Founder's Story - From Zero to 1000% Growth: How Shane Smith Disrupted the Med Spa Industry | Ep. 203

Episode Date: April 20, 2025

Shane Smith is a seasoned med spa entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience and the CEO of Upkeep Ventures—one of America’s fastest-growing aesthetic brands. With multiple Inc. 5000 awards and 1000%+ year-over-year growth, Shane has built a national business by making high-quality med spa services accessible to the customers most companies overlook. His fearless approach to scaling and commitment to affordability are changing the face of the industry.s a seasoned med spa entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience, responsible for building and leading some of the world’s top-performing spa and med spa companies, including multiple Inc. 5000-ranked businesses. As the CEO of Upkeep Ventures, Shane has scaled a national med spa brand focused on affordable, high-quality aesthetic services, driven by rapid growth, fearless strategy, and a commitment to serving customers others overlook.We dive into: – Why being too smart can hold you back as a founder – What Shane learned by shadowing elite CEOs – His no-fluff take on entrepreneurship and risk – Why doing what others won’t is the secret to growth – And how to scale a service business without losing your soul💻 Visit: https://www.upkeepmedspa.com 🌐 More: https://www.upkeepventures.comOur Sponsors:* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://www.avocadogreenmattress.com* Check out Indeed: https://indeed.com/FOUNDERSSTORY* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.com* Check out Northwest Registered Agent and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: https://northwestregisteredagent.com* Check out Plus500: https://plus500.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: https://www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Starting your business should be simple. That's why I love what Northwest's registered agent is doing. You can build your entire business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Seriously, whether you're launching your first company or your fifth, you get more when you start with Northwest. More privacy, more guidance, and more freedom to run your business from anywhere. They've helped businesses grow for nearly 30 years and they've got your back. For just $39 plus state fees, Northwest will form your business, create a custom website and set up a local presence

anywhere you need it. One more, they'll protect your identity by using their address on your formation documents and their premium mail forwarding gives you a real business address that keeps your home info private which I have used this service for many years. Don't wait, protect your privacy, build your brand and set up your business in just 10 clicks in 10 minutes. Visit NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash founders and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent

at NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com slash founders. So join Rakuten and start getting cash back at Sephora, Uniqlo, Expedia, and other stores you love. You can even stack sales on top of cash back. Just start your shopping with Rakuten to save money at over 750 stores. Join for free at rakuten.ca or download the Rakuten app. That's r-a-k-u-t-e-n rakuten.ca. Hey everyone, welcome back to Founder's Story. Today we have Shane Smith, the CEO of Upkeep Ventures. And Shane, I got to say one amazing background, all the plants, everything, but something I see up there is Inc 5000. So I'd love to understand one, what got you into this company? Why this industry? And then after that, I want to talk about how it was to win, uh, you know, such an

award like the Inc 5000. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, ultimately it really came down to the fact that I was a really great employee for about 12 years and I realized that I was making a lot of people a ton of money. 12 years and I realized that I was making a lot of people a ton of money. And I noticed every year that I, I aged kind of my scale of what I thought a lot of money was kept getting higher. And then you hang around enough people to make enough money and you realize the

only way to do that is you have to go own your own business. So I went out, started my own and yeah, it's been back to back in five thousands now. So what was that like? Cause I, about 10 years ago, I had the opportunity to to go to the Inc 5000 award ceremony and I heard Damon John speak and what he said almost changed my life. But what was it like for you? You know what it was? It was fulfilling.

You know, I've always said this. I don't think I've ever been the smartest guy in any room ever. But the one thing that I've always been willing to do that other people aren't is take risks. And I was willing to lose a lot of money because I understood the value of just having rapid growth. How much VCs look at it, how much investors look at it, how much people that, you know, want to be involved in something exciting. If you can show astronomical growth, people don't care about them the bottom line. You can always cut fat later on, but you can't fake sales.

So you just have to be fully motivated. And that's just something I've always had. I've always been, let's just focus on sales. Let's get these numbers as high as possible. And I mean, this company, I think we're at a over a thousand percent growth in revenue year to year right now. What allowed you to not have that fear?

