Imagine stepping into the shoes of Dr. Jessica West, a double board-certified facial plastic and cosmetic surgeon, who transitioned from surgical practice to aesthetic medicine while balancing career and personal well-being. This episode takes you on a tantalizing journey as we unravel the secrets behind Dr. West's successful career transition, her efficient decision-making process, and how she handles the ethical dilemmas in the aesthetic industry. Join us as we delve deep into 'Doctor Dysmorphia', the need for regulation, and the art of maintaining a professional opinion in patient treatments.
Embarking on this journey, we explore the uncharted territories of beauty standards and the influence of social media. Learn how Jessica uses social media to educate her followers and how self-awareness plays a crucial role in her journey. Embrace the discussion on the psychological impact of dissolving fillers, the need for minimum certification and baseline gold standard training for those injecting fillers, and the implications of state-by-state regulations.
Wrapping up this conversation, we touch upon the joy of embracing growth, career changes, and trusting your gut—a testament to Jessica's remarkable journey. Discover how prioritizing personal growth can lead to surprising opportunities and how Dr. West chose to scale back her business to focus on her passions. This episode is a must-listen for anyone curious about the aesthetic industry, searching for career change inspiration or simply looking to hear an empowering story of change, growth, and the pursuit of passion. Join us for this riveting discussion with Dr. Jessica West.
Tweet me @realdrhamrah
IG @drhamrah
Dr. Felix Bertram: IG @drfelixbertram
Imagine stepping into the shoes of Dr. Jessica West, a double board-certified facial plastic and cosmetic surgeon, who transitioned from surgical practice to aesthetic medicine while balancing career and personal well-being. This episode takes you on a tantalizing journey as we unravel the secrets behind Dr. West's successful career transition, her efficient decision-making process, and how she handles the ethical dilemmas in the aesthetic industry. Join us as we delve deep into 'Doctor Dysmorphia', the need for regulation, and the art of maintaining a professional opinion in patient treatments.
Embarking on this journey, we explore the uncharted territories of beauty standards and the influence of social media. Learn how Jessica uses social media to educate her followers and how self-awareness plays a crucial role in her journey. Embrace the discussion on the psychological impact of dissolving fillers, the need for minimum certification and baseline gold standard training for those injecting fillers, and the implications of state-by-state regulations.
Wrapping up this conversation, we touch upon the joy of embracing growth, career changes, and trusting your gut—a testament to Jessica's remarkable journey. Discover how prioritizing personal growth can lead to surprising opportunities and how Dr. West chose to scale back her business to focus on her passions. This episode is a must-listen for anyone curious about the aesthetic industry, searching for career change inspiration or simply looking to hear an empowering story of change, growth, and the pursuit of passion. Join us for this riveting discussion with Dr. Jessica West.
Tweet me @realdrhamrah
IG @drhamrah
Dr. Felix Bertram: IG @drfelixbertram
Alright, welcome to the Dariah Hammer Podcast. Today I have an amazing guest. She's a huge inspiration. We met each other at a meeting in Chicago where we were both featured as speakers and her story was so fascinating. After five minutes talking to her, I decided that I want her as a guest and she gracefully said yes. So her name is Dr Jessica West.
Speaker 1:She's currently a medical director for Michigan Center of Cosmetic Services and she's known for her superior aesthetic results in the area. She's really sought after cosmetic surgeon and we're going to talk about that also. She specializes in minimally invasive and non-surgical treatments out of all things, as a surgeon in facial rejuvenation and preventative aesthetic medicine, which has gained more and more popularity in recent years. So she's double board certified by the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery and Board of Allangology and Facial Plastic Surgery. And she's definitely smarter than I am because she received the William K Miles Award and Dr Miles was actually one of my attendings during my fellowship, so I you know. Rest in peace. He passed many years ago and that award goes every year to the highest written board score by the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery, and so she got that award when she took her boards. She's definitely smarter than I am because I didn't get that award and she did her residency in ENT and Facial Plastics at McLaren Oakland Hospital in Michigan, where she also practices currently, and she did her fellowship in cosmetic surgery with the one and only Dr Jacob Hayabi, who was a past president of the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery and a very good friend of mine and awesome human being, an amazing surgeon out in Southern California.
Speaker 1:So you know I will without further ado, because I don't want to take everything away about Dr West. I want to have her something to tell you guys too. So, without further ado, jessica, welcome to my podcast. It's such an honor to have you I know you have. You wear so many hats in your life and your business, with family, with your business and with your patients, and taking time out of your weekend and to come and just chat with us. It's an honor to have you. I think you're going to be a great inspiration to a lot of our audience and our listeners and I want you to share your story. Now, before I let you introduce yourself, I have a question. Absolutely, and as a surgeon, as a cosmetic surgeon, with all these years of training I don't know what 15 years, or what now? 10, 15 years? What the hell were you thinking in giving up your surgical practice and completely dedicating your practice to preventative aesthetic medicine and non-surgical treatments for facial rejuvenation? Please share with us what you were thinking and how you feel about that decision today.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. First off, thank you for having me. It is an honor and a pleasure to be here today. Yes, so I am a six years of surgical training, 10 years of schoolwork before that. The surgeon who gave up operating and most people in our field and outside of our field must be thinking what a crazy person, why go through all of that training, all of that sacrifice, to then stop operating. So I think to better portray the picture of how I ended up at this decision is-.
