Shownotes
What does it take to transform deep expertise into a scalable, investment-grade business? In this special anniversary episode of the Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Dr. Dia Burger, founder of Stiletto Med Spa, the International Med Spa Academy, and the Million Dollar Med Spa Method.
With more than 30 years of medical experience and two decades in aesthetics, Dr. Dia shares how her vision evolved from operating a highly successful med spa to creating a global chain of premium med spas designed for exceptional client outcomes and strong investor returns. She discusses the importance of leadership, intellectual property, business systems, ethical practices, and trusting your intuition when building something extraordinary.
This inspiring conversation explores the intersection of vision, innovation, profitability, and purpose while revealing what it takes to create a business that is both scalable and sustainable.
What You Will Learn
How vision often emerges through a combination of frustration, reflection, and faith.
Why leading visionaries must continually refine and narrow their focus to achieve greater impact.
The importance of having trusted advisors who can reflect blind spots and accelerate growth.
How Dr. Dia evolved from helping investors build med spas to creating her own global med spa brand.
Why safety, integrity, and client outcomes are foundational to sustainable business success.
How undervaluing your expertise can leave significant opportunities and revenue on the table.
The difference between being a skilled practitioner and being an effective business owner.
Why intellectual property and proven systems create long-term business value.
How efficiency, not volume, drives exceptional results in medical aesthetics.
The leadership lessons required to scale a vision into a world-class organization.
Why protecting standards and execution is critical when expanding a successful model.
How investors benefit from businesses built on proven systems and measurable performance.
FAQ:
How can med spa owners increase profitability without increasing treatment volume?
Dr. Dia explains that profitability comes from efficiency rather than simply performing more procedures. By improving systems, client experience, injector performance, operational workflows, and business processes, med spas can significantly increase revenue without sacrificing quality.
What leadership skills are necessary to scale a business successfully?
Successful business leaders must balance empathy with strong business decision-making. Dr. Dia emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries, understanding the value of your expertise, building systems that scale, and seeking trusted advisors who can identify blind spots and accelerate growth.
How do investors benefit from investing in med spa businesses?
Investors benefit when med spas are built on proven systems that create predictable revenue, operational efficiency, and strong profit margins. Dr. Dia's model focuses on creating investment-grade businesses designed for long-term scalability and attractive returns.
Connect with Dr. Dia Burger
Join the Leading Visionaries Community
Transcripts
LVP 139 Dr. Dia
===
Ad: [:Now, here's your host, Anjel B. Hartwell
Anjel: Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries podcast, where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time, and provide our listeners with world-class examples of the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality.
r is the founder of Stiletto [:Originally trained as a GP surgeon in South Africa, she brings 30-plus years of experience, including two decades in medical aesthetics. She's currently focused on launching Stiletto Med Spa in Calgary, her flagship location, and a full-scale execution of her model. I'm really excited to have you here today.
Welcome to the show, Dr. Dia.
Dr. Dia: Thank you, Anjel. It's a pleasure to be here.
and Dr. Dia was actually on [:So for our listeners who want to hear her twice, I highly recommend that you tune into that episode, which was called Becoming an Industry Leader in Medical Cosmetics with Dr. Dia Burger, and was a two-time award-winning episode. So be prepared, strap in. You're gonna have a good conversation today, and you're gonna learn a lot from her.
So I want to start our time, Dr. Dia, talking about vision because clearly you are a leading visionary in so many ways, and I'd love to have you speak a little bit about your experience with vision. Was vision something that came online for you when you were a child, or has vision been something that just kind of showed up and evolved over time, or did you have some kind of divine intervention that woke you up to your visionary capacity?
Dr. Dia: That is a very [:Anjel: Mm-hmm
I find it requires a leap of [:It is based in reality, but there is... I used to skydive, and it's that, and not buddy jump, like static line. That literally jumping out of the plane, there's massive trust there. Mm-hmm. But it's also the only way to fly.
Anjel: Mm-hmm. Beautiful. I love it. Well, I love that you said sometimes it comes out of frustration, sometimes it comes out of reflection.
So, I want to speak a little bit, because you, you know, we did have you on the show back in June a couple of years ago, and at that time you had, as I recall, a vast vision. And it wa- it... And one of the things that I think is true of many visionaries is we can have an incredibly vast vision, and then it's helpful to invest to have somebody help with bringing that vision into reality.
e to have you speak a little [:Dr. Dia: Mm-hmm. We only have three hours, right, to discuss this? Oh. Ah, yes. And again, there's, there's always a duality, it seems, in my life 'cause, because simultaneously the vision has become even bigger, but in its execution and its granularity it has become narrower, more focused.
g to be in a situation where [:Anjel: Mm.