I was just having another conversation with a guest and we talked about their ability to not have fear allowed them also to be successful. What is it that you do differently than most people? Because as we know, most people are not successful successful entrepreneurs but they want to be. Yeah I think what I do and what most people should do is probably two very different things. I think in reality a lot of my success is because I might not I might not have been smart enough to know that I was doing something incredibly risky and I think on the complete flip side that's why some of the smartest people you know get stuck in that middle management. Like

maybe they're working on one of the top companies in the country, but they're a director and they're going to make $200,000, $300,000 and they're going to make that for the rest of their lives. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's amazing. Good for them. But no matter how smart they are, they would never take the risk of going to start a business, risk their money.

Are we going to be able to pay the mortgage? Are we going to be able to send our kids to school? They'll just never take the risk. And I think ultimately I was just so dumb and naive when I was a kid that I just didn't even know I was being risky. And then once it works a few times, you just become less sensitive to it. I don't care. I'm willing to throw it all on black any single time I can and just risk it.

Ignorance is bliss. And maybe that's, you know, many times you get asked the question, if you knew now, what would you do different? But maybe it's better that you at that time, you only knew what you knew, because if you knew now what you'd have to go through, do you think you'd even still do it again? Yeah, you know what, I would do it again. My life has been so easy. There's so many issues out there. There's so many people that struggle. A little bit of entrepreneurial struggle

in the grand scheme of the reality of how most people are living day to day is a first world problem. So yeah, of course I would do it. I live an amazing life. And ultimately a little bit of stress, some sleepless nights, I'm still in a warm bed. I have a hot meal every single day of my life.

So I try to keep it. Try to keep my vision looking like that. I'm like, no matter how big my problems are, those people with significantly bigger problems, I think. I love that mindset. That is a great mindset. And I think when you get to travel around the world, you see how, you know, other people live, how other people are. And it makes you just even more grateful.

So I know you help build and lead top performing, incredible companies. Is there something that you do when you're working with a company or you're building a company in order to really scale that organization? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the first is try to separate yourself.

You have to do something different. But in reality, I think everything in life just follows good energy, you know, from there's a million ways to look at that. Right. If you wake up in the morning and you think positive thoughts and you do that every single day, those positive thoughts are always going to come true. We've all heard that kind of hippie mumbo jumbo. I think it's true when it comes to the idea of a business though. It's the exact same thing.

So what we do at Uki Ventures that's different than most of the people in the med spa, healthcare space, is every single thing that we do is what's best for our employees and what's best for our customers. I've seen so many doctors driving Ferraris that just jack prices up on everything and they sit back and eat on the margins all day long.

We don't play that game here. There's a ton of money to be made in this space and we believe, I'll use this example. If you're a single mother and you're in any major Metroplex in the US, and let's say you wait tables for a living and you want to go in and get a service done, an aesthetic, minimally invasive medical service

done. What are your real options? The first option is you call a dermatologist or plastic surgeon. They want a thousand dollar deposit. Well to that dermatologist or plastic surgeon, that might not be a lot of money. To the large majority of the people out there, that is a ton of money and it's just not disposable income that they can get rid of. You go to one of my competitors and they'll pay seven, 800 bucks.

That's still actually a pretty good price, but it's still not realistic to how so many people in this country are living. And so we tried to change that. So we cut prices way down into the two hundreds and three hundreds and set up structures that people can come in and get incredibly high quality medical services done at an affordable rate with high quality trained people, clean environment, safe environment, and essentially when no one else wants that customer, we want them. And because we've operated that way, we have an unbelievably large client list in a much shorter

amount of time than the majority of the people in the space because we're operating for the people and it's come back in droves. That's amazing. Do you follow a certain process when it comes to following up with people? I think I used to be in the spa space many, many years ago. Um, and I noticed that a lot of, a lot of brick and mortar locations, one of their biggest opportunities was they never followed up, people would come in and they would never contact them. They didn't even have a process for that. Is that something that you all have mastered?