Speaker 2:Yeah, give us a little context, let me dial it back. So I finished my surgical training in 2018. So my background is five years of ENT and facial plastics and then an additional year of cosmetic surgery. I also, being a crazy person, decided to take over a cosmetic surgery practice immediately out of fellowship, so this is not a traditional track. Normally you join a practice, get your feet wet for a couple years if you decide to go out on your own or buy in as a partner. That's a more traditional track, and I happened to just land into this opportunity.
Speaker 2:I started to cold call people in Michigan, which is where my husband and I are from, and knew that we wanted to come back to Michigan to be with family, and so I was just calling different practices and it just so happened that Dr Robert Burke in Ann Arbor, michigan, had just put his practice up for sale two weeks before my phone call, and so, like many things in my life, that was just. You know, I don't believe in coincidences. It was just a very interesting opportunity at a very interesting time for me. So I cultivated my relationship with Dr Burke, looked into this opportunity and while I was learning to do tummy tuck, breast augmentations and facelifts, I was getting a crash course in business, as I was having to present business plans to bankers, convince them to give me money to take over this practice. So I took over that practice in 2019, march of 2019. And within 30 days I found out I was pregnant with my first child, took over the practice, or you know, signed our closing agreements and then bought our first home, all within 30 days.
Speaker 1:Got it yeah, and I kid you now, I was so nauseous when I was signing those papers.
Speaker 2:I didn't know if it was because I was nervous or if it was the pregnancy, so that was.
Speaker 1:Now, before, before you, I want to, I want to stick at that time, because that's very important. I just don't want you to fly over that, because that is the one thing that many, if not everybody, thinks it's an impossible, it's a time and a phase it's impossible to manage, because it sounds like, even if you make a movie about it, you're like, come on, you know that's, you can't do that. This is like, really, you know, it's just not real. It's just not real, it's not possible. Why make a movie about it? So tell me so. There's a couple of things I want to address. First thing is coming out of training, straight out of training. What gave you the courage, what made you believe that you're going to be able to run a business successfully so you don't go bankrupt? And, yeah, what made you believe that there was some inner voice? And you probably talked to you and said, yeah, you can do this. I want to unpack and, just for the audience to understand, how did you obtain that confidence?
Speaker 2:So I think that's. That is really a complex concept. So, on the one hand, one of the things that I think are surgical training instills in us is we get pushed to our literal breaking point multiple times and really in any physicians training.
Speaker 1:But I really think in surgical trainings, it kind of goes a little above and beyond.
Speaker 2:So you are instilled with a level of confidence that you know, even if you don't know the entire game plan, even when you are pushed to your brink in a breaking point, that you can push through it and you will find a solution to get you there. So I think that's that's always something that's instilled in us. From a specifically business standpoint, I felt like if I could research something well enough and speak to enough people educated about the process that I could figure it out. So again, my program director, dr Jacob Hayabi, very business oriented, and he was wonderful in sharing the business side of the practice and not just educate us on the actual surgical side of it.
Speaker 2:I gained a lot of knowledge in my fellowship alone just on how to run a business, and then anybody with that would let me pick their brain. I called them, I emailed them. I think a really powerful thing that you can do really throughout your career, but especially to residents and fellows. If you can be really succinct with somebody's time and you say, do you have 15 minutes where I can just pick your brain and will be ultra efficient, reach out, you'll be surprised who will be willing to share their words of wisdom with you, and so I really did reach out to a lot of people and I had my husband help me with a lot of things and we said you know, I think we can do this. You know, if you're going to gamble on somebody, why not gamble on yourself?
Speaker 1:And that's what we chose to do so, then let me so let me take it further back. What made you believe you can become a surgeon then? Because you said you learned these traits in surgical residency, and I totally agree with you. I mean, your face with challenges is like failure is not an option, like otherwise it's going to be bad. So I understand that part. So now I take you further back. What made you believe you can become a successful surgeon in a world that is mainly dominated by men and you're already an outcast. You're a woman and you are trying to compete in an unfair playing field, and let's just say it how it is it is unfair, and so that means your confidence came from way back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so good question. I think there's a very definitive point in medical school where we're doing our clinical rotations and there is a defining decision. You either decide you're going to do something surgical or non-surgical, and my first rotation was internal medicine, my first clinical rotation. I was miserable. I was like, oh my gosh, I've made a terrible decision with my life. This is. I didn't like rounding all day and discussing blood pressure medications. And then my second rotation was general surgery and most people hated their general surgery rotation. Right, because the hours are nuts. Your on call, it's high pressure, somebody's always messing with you. You're trying to close somebody in anesthesia, letting the patient wake up on you, and you're always being messed with. I actually felt like those were my people. So I very clearly knew that and this is okay, I fit with this group of people. I didn't fit with the other group of people and I felt at home From a technical point of view.
Speaker 1:Were you an adrenaline junkie, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm good with controlled chaos in many forms, so I love that word. Yeah, you know I'm a control freak so I don't want it to be all chaos but definitely gravitate towards some adrenaline things so very much fit in there. And then early on in our careers we are required to use hands-on skill sets. You start with suturing other hands-on skills and it came very natural to me and so early on I knew I had the skill set, I felt comfortable with it and so I ran with it and I knew it worked out.
Speaker 1:So you did your undergrad in human biology and psychology, right? Is that correct? Yeah, and you had special emphasis in bioethics and such right Yep. So how much of that did help you within the whole journey and even today? How much of that is helping you today and throughout your journey, from going through surgical residency then making a decision to let go surgery I mean, did that play a role at all, or was it just like means to an end, kind of thing?
