Medical aesthetics attracts a lot of nurses, nurse practitioners, and doctors who have zero business education or financial knowledge because we're never taught it in school. Nursing is basically trade school—designed to funnel people into hospital work or corporate employment under physicians.

But nurses have the personality, skill set, and clinical capability to build businesses and scale. The problem is nobody teaches them business. I feel it's critical to educate this space because I believe many medical spas will fail due to predatory industry practices that exploit the lack of awareness among nurses and medical professionals starting these practices.

I also want to help as many people as possible learn finance and business so they have a real shot at success.

Chapter 11 is a debt restructuring program through the federal government. When you file, all your debt goes into a bankruptcy plan. Your attorney works with your creditors—under the oversight of a US Trustee and the bankruptcy court—to determine how much you can realistically pay back, what's secured, what's unsecured, and what claims may be overstated. The moment you file, there's an automatic stay—you stop making payments on that debt while you figure out and restructure it.

It can be a really useful financial strategic tool when you get upside down on debt. The key question is: can you afford your operations, inventory, and everything else on a month-to-month cash basis if the debt burden wasn't crushing you? If the answer is yes, Chapter 11 might be the right move.

There are so many decisions over time that lead to where we are now. We had a construction project that's been a disaster—a huge drag on cash flow. It was supposed to be a revenue-producing asset and should have been completed almost a year ago. The construction industry is brutal when the general contracting system is broken.

Beyond that: overpaid salaries, lower revenue projections than we forecasted, money poured into predatory equipment financing because banks won't lend to young businesses but you need those machines to operate, and spending from companies that promised the world but delivered nothing. Bad contracts, bad hires, bad partnerships. It's hard to pinpoint one thing. It's the accumulation.

The response has been unbelievable. Yes, there were a couple of speed bumps and a few angry people, but overall the support has been amazing. A lot of congratulations, actually—because if you understand Chapter 11 and get to the point where you can actually file it, that means you've done things right. You're working on a cash basis, you're not making stupid moves, you've become lean, you and your team are grinding hard. That takes courage.

Vendors, employees, and partners have all reached out saying, "Let us know if we need anything." It's been a pleasure working with everyone. Not perfect, but honestly, I expected it to be a lot harder.

I had no idea what Chapter 11 was until about a month before we filed. My EO group (Entrepreneurs' Organization) here in Nashville was pivotal—I can't recommend EO enough. They and close friends helped me educate myself quickly on the pathway forward.

The real lesson: when you have mentors and friends who know things you don't, and you're willing to learn what you don't know, everything shifts. I know I don't know everything, but that solid pathway was right in front of me. I would have easily missed it because if someone had said "bankruptcy," I would have told them they were crazy. That's how little I understood the tools available to me.

Absolutely not. I've been told my content might come across as negative—I really don't care. It's not negative. It's the truth.

In our industry, we're built on smiling and putting on a pretty face. Unfortunately, the surface is also fake. Some of the biggest names in medical aesthetics are struggling, underwater on cash, not doing what they say they're doing. But Instagram makes it look like everybody's making a fortune. I haven't found a single person yet who's truly thriving and not dealing with normal business struggles.

I'm trying to open the door for people to talk about the real stuff without worrying what someone on social media thinks. Work on your business.

Educate yourself. Don't listen to reps who scare you into spending thousands on things you don't need. Don't listen to attorneys making you feel like you'll lose your license if you breathe wrong.

Don't buy big expensive machines with predatory financing. You can hustle, use AI, and build organically without massive upfront spend. Don't let shiny diamonds distract you. Get good at your skill and stick with what you know. There is money to be made—anyone who says otherwise is lying.

Seek help from someone who knows medical aesthetics specifically. "Business consultant" is a fancy term for a lot of people who know nothing about this industry. Each vertical is unique. Find someone reasonable—not someone charging $5,000 a month while pumping out stock templates to 25 clients.

The worse the industry gets financially, the more predators come out. Be suspicious.

It's already shaped us immensely. We're implementing better EMR systems, smarter AI integration, and being ruthless about every dollar spent. My cofounder Mary and I aren't assuming ROI—we're thinking through each decision carefully until we have consistent cash reserves growing.

There's no decision that should be taken lightly. We're not assuming growth. We're assuming the worst, assuming we might go backwards. It's not negative thinking—it's conservative thinking.