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Nick Dumitru
Founder, Think Basis Inc.
The Short Version
I find what's blocking a practice.
Then I remove it.
I started in aesthetic practice marketing in 2001 with one doctor who trusted me to fill his schedule. I did. He told another one, and that's how the business grew. Since then I've managed hundreds of millions in ad spend across plastic surgery, dermatology and med spas, listened to thousands of incoming calls, and sat in more consult rooms than I can count.
I learned early that no two practices are blocked by the same thing. Some are losing patients on the phone. Another has priced itself like the clinic down the street and wonders why nobody believes it's better. A few are invisible where their patients are looking, and one was running ads into a front office that drove people away. I use the same tools every agency has. I just don't pick one until I know what's wrong. The case studies show what that looked like at seven practices.
The other half of the job is technology, and I've always been the guy who builds it rather than buys it. We built Echo, an AI sales coach that drills clinic staff on the objections patients raise. We built a Chrome extension that keeps a clinic's follow-up on track every morning. When a practice needs something that doesn't exist, we make it. The tech serves the fundamentals, though. This business still runs on a person at the front desk making a patient feel looked after.
I wrote the book on it. "A Cut Above" hit #1 on Amazon in Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery. Then I put the rest on this site for nothing, because an owner who has read it arrives at the first call already knowing most of what I'm going to say.
Philosophy
Activity Is Not Progress.
I've said that line to every owner who came to me confused about why the agency was "doing so much" while the schedule stayed flat. Reports aren't results. Impressions aren't income. A practice grows when more of the right patients call, more of them book, and more of them say yes in the room. Everything else is activity, and activity is what most agencies bill for.
The other line I'll repeat until it sticks: you are not the patient. I once watched a surgeon defend a logo that would have cost him patients with "well, I like it." I watched another let a twenty-something office manager choose the product lines because she used them herself, and I watched that practice shrink to a fraction of what it was when we had it. Neither your taste nor your staff's is market data. The market votes with her wallet, and nothing else counts.
That's why the work starts with a diagnosis instead of a proposal. The same method runs our advisory work for private equity firms and operators: find the real constraint, say exactly what to fix, and hold everyone, me included, to doing it.
Brands are born, not created. You don't build a brand by giving money to an agency. You build it by getting money from your patients. I've been making that argument since 2017.
How I Work
I'll Tell You
When the Idea Is Bad.
Every client meeting includes at least one idea that should make you more money: something specific to your practice that was tested somewhere else first, with real money. I made that promise to myself years ago and I've kept it, mostly because it's the part of the job I like.
The other part is less comfortable. I hold myself to the results and I hold you to the execution. If the front desk is killing leads, I'll say so. If the fee is wrong, I'll say so. If you're copying a competitor's bad idea because it looked busy, I'll say so. Most agencies won't, because an uncomfortable client cancels. When I push, it's because the thing I'm pushing on is costing you money.
I don't take on many practices at once. The work only works when I'm in the numbers myself every week, and there's a limit to how many sets of numbers one person can actually know.
The Book
A Cut Above
Amazon #1 Best Seller in Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery
What I learned making doctors wealthy, in one book. Why most practice marketing is ego with a budget. How patients actually decide, and how long they take to do it. What to fix before you spend a dollar on ads, and how to become the practice everyone else in your city is measured against.
Surgeons bought it because it told them what their agencies wouldn't.
Credentials
Where You May Have Seen Me
Media & Speaking
- Featured expert in Inc. Magazine
- The Globe & Mail
- IT World Canada
- CBC Radio Canada
- Speaker at IMCAS (world congress for aesthetic medicine)
Published
Author of "A Cut Above", Amazon #1 Best Seller in Plastic & Cosmetic Surgery, and of the 120-odd articles and 19 podcast episodes on this site.
Giving Back
Donor to Kiva, the online lending platform for entrepreneurs, and a past donor to McMaster University's DeGroote School of Business.
Is Your Practice a Fit?
We take on a handful of practices at a time. Tell us where yours is and what's in the way. If it's a fit, we'll set a time for you to meet Nick Dumitru, our founder, who has worked with plastic surgeons and aesthetic clinics since 2001.
See If We're a Fit