How CloudMedspas Is Creating the Airbnb of Healthcare Real Estate

Shannon Seeberan (00:00)
I would just say, you know, we have—I love our product. When I say we’re the Airbnb, it’s truly that. We are solving a problem for space owners that is helping them generate more revenue for their largest asset, which tends to be their lease or their mortgage, and then we’re solving a problem for a majority of the marketplace of solo practitioners who are looking to scale, grow their reach, launch their private practice without taking on the risk and overhead of a lease or a purchase.

Quentin Edmonds (02:05)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds, and I am excited to be here today. I have a fantastic guest here, and I cannot wait for us to peek through her experience and learn a little bit about what she does. The company name is CloudMedspas, and this is the best way that I can explain it to you as she explained to me: it’s the Airbnb for healthcare. So, yes, we are going to learn something new today. Maybe some of y’all are familiar with it, but I know some of our audience probably not. So, again, I cannot wait to talk today with Ms. Shannon Seeberan. Ms. Shannon, how are you today? Hi.

Shannon Seeberan (02:48)
I’m great. Thank you. Thank you, Q, for having me on.

Quentin Edmonds (02:51)
Yes, ma’am. I’m so glad you’re here. And listen, I am the type—I love to dive right in. Yeah. So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days. If you don’t mind, give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got into the space that you’re in. And then tell us what markets you’re operating in as well. So Ms. Shannon, ma’am, the floor is yours. Yes, ma’am.

Shannon Seeberan (03:11)
Great. So I guess to start with how I got into this, how this all happened. I was—I was in New York for many years doing media sales—sorry. And I took a little bit of a sabbatical and just by chance got into consulting with medical practices. I grew up—my dad had his own private practice next to our house, so just really understanding physicians really well, the struggles they dealt with in private practice. And so there was a huge need for some efficiencies to be enabled within private practices. So started working specifically with dermatology practices, integrating medical aesthetics into these practices, which, you know, most people know is a cash-based business, and every practice is looking for more access to capital to run—to run efficiently and sort of beat the constant ongoing struggle of working with insurance companies. So that business did very well, but you know, I currently—I’ve lived in Silicon Valley for the last 13 years, and I had a draw to move to the tech side. But also take my knowledge, what I know, and come over to this—the dark side of tech. So about seven years ago I met a founder, a partner, CloudMedspas, Iggy Fanlo, who started this business out of Boston, and we grew it to scale where it is today.

Quentin Edmonds (05:29)
Yeah, yeah, I love it. Thank you, ma’am. Thank you for taking us through the journey, letting us know what you do, kind of how you got there. And so, and I—and I love, you know, that you—you mentioned transition kind of in your life and in careers. And so, Ms. Shannon, I often say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning no matter where we are in life, we are borrowing from that—that leg of the journey, right? And it makes us who we are today. Yeah. I would love to know throughout the journey, throughout the process, what have you learned about yourself? Have you learned resilience, discipline, humbleness? What are some of the things that you learned about you, Ms. Shannon?

Shannon Seeberan (06:06)
You know, I’ve learned that I love to solve problems and every day I think you have to show up at work or whatever you do and realize it’s not going to be a smooth process necessarily. But the way you approach problems collaboratively, optimistically, is really sort of, you know, what sustains the ability to—to get through hurdles. Especially, you know, CloudMedspas is in theory a startup, but you know, seven years in it doesn’t feel like it should be. It feels like we should graduate to another level. And we’ve been growing very quickly and seeing a lot of success, which is—which keeps us all in the game, yeah, because of those positive outcomes. But I would just say resilience, empathy for, you know, a huge percentage of the marketplace we’re trying to make better. Right. That’s why we’re in this, because we feel like we have a great solution for a lot of people struggling with the different challenges that pose them as independent business owners in theory. So to me, the fact that we have such positive outcomes and we really turn the tables for our clients is what keeps me involved at the end of the day is that personal impact.

Quentin Edmonds (07:28)
Yeah, yeah. I—I absolutely love it. Again, thank—thank you for the answer—for that reflective answer. I love everything you said. I love how you brought out the word empathy. I mean, I think, you know, just connecting with people on an empathetic level is—is a game changer. So I appreciate you sharing. I want to ask you a little operational question, right? And so what’s one operational thing that you’ve put in place, let’s say the last two years, that’s been the biggest difference in the way you do your business?