I don't think we've mastered it. I don't think there's any way to master it. I do believe first off, I have an amazing team, so it's not like it's me doing it. I've got a great team, but we use uh, of course we have we use software so Every day we have call lists We pull out all the people that are due for these services Going back X amount of dates depending on the service that they're getting we have salespeople that call these people full-time So of course we're calling them about two to three times a week. We will send out text messages

I think I send out about a half a million text messages for marketing a month right now. Um, so we'll text entire client databases or city specific on set specials. So we are in constant communication. And then not to mention retargeting, whether or not you're a customer or you've even visited my page, you're never not going to see my ads and you're never going to know what's going on. So between call lists, text message marketing, managers just doing their job and just reaching out to people as they should, calling top customers and whatnot.

We're in constant communication with these people trying to get them back in. If not, you just lose everyone. There's so much competition and so many people going after that same customer. Why would they not just go somewhere else? If it's closer to their house? You have to get in their ear. You have to let them know that there's no other choice. But the only side thing there is there's not really very many people that compete with Neon Price. So there's not a whole lot of options. There's other med spas, there's other spas, but there's not too many people playing in my price bracket. So when you looked at this as the business model, I know you have multiple locations.

How did you look at, okay, we were going to make this work. That means we need to market to X amount of people or we have to get X amount of clients to come in. How did you look at this as a business model? Or was there something that sparked it to say, okay, these are the clients that we're going to go after? Yeah, you know what, we had so many plans, but I'll be completely honest with this. We opened smack dab June 15 of 2020, right during the pandemic in New York City on the Upper East Side. So arguably the worst market in the world

to be opening a business during the worst time in history is when we opened our first location for this company. So to say that we followed any of our original plans would be a lie. I was just throwing things at the wall and seeing what stuck. We were spending all of our budget on ads. We were just trying to figure out,

A, who feels safe enough to leave their house, who's out there, who's still in New York city market to everyone. And daily we're going to look at the analytics and see who's responding, who's booking, we're going to double down on that. And that's, that's really why we, I mean, we originally thought we were going to probably live in the mid thirties, early forties range, like most med spas do. But we right now, we're 18 to 34, really 18 to 26 is where the large majority of our customer base is.

That's not what we planned. That's just kind of what's transition. And I think that's important. What your plan is, is ultimately is not going to matter. Who's actually spending money? Like, who cares? Throw your plan is is ultimately is not going to matter. It's who's actually spending money. Like who cares? Throw your plan in the trash. It doesn't matter if that's not really first coming in, figure out who your

customer is, who your brand relates with and just double, triple, four X down on that and just keep doing that and you'll be fine. Hey, Airbnb was created in 2008. So there you go. Yeah. Sometimes when maybe when everyone else is not doing something, because it's not a good good time. Yeah, maybe it is a good. But good. It sounds crazy.

when it happened, but that's amazing. I mean, what an incredible story. Sounds very exciting. So for, and I really liked the fact that you're going after a generation of people that are one younger, which other people may not be going after, but that allows them to also, I mean, you have such a long lifespan of that customer.

They might, you know, they might be a waiter or waitress today, but tomorrow they might be a waiter or waitress today, but tomorrow they might be an executive and then they have more money. So I mean, that is something very interesting. And I'm fascinated that a that group of people are looking for Med Spa services because they want to be the best their best self. I think that's very, that's very fascinating. But I'm curious, what is a piece of advice that you would give to somebody else who's like, you know what Shane, I want to follow in your footsteps. I want to be a successful entrepreneur. I want to get the Inc 5000 list. What advice do you have for me?

You have to be able to switch your mindset on what success really looks like. And I can only answer how that worked for me. The thing that really changed it for me was finding the most successful people that I could get my hands on and making myself so valuable to that person that they could not live without me. And I did that for multiple CEOs while I was growing.

What happened because of that is a couple things. The first is, is it changed my idea of what success looks like. When you see the houses that these guys live in and private jets, you're like, what am I thinking if you want $100,000 a year? I can make some real money. So your mindset shifts there, which is fantastic. One of the best things I've ever done for my personal growth was picking up a new language, whether you're traveling, leveling up your career, or just love learning,

speaking another language opens up many doors and Rosetta Stone makes it easier, more immersive, more fun. It's the leading language learning program available right on your desktop or mobile. Rosetta Stone helps you learn naturally, just like you picked up your first language through real world context and conversation. Just practical skills you can use right away. What I love most is the true accent speech recognition. It gives you real time feedback so your pronunciation actually sounds like a native speaker.