Speaker 2:So what I will say in hindsight when we're in undergrad and you're pre-med and you're a super gunner and you're going for it, everything seems so important that grade you got on that exam, that letter of recommendation everything is like the end of the world to you. In hindsight, 90% of it didn't matter Really. It didn't.
Speaker 2:Now exposure to certain experiences in life living your life while working your tail off, understanding and learning how you handle pressure, how you handle interpersonal relationships. Those skills and those experiences were invaluable. So I gained a lot of experiences that were very important at that time, that helped propel my career. I made a lot of mistakes that I learned from. That, I think, are sometimes the most important experiences you have when you're kind of looking for progress but ultimately when you think about actual coursework Sadly, I'd say the majority- of it.
Speaker 1:You don't use. Do you perhaps remember one of the biggest mistakes you made? That if you were your 20 year old self or 25 year old self, you would go back and say, don't, do that, don't do that or, you know, would you say you actually celebrated your mistakes because if it wasn't for that big mistake, you wouldn't be where you are today. Like which one is it for you? I'm definitely, I think, of the biggest mistake.
Speaker 2:I definitely think you know and what, maybe what I would have once labeled as mistakes or quote failures. Now I kind of have a kinder approach to that and I don't give them those negative labels. So maybe the thing that I would have told 20 some year old Jessica one maybe chill out a little bit. You know, these things are not that important that you're focusing a lot of energy on, into that, those moments where you feel like a failure. You know and for those that don't know me, I am your stereotypical, like a type control freak. You know a lot of us become surgeons, so to kind of relabel experiences not as failures or mistakes, but it's a learning experience and it's ultra important for your success long term. So that's honestly what I would tell anybody in their 20s. They're not failures, you're just interesting.
Speaker 2:You know, it's a hurdle that you need to get over to become the person that you're going to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think life slash perspective helps us with navigating through that and understanding that mistakes is just part of the journey and part of the learning experience. Now let's go back to the time. Now. It's interesting that you decided to really take on all those big challenges and so then you became pregnant, which is, you know, part of being a woman, which is one of the.
Speaker 1:You know I'm a family guy myself. I, for me, it's family always first and I can't put myself into a woman's shoes or life and to see how they feel. But I understand that every woman's dream is to have a baby. I mean not to be stereotypical, but it's like it's one of the, it's human nature, it's embedded in our DNA. You know, we can fight it and say no, I'm not like that, all we want, but it's just in our DNA, like it's millions of years of evolution.
Speaker 1:And when you have all these dreams and plans, how did you think of family at an early age, in your twenties, being in college and getting yourself onto this huge journey, and how did that change? And how did you adapt to that once you were in Michigan, taken on the practice and then realizing you're pregnant? Can you kind of like explain for us how that changed for you, or how you, how you're now looking back? Would you look at yourself and what advice you would give a lot of the women in the audience, or pursuing a career like you have and their parents or their loved ones telling them, trying to discourage them, saying, ah, this is going to be hard, it's not going to be possible, you can't do this, you can't do that, but then here you are and so so then it is possible. Can you like help us out here, give us your insight into all of these challenges and maybe punch the naysayers into the face?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So I'm going to unpack kind of two different things that you covered there. So one of the comments you made was that it's kind of part of our DNA as a woman to feel like we're going to have a baby or we want to have a baby. So I'm going to give you kind of a different perspective a little bit. And this is very common of female surgeons. I found Again, you know, I found like I found my tribe, my group of people that communicated similarly to me, that understood me.
Speaker 2:A lot of women in surgery often do not have the strongest desire to have children.
Speaker 2:Like when I was younger I almost felt like there was something wrong with me because I wasn't like some of my girlfriends who were like, oh, I want to get married, two kids, yada, yada. That was great to me if it happened and it worked out well. But it was not a critical piece to the puzzle for me and my younger years to absolutely have children and to absolutely get married. And actually there's a lot of women out there kind of similar that you know they have other wants, desires and goals, that kind of parallel the family life but maybe don't have as strong of a desire in their younger years to actually have children. So I always had this underlying like ooh, is there something wrong with me that I don't constantly think about wanting to get married and have babies? Now, lucky for me, I met an amazing man. I got married he you know my soulmate. He's wonderful, and I wanted to have children with him. And so it wasn't just that I wanted to have children, I wanted to have children. So it changed.
Speaker 1:You found the right person and now your emotions change, like I get it.
Speaker 2:And my husband and I have been together for I don't know 13. We've known each other for 13,. Maybe 14 years now I kind of lost track. We've been married for eight and thank you, and so I think, a good and an important concept. And for any female career driven women out there, it's okay if you don't want to have children and you don't want to have a family, but it's also okay that if that wasn't a goal for you to change your mind and to have it work while being career driven you can do both.
Speaker 2:But it's important and this is something that I learned the hard way is that when you're used to being a high achiever and doing everything and just juggling everything, you part of the reason you're able to do that is you just push through constantly. I can do this. I just have to make it work. I will find the solution when you do start a family. It is the most humbling experience ever because all of a sudden, you are caring for other humans and your body is going through things that you've never had to deal with. So I was like operating for eight hours a day and I was pregnant and you know it was wild, it was nuts but so my advice is that you do have to make adjustments. You can do it. Don't ever let anybody tell you you can't do it, but listen to the people who have done it, not the people that are telling you no and haven't been able to figure it out themselves. So that's yeah.
Speaker 2:And so one thing I will say I've had access to a lot of very strong women in surgical roles who have juggled family life and are wonderful mothers and also can do the surgical side, can do the business side. So I've picked their brains and I know if they can do it, you know I can do it. And that's what gave me the confidence that I could kind of push forward with everything.
Speaker 1:I love that because I think, no matter how strong we are in any stage of life or any decisions we make in our lives, one of the most important and not often talked about things is mentorship. You know, seeking and I'm not talking about mentorship of people that you know, because you know many have maybe their parents as their mentors. And if your parents happen to be the ones that are naysayers, you know many have grown up in family where the parents were naysayers, constantly telling their kids you can't do this, this is not for you, you know, and they somehow did it anyway. So their personal, their personality, you know, helped them to achieve what they wanted to achieve. But not everybody is that blessed with having that type A and strong personality. And you had both. You had a type A, strong personality, and you had the right people around you.
Speaker 1:And so I think you know, for every success story that I've listened to, having done so many podcasts with successful and influential people like yourself, is that's been really the common denominator where it takes a strong personality with strong mentorship and that's really the secret sauce to success.
Speaker 1:So I love, I love to hear that every time it's almost like. Every time I hear that it's like it's something new, but then it isn't. So for all of the listeners out there, you know everything has to come from you first, and then you know, surround yourself with people that believe in you and can put fuel into your fire, but the fire has to come from you. It's not, it can't be given to you. So so then, okay. So now you are faced with a huge challenge. So you had many reasons and opportunities to give up on your dream and on a goal that you had set yourself, and so I guess the best excuse would have been COVID right To just drop everything. And because it's not something that you created, it's something like out of a movie, what was the movie where there was this pandemic?
Speaker 2:Was it called pandemic? I think so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was called pandemic, so yeah, and then. So you had the greatest excuse and you were pregnant. That's probably even a better excuse. What makes you pull through? Like yeah, are you crazy? Like didn't your husband tell you chill out, like take a chill pill? What are you doing?
Speaker 2:Man, so he knows never to tell me to chill out.
Speaker 1:That puts a chip on your shoulder. Yeah, chill out, watch me.
Speaker 2:Naysayers fuel me. So, kind of to give a little bit more of the timeline. So practice took over that March of 19. I had my first child in November of 19 and I took a two month maternity leave. So for those that own businesses this is like a practice management nightmare. Right, we're trying to develop some working capital I go and take a two month break and then two and a half months later we're hit with COVID.
Speaker 2:So my son was about three months, three to four months, when this all ensued and from a business standpoint it was supremely stressful. You know, I chose not to hold anybody's money hostage, so anybody that put deposits down did anything with me, they were all asking for their money back and I was like, all right, and I gave it to them and so in the state of Michigan it was a mandatory shutdown for all non-essential services, and it was two and a half months and I was fully aesthetic. So I was non-essential, I had no way to generate income and I had a small child. So from a business standpoint it was terrible. I was saved by that PPP loan that took, you know, two months of paperwork to finally get, but that saved me from a business standpoint. Now, on the flip side of that, the personal side, I would say that two months shutdown from the pandemic was the pivotal time period that led to me deciding to no longer operate. So the little, the little rootlets had kind of been planted, maybe over the previous couple of years, but during that two and a half months shutdown that was the first time in well over a decade where I felt this ultimate sense of freedom from being on call and from my phone and from these subconscious attachments to our career that we don't even recognize we have. And it was glorious. And so it was something where I was going on walks with my family, I would leave my phone, I wasn't checking it, nobody, my surgical patients weren't calling and, in all fairness, my call was easy compared to everybody. I had it easy. I wasn't taking ER call, I just had to take surgical call for my patients. But that underlying attachment I recognized hindered my feeling of freedom, and I didn't find that acceptable anymore. And so, the gears returning, I said, okay, hold on. Now You're a surgeon, you just bought a surgical practice, this is your career. How do you operate and not take call? Well, the reality is you and I both know you can't. You can't operate on people and not take care of them afterwards. So then I looked at alternatives and whether that would make me happy, but that was the critical time period and it was just important to trust my gut at that time. So then, over the next few months, so 2020, over the next few months and I'm a very visual person, so whenever I have a conflict or an issue.
Speaker 2:I write things on paper. When I do a presentation, I'm like I'm the person writing everything out on paper with arrows and concepts. So I made it very simple, pulled out a piece of paper, I made two columns. One column looking at, kind of stepping back from the macro, the big picture. I was looking at the micro on a day-to-day basis, on a week-to-week basis.
Speaker 2:What brings me joy when I think I had a good day at the end of the day, what happened? And I was very surprised to find that the first three things I wrote down in that paper had nothing to do with my job and nothing to do with my career. And it was. Did I get to see my kid in the morning? Did I see my family? Did I have time to work out? That's really important for my mental health is being active. And then the freedom when I wasn't on call. So good, you know, like the days that you're not on call and the days that you are on call it's a little bit. Yes, totally, people don't really recognize the type of toll that takes on a human. We just do it because that's our job.
Speaker 1:Oh, just psychologically. Psychologically, I stopped taking a call in 2019. My life changed.
Speaker 2:Changed drastically.
Speaker 1:The weekends I was on call. I had this subconscious anxiety because I expected my page or my phone to ring any time, and it just I just couldn't enjoy sitting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was exactly. It's PTSD, yeah. So people don't realize how hard it is and we just accept it as life. So it's interesting when you say what's the most important thing to me is like and that's what I thought when I dropped that, I said, you know, it's me first, then others. You know, I have to think of my own health first. Yes, I have to be healthy first so I can be there for my family, so I can be there for my patients, and I'm going to cut out everything that's causing me pain because I have one life and I already sacrificed a lot. I paid my dues, you did, I let that, let the younger people do that, but so take us, yeah, so. So then you wrote things down and you the broke things down. It's interesting that you went from micro to macro. Usually we're told, go from macro to micro.
Speaker 1:So you did it reverse. You know so for those listeners, maybe you know if you're stuck, you know start maybe going on. Reverse and write down the micro issues or wishes before you get into the macro Absolutely so little things you know I I have.
Speaker 2:I love being there in the morning to hang out with my kids, have a cup of coffee and not be rushed and those things make me a better human. Later in the day it makes me a better mom when I'm home with my kids.
Speaker 2:It makes me a better physician for my patients when I'm not rushing around doing that. So I kind of created this ideal schedule. What does this look like on paper? And then then I reverse engineered it and I recognized I don't want to take call anymore, can I not operate? And then over the next couple months, I started to think on how I could change my business plan. How do I change this around? My sister, who is my practice manager, really dove into the numbers and in the state of Michigan, the cost of oar time was rising. I started in 2020 and it just has escalated since then. And so your actual profit margin on surgical patients versus non-surgical, when you're ultra efficient with your time, we're like, hey, I think we can make this work. It's gonna be scary. Then, on the other side of it is you know. I was like what's my identity now? Who am I? I was a surgeon. What am I doing now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that's a big one for you. So I want you to delve a little bit into that, take us into your head, into your emotions, and I want you to give us the raw version, because I think this is, this is, I think, the pivotal moment in this podcast where I really want to know from a personal point, like because I'm thinking of myself I love surgery so much. To me, the operating room is my sanctuary.
Speaker 2:It's our happy place, right.
Speaker 1:Just just a whole ritual. The beep of the anesthesia machine, the sound of the such I mean you name it. The smell of the cotter I mean you name it. It's just the thing that we always dreamt of all our lives and careers, and now you're gonna drop that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think thankfully, thankfully, part of my personality is I have the ability to kind of push aside what other people think. So there is a part of it. Oh my gosh what. What's gonna happen when I tell my colleagues that I'm not operating? But a large part of me kind of didn't care what people think of me. You know, I'm human, so I do care, but I do have the capacity to just say whatever, I don't care what you think.
Speaker 1:What about your? What about your mentor?
Speaker 2:Yeah, did you what?
Speaker 1:you were. You afraid what your mentor is gonna say? I was.
Speaker 2:I was and honestly I've been so busy I don't even know if he knows. So it's one of those things you know well, I know he's listening to my podcast.
Speaker 1:I know, I know.
Speaker 2:I'll send it to him. So it's one of those things where I very much cared to the people who influenced my surgical career. And then I unpacked it some more and the reality is we're meant to feel like our professional career is this linear progress. I decided in my 20s what my career was gonna be. My goodness, when we're in our 20s, you're a kid still. You don't. You don't really know anything yet, and I'm making decisions for the rest of my life, that's you know. It's kind of a ridiculous concept.
Speaker 2:So I recognized that I kind of have a entrepreneurial mindset and that is as much a part of my identity as the surgical background and my value is not just based on my title and I'm allowed. This is a big thing, because we're never meant to feel this way, especially as surgeons. Your own health, your own day-to-day needs we always put those on the back seat and never prioritized. We were never taught how to prioritize them your own health, your own well-being and so I had to shift my mindset.
Speaker 2:I mean, my god, when I was pregnant I was operating like a madwoman, you know, doing all sorts of crazy things and I could, and it actually wasn't that hard. But that doesn't mean I should have been. So for the first time I kind of took a pause and asked myself what I wanted, determined exactly what I wanted and decided I was gonna go there and it was gonna be scary. And once I make a decision I do it. So it's kind of like all you're interpreting everything and you're gathering all the information and then, once my brain decides it's gonna do something, I'm in. And then I was in.
Speaker 1:And then, and so now.
Speaker 2:This is what, three years later, three years after I made the decision. Yeah, almost exactly actually.
Speaker 1:So in these three and a half years did you do any surgeries at all?
Speaker 2:So I transitioned from, you know, the full surgical gamut to minimally invasive. So I was doing awake liposuction with skin tightening procedures that were, you know, low risk not as in depth.
Speaker 2:I was used to doing these crazy 360 degree liposuction cases, so I just kind of scaled everything back and it scaled back my stress significantly. And once I'd done that once and I saw that I could pivot and change and remove things from my life that created stress, I kept doing it because now I had made the biggest decision, the smaller decisions were much easier. So then I offloaded all the body stuff I was doing. I was busy enough with just facial aesthetics and to give people a framework, I only am in the office Wednesday, thursdays and Fridays from 10 to 4.30.
Speaker 1:And I'm doing so I'm so you're basically off Monday, tuesday with my kid you got the, you got the four day weekend every week and no call, and so that is amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's sound. You know, if you would have told, if you would have said that to anybody years ago, I would have said no way. How do you know? How do I make that happen? But with that does come sacrifice. It's not like you know I I wrote some very large six figure numbers on that piece of paper. I said, okay, if you never had to take a day of ear, call what, what potential income are you willing to let go of to do?
Speaker 1:that.
Speaker 2:And then I wrote another number down, another big six figure number, that said okay, if you never had to take call ever for a surgical patient, what potential revenue are you willing to lose personally to make that happen? And I surprised myself. These are some big numbers.
Speaker 1:Well, well, think of it. The numbers are just numbers. They're arbitrarily chosen numbers based on like what really, like you know, because it doesn't matter how much money you make. I think it's more important how much money you spend. Yeah, because, at the end of the day, the number you make is irrelevant if you don't have the relative number, which is the number you spend, correct? And I think, no matter how much money you make, if you overspend on stuff that doesn't really matter, you end up with no money and stuff is stuff, stuff is stuff, and I think that's everybody, no matter how much money they make, should sit down and think about it.
Speaker 1:And I have had that moment with myself, catching myself trying to achieve even more and more and more. And then some days it's usually well, I'm right on my commute back home, with other silence, there's no one to you know, disturb me. I usually try not to. Sometimes even I don't even listen to any music or anything. I'm driving, and that's when the thoughts come to my mind. I'd ask myself same, who is inducing that stress to you? And then the answer is well, you're doing it to yourself. And so then why are you doing it? And it's usually because of mismanagement, and mismanagement of money.
Speaker 1:Mismanagement of life is not about how much money you didn't make, or you made is how much you wasted, and so that's gonna. That's kind of. I've reached this moment in my career and life where I think more about that than about how much money I should be making, because it's easy to get carried away. You know, it's like you always. You know, I think Roosevelt said comparison is the evil of joy is, you know, there's a human thing almost, you know, kind of like keeping up with the Joneses, and then you have to slap yourself a couple of times and say what are you doing like that? That's not important. You know that is just like fiction, that is not real.
Speaker 1:So yeah, now I want to use this conversation and pivot into your personal growth mindset that you know you're. You know I heard your talk in Chicago on the podium at the InMode conference and you know it's not surprising that you were invited as a speaker just because of your immense insight. How do you now balance that? How do you balance growth mindset with what we just talked about? It's almost like an oxymoron, and or does growth mean something else to you? I want you to kind of like first. I think before we talk about a word, we have to set the definition of the word before we start talking about it, because it kind of means different things to different people absolutely, and I think that's an excellent point.
Speaker 2:You know, if you were to ask us when we are in residency, what does this mean? What does growth look like to you? And even when I initially started writing down one year, three year, ten year goals and because you're you're, in order to be successful, you do need to set measurable goals. You know if you need, if you want to achieve something, it needs to be measurable. However, that doesn't mean that growth is necessarily a monetary thing or a volume thing. So in my head, to grow my practice, I wanted multiple locations. I wanted to hit this revenue goal. That is how I initially perceived growth.
Speaker 2:Then, as I was forced to kind of reconsider what growth meant to me as I was changing my, my career path, to create this work-life balance, you have to blend them together. So kind of, when we think about a growth mindset, to me that just means how do I play to my personal strengths and become more aware of my blind spots? So really important concept you want to put your energy into what you're good at and what drives you and what you have an emotional connection to, because you will be more successful ultimately. Now that doesn't mean that you just say, hey, my weaknesses or my blind spots, they are what they are, everybody needs to just deal with them. No, we still need to be aware of them so we can work on them.
Speaker 2:But growth can mean to me it's more of a knowledge thing rather than a monetary or volume thing. So whenever I delve into like growth mindset books, it can be any topic. So for me, I never had any financial education ever. I am so far behind as far as you know investments and everything. I'm doing a lot of catch up because I was never exposed to it and so for me in, financial education was so critically important once I started having a small business. And now I kick myself. I'm like, oh my god, I wish I'd known what a Roth IRA was back in my 20s. So right.
Speaker 1:I really think it's something that needs to be incorporated into high school education at a very early age 100% agree with you yeah, and so so so growth, growth mindset to you means knowledge, but then like it, that's kind of sounds very abstract so kind of help us out so.
Speaker 2:So you can use that to incorporate different facets of your life that you want to grow. So you could ask 20 different people what's important to them, and it's all going to be different, and if you want to grow any unique aspect of your life, you you kind of have to be broad in a sense. So some people they might want to grow their contributions as a volunteer because that is what makes them feel good. Other people want to become financially independent and that's their primary goal right now. And so then, educating yourself on that process, it's important, I think, knowing that growth in our career is always going to be better achieved when you incorporate your personal life. So me, opening multiple locations, increasing revenue, doesn't mean no good. If I feel like I'm anxious and mad that I'm not home with my kids, what, what did that particular growth do for me? Nothing. So I kind of I like the broad growth mindset, macro vision that incorporates both personal and business aspects of things and then getting into that.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. I think the personal aspect is never talked about. When we talk about growth mindset, we're still that one human being or one person, it doesn't matter whether we're at work or at home. Growth at work doesn't mean anything if you don't grow at home, and vice versa, and I think I love your definition that it means both, that both have to be. It has to be inclusive. Now, have you ever thought of scaling your business where you don't necessarily have to be at different places yourself, where you can train others and have others run multiple locations for you?
Speaker 2:so that's a very thought, that's a good question because unique to me. When I again going back to that list of what gives me energy, what makes me happy and what drains my energy and does not make me happy, one of the thing that I have learned in a leadership position and as a boss is actually the management side of things. Although critically important, drains my energy, drains me dry, it just it's. It's not what gives me joy. So I was starting to grow, even in this non-surgical framework, and I was getting more employees and we were, and I was thinking in terms of potentially having other people run other areas.
Speaker 2:The reality is it's your business. You are always going to have to have a pulse on it, even if you have amazing practice managers, practice administrators, and so that was another mindset change that I recognized about myself. I didn't get joy out of that and I was willing to sacrifice financial growth in that realm so that I didn't have to be a part of that process. So I have actually scaled back. I have less employees, smaller scale. I just have. These are my office hours, and I've pivoted and now, as you know, I'm kind of involved in some more of the speaking circuit, which I do love connecting with people. On that level I do some consulting work within the aesthetic world and I love this stuff.
Speaker 2:I've been approached to do educational courses and some other things, so I love that side of it and so I don't think I'm, at least in the foreseeable future, I may not grow that portion of my practice because I'm happy with it right now. You know you ask me but you're gonna grow personally. What's that?
Speaker 1:But you're gonna grow. Personally, I think educating. Educating is for me also, just like you. It's a huge value to my personal growth because I love human interaction, I love being inspired and I love inspiring it's. I think it keeps us alive. It's give and take, that's what keeps us alive and keeps our hearts beating. And you know, I can totally relate to what you just said.
Speaker 1:And again, going back, growth doesn't mean only scaling in your business and making more money. It means, I think, the personal aspect is I would in my, for me I don't know you tell me what's for you. For me it would be 80% and then the financial would be 20%. For me it would be 80-20 rule, and for some people it's opposite. Or, you know, they don't even think of the personal aspect, they just think of the financial aspect. I mean I have a lot of friends or even patients that I talked to.
Speaker 1:I mean we're talking about millionaires and billionaires that they're just miserable. They always complain. Every time I talk to them, they complain and I'm thinking to myself, I'm looking at them, I'm thinking, man, this guy or this gal has so much money, they could buy anything, but I guess they can't buy happiness. And then why is that? If you make more money than you can spend, why can't you find a way to be happy, like what's missing? And to me, the answer is I think they got the story wrong. You know, they misinterpreted the meaning of growth and which you beautifully just explain.
Speaker 1:It's this is. I totally love that and I think I've this is the first time I hear it from someone else. It actually hit me as like yeah, she's right. I have never had, I never had thought of it myself. So thank you for that, because I just have had a moment with myself where I'm like that's absolutely right. I needed to hear that because I felt it always. I always try to implement that and live by that, maybe a little bit more subconsciously. But now I think, having listened to you, I'm gonna do it from now on consciously, alright, and yeah, because I just it totally hit home with me and it's it's funny that something that makes total sense is like when you hear you like da, and it keeps getting forgotten, even in conversation with the smartest people.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you know to, to one of your points, I think for me, I noticed this. I guess we can call it misery almost, among people that we were striving to be like. You know, I, I know, I had numerous attendings that were successful surgeons. They did great but they seemed miserable.
Speaker 2:They came into work, you know, and just every single one of them, if you ask me and yeah, and it was just, I just knew early on I didn't want that, I didn't want to be like that. And I will say you know, I did have one of my attendings when I was in residency and he did facial plastics and he said you know some, one of my words of advice to you is keep your personal overhead contained so that you don't build yourself to what you think you should be living. You know big house, nice cars, all of that so that if you ever get to the point in your life where you want to change things, you can do it and I, and that always stuck with me.
Speaker 2:And so my husband and I and I don't mind sharing this when we moved back from California to Michigan, we were looking to rent before we bought, because we were looking in some areas I wasn't super familiar with in the rentals were sky high. It was like what we were paying in California, you know, here in Michigan, and we said, okay, let's just buy a house and we'll we'll rent it. You know it'll be a rental income. And it was not a big house.
Speaker 2:I mean, this was under 1500 square feet, you know when we first started and we ended up living in this house with two children for about three years, and so I really had to have that internal battle with myself when I go oh my gosh, I know how much money I could be making if I did just take the hospital job or I just did start operating again. And I had to, you know, counter myself and reassure myself and also talk to my friends again who are miserable, taking call, who wish they had that magic switch to get themselves out of it, to reassure myself. It's just stuff. It's just stuff.
Speaker 1:You know, it's not just don't understand how someone as young as you, in such an early stage of her career, I just don't understand. I understand, I can't wrap my head around that how someone as young as you, so early in her career, even had that self-awareness like this. This needs an immense amount of self-awareness and confidence and discipline. I mean, like, just tell me a little bit about your childhood and where the people that inspired you, just real quick, because I want to know is it's a gift you were born with or did you have people around you where you saw that and then you became that? Who inspired you? And or both, like just real quick, because it doesn't make sense for you to have that amount of insight in yourself and in life. You have that perspective of it. You talk like someone that is 86 years old and has lived life and have made hundred mistakes and learned from them and now sharing it with us.
Speaker 2:That's how you sound like so I it's kind of funny that you say that I jokingly, even in my teens and twenties, used to say that.
Speaker 2:I'm like a crabby 60 year old man stuck in a young female pocket, and so I kind of always felt like I had a slightly different perspective just on things in general. So kind of my childhood I would say so. But neither of my parents went to college. There's no physicians in my family. We did live in a city that many of my friends were wealthy or, you know, upper middle class. We were not, but I was a part of a very good educational system. So it was kind of this interesting dynamic where I saw a lot of people who had achieved success and I didn't. I didn't go without, you know, I certainly didn't live in an unsafe area or anything like that, so I don't want to paint that picture, but we. It was humble, I came from humble beginnings but I saw at a very early age that, you know, sometimes money isn't everything, I guess is it easy to put it?
