Heidi Hermel
Nurse Practitioner & Owner, The Skin Clinic Med Spa
Heidi Hermel is a Master’s-educated Certified Nurse Practitioner with over 11 years of experience in skin conditions and medical aesthetics. After working as a family practice nurse (where she received training in aesthetics), then later in urgent care, Heidi transitioned into entrepreneurship. She opened her own med spa in Mankato, Minnesota in January 2020.
Also a mother, Heidi has three teenage children. She is married — and her husband recently quit his job to stay home and help Heidi with her business.
Every time a client comes to Heidi for a service or a consultation, she takes the time to learn what their skin care goals are, and only recommends treatments that will help her clients achieve their goals. Heidi’s customers are more than clients to her — they’re people who deserve individualized care.
As Heidi always says, “It is so much more than just Botox. It’s about feeling better about yourself!”
An experienced nurse practitioner-turned entrepreneur, Heidi Hermel is dedicated to delivering personalized care at The Skin Clinic Med Spa. Her thoughtful approach has helped her build a thriving business, but the road to her success presented challenges along the way.
Upon surviving the COVID-19 pandemic, a new hurdle was right around the corner for The Skin Clinic. It was a time of rapid growth, and staffing and operational issues were impacting service delivery and keeping Heidi working long hours. “I felt like I was on a hamster wheel every day of the week,” she says.
Since working with KLC, Heidi has gained the knowledge, skills, and tools she needs to continue building her growing medical spa and leading her team. She has catapulted her business past the 6 million dollar milestone; opened a new, larger location; and is creating an incredible legacy for her daughters.
Working with KLC has been the best move I've made for my business. It's really rewarding when you can see the work you're doing for yourself, and how it's benefiting your team and your family.
Heidi loved her time as a family nurse practitioner because of the connections it enabled her to form with patients. However, she no longer loved her job in corporate healthcare and was getting burnt out. After giving urgent care a try, Heidi realized it wasn’t a fit and that she preferred an environment where she could build more of a relationship with each of her patients.
As part of her education, Heidi had taken a Botox and injectable course, and loved combining her nurse practitioner degree with those procedures. This led her to open her own practice.
The Skin Clinic Med Spa started out as half aesthetic practice, half cash-based medical clinic. However, the business quickly grew, and today it focuses solely on medical aesthetics.
At The Skin Clinic, Heidi combines her extensive background in family practice with aesthetics to help clients treat conditions that they’ve never been able to treat before — specifically acne and rosacea — with the results they’re looking for.
“I never thought I would open my own business,” Heidi says. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I love being a nurse practitioner, and now I’m able to do what I want how I want to do it.”
Two months after opening The Skin Clinic, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the med spa was shut down by the state of Minnesota.
“It was 11 weeks of uncertainty,” Heidi says. “During that time, I reflected on whether medical care was really what I wanted to offer. I thought, ‘In the midst of a pandemic, am I the right clinic for people to call when they have health issues?’”
So, Heidi transitioned to aesthetics only, and every month her business just kept growing. In short order, Heidi realized she needed to invest in herself and learn to become a leader. She couldn’t ‘do it all’ anymore, and she needed employees to help her.
“I felt like I was on a hamster wheel every day of the week,” she says. “I was no longer able to offer the level of care I wanted to because people were calling all the time, and I would be done for the day but answering messages until 9 at night. I thought, ‘This isn’t why I’m doing this.’ I knew it wasn’t going to be sustainable.”
Heidi quickly hired an office assistant. But, it turned out that she needed more than one staff member. She had decided to build a new space, which was much larger than her current med spa. She needed to start growing her team so they’d be ready for the move.
“The pandemic made hiring employees a whole different ball game,” Heidi says. “I didn’t realize when I hired somebody that my life would get much harder. It was chaotic.”
It was clear that Heidi needed guidance to help The Skin Clinic grow smoothly in the areas where she was struggling, such as team building, marketing, sales, and client communication. She wanted to not only attract new clients, but also returning clients. She needed help developing processes for managing bookings and creating treatment plans.
Heidi was introduced to KLC Consulting founder Kaeli Lindholm through an industry colleague. At that time, her business had been open for exactly one year. It was successful despite the pandemic, but she could see that she needed Kaeli’s expertise to help her scale. So, Heidi decided to join KLC’s Confidence to Scale program.
“I realized if I wanted to continue to grow my staff, I needed to learn the tools to be an effective leader,” she says.
The program gave Heidi the tools she was looking for. In fact, she got so much value from it that she joined KLC’s POP Leadership Academy next.
With Kaeli’s guidance, Heidi focused on her growth strategy and team building, so she could scale her business through assets and stop the hustle. This involved developing the infrastructure required to allow her to transition into a CEO role in her company. Kaeli and Heidi covered three main areas together:
1. Personal professional development
2. Team building (stacking her bench)
3. Leadership
Kaeli and Heidi focused on building internal assets not just through Heidi’s team, but also through her membership program, recurring revenue streams, and retail strategy to drive organic growth for The Skin Clinic in a small-town environment. Each week working with Kaeli and the other POP Academy members has provided Heidi with tons of valuable knowledge.
“It has been the best move I’ve made for my business,” she says. “I now have the opportunity to interact with other like minded business owners and have Kaeli to listen, run ideas by, and get recommendations from.”
Heidi also loves that Kaeli helps her understand why she’s making a certain decision so that in the future, she can continue to make the best choices possible for her business and team.
Since working with Kaeli, Heidi has grown her team of just herself and one assistant to a team of 15 staff, including 2 injectors, a wellness provider, 3 aestheticians, a strong client experience team, and practice manager.
“Building a team has been so rewarding,” Heidi says. “In our new space, my aestheticians are getting very busy very fast, and we’re bringing on a new injector. We’re even expanding to the space next door.”
Having support has given Heidi more time to work on the service provider side of the business, mentoring aestheticians and new injectors, and letting someone else handle part of the human resources tasks. She’s also proud of the culture she’s created at The Skin Clinic.
“A good culture is so important. We’ve created an environment where the employees want to come to work, and they’re excited and passionate,” Heidi says.
Since working with KLC, Heidi has gained the knowledge, skills, and tools she needs to continue building her rapidly growing medical spa. She’s also catapulted her business past the million dollar milestone (amidst a global pandemic) in just over one year by investing deeply in the core strategies of personal professional development, team building, and leadership.
Marketing, sales, and client communication have improved, too. Heidi’s membership program has increased from 107 members to 245. And, she now also has more bandwidth to focus on creating an environment that clients enjoy.
As The Skin Clinic grows, Heidi plans to keep expanding her team and locations, and get her family more involved in the business.
“My oldest daughter wants to go to nursing school and work with me, which is amazing. I would love to leave a practice for my girls,” she says.
Showing her children that hard work pays off is the most rewarding for Heidi.
“As scary as it is, the best thing I ever did was to take this leap,” she says. “My husband is able to stay home and work with me. It’s really rewarding when you can see the work you’re doing for yourself, and how it’s benefiting your team and your family. It is a risk. But I just think, what if I wouldn’t have taken a risk?”