With 30 years experience, millions of learners in 25 languages choose from like Spanish, also Tagalog, which I'm learning. Rosetta Stone is the go-to for anyone serious about learning fast and retaining it long term. Don't wait. Unlock your language learning potential now. Founder story listeners can grab Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. That's unlimited access to 25 language courses for life. Visit RosettaStone.com slash today to get started and claim your 50% off today. Don't miss out, go to RosettaStone.com slash today

and start learning today. When my business needed to hire someone urgently, it felt like I needed them yesterday. We struggled to find quality applicants quickly, and that's when Indeed came to our rescue. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job posting on other job sites. Indeed's sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire fast. With sponsored jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. And it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed receive 45%

more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. Hiring used to be a drawn out, overwhelming process, but with Indeed, it became incredibly fast and efficient. Plus with Indeed sponsored jobs, there are no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts, and you only pay for results. How fast is Indeed? In the minute I've been talking, 23 hires were made worldwide on Indeed. There's no need to wait any longer.

Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job visibility at Indeed.com slash Founders Story. Just go to Indeed.com slash founders story right now and support our show by letting them know you heard about Indeed here. Indeed.com slash founders story. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. April is Earth Month, a time to reflect on the impact of our choices.

Sustainability starts at home and especially in the bedroom. Did you know most mattresses end up in landfills within a decade? That's why I love avocado green mattresses made with certified organic materials like latex, cotton, and wool. Avocado mattresses aren't just built for comfort. They're built to last. And lasting quality means fewer replacements, less waste, and a healthier planet. Every Avocado mattress is crafted ethically, climate neutral certified, and made in their own zero waste factory diverting 85% of waste from landfills. This Earth moon, choose sleep with purpose, choose sustainability. Head to avocatomatress.com today and save up to 10% on certified organic mattresses. Dream of better for you and the planet. The next thing there though, is these guys will keep you around for everything.

So you're in every meeting. You're in every conversation. You're listening to private equity conversations. You're listening to them talking to banks. You're listening to them speaking with their friends and seeing what kind of friends they talk to. So your mind shit your mindset will just shift completely and then you can go out on your own. If you want to just take the risk and do it, that's fine. You're gonna learn so much from mistakes. I get it. But invest in a few years on trying to surround yourself around the most successful people you can.

Learn a little bit then go take the risks and go all in. And you're just gonna only learn by mistakes anyway, but try to learn from someone. That's that's my number one piece of a big takeaway from from this today is you're a forever learner surrounding yourself with much smarter, successful people, you will help. I think a lot of people sometimes think they know everything or think they know all. When, like you said, we barely know anything. Shane, this has been great.

Super inspired for me today. I think the audience is gonna also take a lot away. If people wanna get in touch with you, they wanna find out more information about your company. How can they do so? Just go to upkeepventures.com and you can reach out. We'll be in touch. Always available for free advice.

I said I'm always available for free advice if anyone needs anything. There you go. I love that. I love that, Shane. I think that's a great offer for everyone, but this has been great to have you today on Founder's Story. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate you. If you're looking for legit ways to make extra money, you've got to check out The Side Hustle bitch. the guy earning $3,000 a month renting out mobility scooters online or offline from Amazon

to your own hometown from YouTube to vending machines. The side hustle show has you and your wallet covered. Subscribe to the side hustle show wherever you're listening to this podcast and increase your earning power today. Looking for the ultimate online casino experience step into the bed MGM casino app where every deal spin and goal brings Las Vegas excitement into the palm of your hand. Take your seat at Premium Blackjack Pro, where strategy meets top-tier gameplay. Drop in on the exciting Sugar Rush and Crazy Time slot games,

or play the dazzling MGM Grand Emerald Nights, a slot experience that captures the magic of MGM. With so many games, it's time to make your move. Download the app and visit BetMGM Ontario today to experience the next level of gaming. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600

to speak to an advisor, free of charge. Ben AmGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario.