phoenix. Over a 28 year career, he has worked in software, software development and hardware technologies within the computer industry and has spent 26 of these years with a specific focus on the healthcare industry.  This experience has been localized to both the acute care setting as well as the physician office environment and has included executive sales and marketing management. Steve has also owned and operated a medical billing business which allowed him to gain an acute knowledge of the medical office environment in multiple specialties.  He is the President of Big House, Inc which owns and operates over 100 websites and provides search engine optimization services for a variety of industries. Steve is an award winning Toastmaster and highly compensated public speaker who has presented around the world to healthcare related audiences as well as to those seeking personal motivation.