Shannon Seeberan (07:56)
Mm, that’s a great question. I would—I would say we have continued, and you know, everyone’s seeing it these days, we’ve continued to use the resources and tools available to help with client support and be more efficient without going full bot with customer service, but using it in more efficient ways so that our team can be leveraged really where it matters and really empowering our clients with resources operationally that can solve, you know, day-to-day problems for them or questions without bringing in the entire team to do that. And I think once you empower people to find their own solutions, everyone works more efficiently. So that’s probably—and we can always be better in that area.

Quentin Edmonds (08:27)
Yeah.

Shannon Seeberan (08:50)
And with the AI tools now available, you know, every day we’re—we’re sort of, how can we outsource that to AI, right, to help us? Because humans, I think, have to get very particular with how we use our time and resources to be effective.

Quentin Edmonds (09:08)
I love it. I think time is our most precious commodity. So the way we can use time efficiently, absolute game changer, and definitely AI is helping us with that. And I love how you say, but we’re not going full bot though. We’re not.

Shannon Seeberan (09:21)
Yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am.

Quentin Edmonds (09:27)
So let me ask you, what’s the next real goal for you guys? What are you looking to solve or scale next?

Shannon Seeberan (10:07)
So, you know, I would to become, you know, an—a recognizable brand and the solution out there and build more awareness, clearly. And so there’s a way to do that while effectively still executing and delivering our product. You know, initially for a lot of companies when they start out, that initial growth is slow. We’ve kind of hit a turn where we’re ready to scale quickly and we’re capable of doing that well while still maintaining a high quality product and support for our clients. So I think we’re kind of looking for that zero to ninety period just for the marketplace to know that options are there for them to help with their fixed costs. So I think a lot of people feel like they’re stuck in—on a hamster wheel and limited by how they go about running their practices, and, you know, the exploration of what’s new out there so they can minimize overhead, increase profitability. You know, this savviness of running a business is not necessarily endemic to healthcare. And so they don’t necessarily—you know, they should go hand in hand, but not necessarily perceived that way by this market. And so it’s sort of bringing to light more control, more opportunity for this marketplace.

Quentin Edmonds (11:33)
Yeah, I love it. So Ms. Shannon, I wanna talk to you about relationships, right? I would love to know what’s your philosophy on building healthy business relationships. Have business relationships served you well? Who are the people in your community, the backbone that you—people that you lean on? So Ms. Shannon, if you don’t mind, talk to me a little bit about relationships, ma’am.

Shannon Seeberan (11:57)
Yeah, I mean they’re the most valuable intangibles, I think. And the most advantageous approach to a relationship is hoping you can both equally succeed from the relationship. That’s why we date, that’s why we maintain our friendships, is because we both want to get something out of it. And so, you know, going into these partnerships and relationships with the mindset of there’s enough for both of us to win here, as opposed to, you know, butting heads over who’s taking more. And we build that culture and that understanding with our clients as well, with the—the micro-environments that they’re building at their locations and the healthiness of collaboration and networking and all of those things. So I—you know, I always say it’s sort of— people like to think of success and business as transactions and financial outcomes. There are intangibles aligned with all of that that we know are the foundation of successful business. And that, like you mentioned, goes—really resides in the relationships you build.

Quentin Edmonds (13:09)
Absolutely. I love the word relationship. Sometimes I break it down in my mind to say “relate-ship,” right? Like we’re in a ship together. Yes. Moving, we’re going somewhere. And we have to relate together while we in this ship, right? So how are we gonna do this? Are you rowing the oars? Like are you dropping the anchor? Are you—like what are we doing here? So everybody…

Shannon Seeberan (13:29)
Sink or swim. Sink or swim.