Dr. Dia: Right? To reflect things back to you and help you just navigate what is unnecessary, what is wasting time, and where you should maybe be focusing more. Mm. So it went from building multiple med spas for investors to Building multiple med spas for me- Mm-hmm ... and for investors, right? Participating in another capacity.
e. And w- how the vision has [:Because the building spas the way I'm doing them right now ensures that what I build and start up at the top end of the market stays like that- Mm-hmm ... and then grows. You know, it's not like when you take your hand away and it wants to collapse.
Anjel: Mm-hmm. Beautiful. I love that. So just so our listeners are clear Dr.
s great desire to change the [:And then we got to this point where you are now, which is... And I love that you said the safety and integrity has taken the forefront, and the, the more that safety and integrity took the forefront, the more it became clear that this is a chain of med spas that are going to be under your direction as opposed to you building med spas for other, other people who are investor owners.
eeing where you were leaving [:Dr. Dia: Right. And that can be micro and macro. And if I start with micro, it is, in the beginning, when I entered this industry, it was because I couldn't see myself being a family doctor, right? For the next 10 years, I think I would've not been a very happy camper. So it was to apply what I was trained, which is to be a surgeon.
me into an industry, and you [: without taking advantage of [:Now, from a macro perspective, because I did so well, um, and there was a business advisor in the background looking after over 50 similar spas, I was the youngest one. Of course, he's analyzing numbers for everyone, and then contacts me and says, "What are you doing?" Mm. Because you're way off the chart with performance.
And then he pulled me into helping optimize the other ones. And for almost 10 years, I did that for free.
Anjel: Mm.
advantage of your character, [:Right? Um, and you just give. So a big growing part for me has to be that I simultaneously have to be the empathetic physician, but also the business person.
Anjel: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Dia: Right? And those two are... You have to be able to climb fully into bo- into both. In the one, you are a giver empath, and in the other one, it's like, "Here's the deal," right?
It's fair to both, and if you don't want to pay it, then good luck, right? I'll discuss this with someone who is interested. Mm-hmm. So there's a little bit of a, a non-physician boundary there.
Anjel: Mm-hmm. Excellent. Right?
Dr. Dia: Yeah.
your current vision, and, Mm[:we're gonna celebrate some more our third anniversary. But right now we're gonna take a quick break. Listeners, are you a leading visionary or in the role of leading other visionaries? If you're interested in finding out more about how you can receive support for getting your vision out of the air and onto the ground in a way that's both inc- impact and income producing, the best support is found in collaboration with other leading visionaries,
which is why we've created the Creative Age Leader Lab. Discover more about this opportunity at leadingvisionariespodcast.com/creativeageleaderlab. Consider joining our community and sharing your feedback and takeaways from each episode. Be sure to share this show in your own spirals of influence with the people that you think might benefit from our content.
r. Dia is, French Polynesia, [:And we will be right back with Dr. Dia Burger.
Ad: The Leading Visionaries podcast is brought to you by the Creative Age Consulting Group. Are you the one who thinks differently? Who is called to create a significant conscious change in the world? Who is seeing and dreaming of a better way for your industry, your community, humanity? Creative Age Consulting Group is hired to guide leading visionaries just like you who want to break through the static in order to clearly express and confidently enroll support for their vision in a way that makes it inevitable that it will come to pass.
ents a free copy of the book [:The book is yours by visiting gift.leadingvisionariespodcast.com.
Anjel: And we are back with Dr. Dia Berger. You can find out more about Dr. Dia and acquire the private investor briefing if you are inspired to become an investor in her vision. Uh, we will have that for you in the show notes. Uh, you can connect with her also directly on LinkedIn at Dr. Dia Berger on LinkedIn.
money part of the equation, [:And so I'd love to have you talk a little bit about how your mindset has shifted in terms of the value of your intellectual property, number one. And number two, like, where is the vision now? What do you see now as possible financially for you and the investors who may choose to come along for the ride with you?
more and more You know, you [:And I go there and I inject with one person who helps me, and you can literally see how the hourly rate looks, and it is the same success model over and over and over again. Mm-hmm. So, and part of why the vision has narrowed to keeping this under my guidance is to ensure that that stays the way.
stment. Mm-hmm. Right? Which [:And you can see the staff, for example, in this spa, sh- the one, the owner looked at one of her workers and she said, "Just do what she says, 'cause she's always right." Right. And it's, it's not an ego thing, it's just, it's based on me having tried everything else and made those same mistakes. Yeah. But, you know, by keeping it under your guidance, you ensure those things don't happen, because we don't have to reinvent the wheel at this point.
very, very well and putting [:Anjel: Mm.
Dr. Dia: And then go replicate them.