Quentin Edmonds (13:31)
And then sometimes the—the ship gets bigger. You know, sometimes it starts off as a rowboat, you know what I mean? Maybe a yacht. So as we—again, as—in this ship together, how are we relating why we’re in the ship? So I think you just hit the nail on the head when you talked about the way you’re relating within the people within your ship, within your sphere. Yes, ma’am. Listen, I—I—I’m always curious about the name of businesses. So CloudMedspas, is there a story behind the name? Like, how did the name come about? Like, talk to me a little bit about that.

Shannon Seeberan (14:43)
Yeah. So when we initially entered the space, we were targeting a specific healthcare provider—okay—the medical aesthetic practitioner. So the—which is typically a nurse or physician who is offering non-invasive medical aesthetics. In short, people refer to these procedures as Botox procedures, fillers, things like that. And so that’s where “Medspas” comes from. “Cloud” comes from sort of, you know, a—as we all refer to clouds these days, and technology is sort of a shared resource of systems. We can all benefit from sharing the same utility as versus us each having our own. So that whole group opportunity to buy in and share from the advantage of a collaboration and group buying and all of those things as we’re, you know… So it’s the CloudMedspas balance is really the origin—and the aesthetic space is really the origin of the name, yeah. We are finding ourselves sort of graduating beyond a specific practitioner and a specific healthcare space and to being more inclusive of all health, wellness, and beauty. And so our clients range from any type of host space owner in that health, wellness, beauty realm, in addition to the types of renters that are seeking the space, you know: chiropractors, therapists, beauticians, concierges, physicians. So it’s really grown. So, you know, the name has some recognition and awareness now, but we really are expanding outside of it.

Quentin Edmonds (16:31)
I love it. I love it. Well listen, Shannon, I know I’ve asked a lot of questions. Is there anything that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about? Like specifically if you came in maybe with something on your mind, like, “I want to make sure the audience know this. This is what I want to make sure I say about my business.” I kind of want to create space for you to land that message if you came in with it.

Shannon Seeberan (16:50)
Yeah, and I, you know, I would just say, you know, we have—I love our product. When I say we’re the Airbnb, it’s truly that. We are solving a problem for space owners that is helping them generate more revenue for their largest asset, which tends to be their lease or their mortgage, and then we’re solving a problem for a majority of the marketplace of solo practitioners who are looking to scale, grow their reach, launch their private practice without taking on the risk and overhead of a lease or a purchase. And so there—as we all know, there’s a bigger marketplace of people who can rent than can purchase. There’s a bigger marketplace of people who drive a Dodge versus a Lamborghini. And we are really focused on the top of funnel—huge top of funnel feed of a bigger marketplace, empowering everyone involved. And we all want to approach real estate differently post-pandemic, when a lot of people realized fixed costs were really painful, you know. So from both the space owner and the space user, there are options out there. And we’ve seen it really take off with products like Airbnb, shared space utilization. Let’s optimize, you know, the available real estate that everyone has or wants access to.

Quentin Edmonds (18:11)
Yeah, yeah. Ms. Shannon, I really appreciate you sharing, ma’am. I appreciate your message. If anybody wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, ma’am?

Shannon Seeberan (18:26)
Email—I know that sounds archaic for a lot—old for a lot of people—but [email protected]. Also text, you know, reach out to me directly, 773-398-1999. Check out our website, cloudmedspas.com. We’ll respond quickly. I love to have conversations like this, you know, just to even explore the opportunity, see what is available specifically for anyone who’s interested.

Quentin Edmonds (18:55)
Yeah. Well, Ms. Shannon, let me say three things to you sincerely. One, thank you for your time. I think again, time is our most precious commodity. So I appreciate you spending time with us today. Secondly, thank you for your story. Thank you for your seeds that you plant. I believe that the seeds—they can take root. We may not know when. We don’t know when the growth’s gonna come, but the seed is there. So I appreciate you showing some seeds today. Lastly, thank you for your way you think, your mindset, and bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you coming on today.

Shannon Seeberan (19:23)
Thanks, Q. Appreciate it. Appreciate it.

Quentin Edmonds (19:26)
Well, listen, y’all heard Ms. Shannon. Please check it out. Her information is in the show notes. Please get in contact with her. But definitely make sure you’re subscribed here, because I’m promising you, we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Ms. Shannon. So, ma’am, I say thank you again. And everyone else, y’all have a fantastic day.