Anjel: Sure.
Dr. Dia: So.
Anjel: Sure.
Dr. Dia: Yeah.
Anjel: Well, so, you know, one of the, a, a couple of the things that I just want our listeners to hear, because it does it will give you real perspective as you and I have been working together.
So the average med spa hits maybe $600,000 a year. You ran a med spa that consistently was doing over a million a year, and you have now sorted out and structured and sequenced and methodically you know, structured a med spa that can do millions in a month.
Dr. Dia: Yes.
Anjel: And so, you know, I just want people to hear the contrast there.
being empathic and about the [:When you sold your original spa, it was a 22X ROI, which is huge. That's a huge ROI. So now you're creating something that's going to become a chain of spas, as opposed to, you know, helping individual spas to get better or bringing in investors who wanna own and operate their own spas using your methodology.
the vision that's bigger and [:Dr. Dia: financial return that's possible. Right.
Anjel: Right? Yeah. Great. So, when you think about some of the things that you've needed to do in terms of as your role as a leader, I'd love to hear you share with our listeners some of the things that has, have evolved for you over the last couple of years that we've been working together in terms of your leadership.
ing or teach my injectors to [:This is not about volume injection per face. It is about an efficiency. It's an efficacy model.
Anjel: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Dia: So ... And that's just because I literally can, when I say this in conversations, I can literally see people go, "How does she do that?" Right? Mm-hmm. Where are the freaks coming out, right, if it's exponentially like that?
ell you that the majority of [:Because it is a pretty young industry, and they ride on a traditional model. So what I find challenging is to have the answers and not just become a prophet, right? And tell them, because it is really brutal to watch how they do not succeed because they do not understand what actually makes this efficient.
Um, I find most injectors do a weekend course, maybe two, maybe three, and they and the public think they can inject, which is- Mm ... so incorrect. Mm. You have to have the skill set. You have to have decent basic training. And then that doesn't mean you're gonna be good at it. Mm-hmm. 'Cause they don't teach us this in med school and nursing school.
And people don't understand [:Anjel: Mm ...
Dr. Dia: that create this in the end. They think they can touch... And that is why the fix-up of old spas, why I'm not interested in doing that anymore, 'cause you can't- Mm ... fix one thing and the whole machine is improved.
Anjel: Right. Well, you know, I think that's another n- thing that we wanna make sure that our listeners are clear on. Not only do you have a proprietary structure for the business side, but you also have proprietary mathematical aesthetic formula for injecting so that somebody looks completely natural. It doesn't look like, you know, they don't have fish lips or any of those other weird things that this- Right
you know, good marketing can [:So, um, we've only got a couple minutes left, so I would like you to imagine that there are some people who, in our listening audience, who would love to participate in financing your vision. What would be the top maybe two things that you would want them to hear so that they could feel like, "I wanna get behind this.
I wanna be part of it. I want to you know, finance this, this vision"?
about return on investment. [:I find most injectors, even the ones who have done this for a long, long time, can't even tell you their injection rate, which means they have no idea how they are scoring or how they're performing. And at this point, I inject a constant $6,000 an hour, right? So that is huge in the market. It's called a, it's actually called a high-volume injector, and like I said, not per face, but per time unit.
ds, for an investor, that is [:They create, you need more space, more people, but it's just a headache, and it's not really worth it in the business. And I set these spas up that they have a very early cash flow while we still are not quite fully launched yet. So from a business perspective, I am extremely happy with how they perform, and so are people that I've built these for.
of join the group, and where [:Anjel: That's right. All right. Well, I am very excited to see where we go from here. Uh, we've already mapped out Stiletto Calgary, i- which is currently under construction.
We've mapped out Stiletto Toronto, and Vegas, and Miami, and New York, and I think San Francisco. So we are already rolling, and if you are an investor and you would like to get in on this wonderful opportunity, then we certainly encourage you to get in touch with Dr. Di on her LinkedIn or look for the private investor briefing to get more information about the opportunity.
g in partnership with you as [:I love it when we, you know, make the cosmic date. And so thank you so much again for coming today to celebrate with me. And listeners, we do love feedback. Please let us know what you thought of today's show by joining our community, sharing your takeaways, asking questions, or submitting guest suggestions.
You can weave your visionary thread into our fabric by opting in on our website at leadingvisionariespodcast.com or by interacting with us on social. Look for the handle @leadingvisionariespodcast across all the major platforms. Thanks so much for tuning in. Keep your eyes, ears, and hearts open, and remember, you are here to create conscious change
stening. Be sure to rate and [:We invite your feedback and guest suggestions and invite you to subscribe to our mailing list to be notified of new episodes at leadingvisionariespodcast.com