Speaker 1:I'm observant, I guess is one of my is one of my.
Speaker 2:I'm hardwired to be observant and I think part of that is just I came out of the womb that way and then I was shaped so what?
Speaker 1:what did you see? So, yeah, so what did you see that made you believe money is not everything at so early? Because usually if you are come from humble beginnings and those people around you that are super successful, drive beautiful cars, live in big homes, it makes you want that. And so tell me, it just doesn't make sense like how you would, so early in your life as a teenager, realize money is not everything. Where all my teenagers talk about is like these super cars, these youtubers that make so much money. Like how, like tell?
Speaker 2:me now, don't get me wrong. I have to. I have to start with. I definitely still wanted money.
Speaker 1:You know I was I wasn't that you know Zen and I definitely, just you just humanized, yeah, I definitely wanted money, I wanted to be successful.
Speaker 2:I was ultra driven, but I thought the undercurrent in some of it and I think sometimes when you don't have something and you want something, you put it on a pedestal and yeah.
Speaker 2:I I thankfully knew a lot of people's stories that maybe came from wealthy families or, you know, we're in different situations and the reality is we're all human. We all have difficulties and troubles and issues, and money never solves those things really it does. Now I do think there's a lot to be said. When you don't feel like you're being shackled because of your lack of money, you know you might be working in a situation you don't want to be in. There's a lot of freedom to that and that's what I I'm working to achieve. But I knew at an early age that there's always another side to things.
Speaker 1:Everything you know that's amazing, this success, that's amazing all these things.
Speaker 2:So I was.
Speaker 1:I was gifted, I guess, with the ability to observe and pay attention well, I think self-awareness is a huge thing for people to be able to make the right decisions, because every decision we make is relative to ourselves, our personality, what gets us going. We can't take someone else's ideals or ideology and then live by that because it might not make us happy. So I think you can consider yourself extremely lucky to have such a immense amount of self-awareness, or had it at such an early stage in your life and now carrying it on in your life now. So no another thing yes, I mean this is. This is key. I think this is the one key to success is to have self-awareness.
Speaker 1:I really do agree. You need to know where you are, to know how to get where you want to get at. You know you need to have a path and without self-awareness you can't even create a path. I agree and that's the one thing I think. If everyone has a hard look in a mirror and asked themselves you know who are you and what do you want, and then go from there, I think everyone will figure out what best is for them having good sounding boards too, I think of course you know.
Speaker 2:I like the pen to paper, write things down so you can visualize it kind of work through it, but also having people in your life or you're like this is how I'm feeling about this yeah this is where I want to go and just kind of have somebody else who can remove themselves from your process and give you a bird's-eye view of it, just to give you that little giddy up in your step, absolutely.
Speaker 1:That's why I love to be around successful and smart people and people that are authentic and genuine, because they will tell you and they can really change the trajectory of your entire life and career because of their experience, their honesty and their candor, and so I 100% agree with you surround yourself with those people and listen to your heart and let the rest be history and and then just enjoy the journey. Now we're gonna pivot now into the a little bit of aesthetics here. Now you made that decision. I feel in the perfect time, at a perfect storm, I would say, in the aesthetic industry. By that I mean today, more than any time in history, non-surgical procedures are gaining more and more and more popularity. I mean, just look at all these med spots that are popping up, all these aesthetic nurses, injectors that are super successful. I mean it. They created a whole industry and I feel like you made that decision to pivot from surgical into non-surgical during a perfect storm, which speaks also to your success.
Speaker 1:But you are unique in that, that is, you're bringing it with an inside of a surgeon, meaning someone that has not only studied anatomy inside out, actually dissected anatomy inside out, so you have such a more valuable context than, for example, an injector who thinks they understand. You know, with all due respect, I mean this is nothing. I have injectors. They're very good friends, family members, I respect them highly, but it's comparing someone that is flying a single engine versus someone that is flown a 747 every day and now is supposed to navigate through a little cloudy turbulence. It's just much easier.
Speaker 1:But you have also more insight in the aging process, in the anatomy, physiology, and so I'm pretty sure that's subconsciously or consciously, it's what makes you an expert and that's why you're so sought after. Now for you, what is your perspective on the longevity in the effectiveness, effectiveness on the treatments that you are are rendering, and and how do you consult your patients and how do you for yourself, create this ethical and more moral barrier not to over treat someone with non-surgical modalities or devices or treatments and really do what's right and kind of navigate this like devil and the angel, doing the right thing versus being a profit center. And so how do you do that? How do you every day tackle that? I want, I want the audience to learn a little bit about what's what, the thought process, and also your values and how you keep yourself and the patients honest yeah, good question.
Speaker 2:So when I first took over the business, I think it's very easy I so I love the stepping back and looking at numbers and that that part of the business side. But when it came to me being in a room with somebody and, you know, being that business person terrible at it, I knew that wasn't my thing. What I'm good at is being very genuine and objective with my assessments and very truthful with my recommendations, and so I just learned very early in the process don't deviate from that. You'll sleep at night, you won't feel you know bad in any way. If that person was my mom, my sister, a family member, what would my recommendation be for you?
Speaker 2:So I often have people who come in, they're willing to give me, say, oh, I want face tight. I saw it. And if I think and they're ready to give me their money, and if I don't think they're a good candidate, I say listen, you're just not a great candidate. You're gonna give me this money. You're not gonna be happy and we're both not gonna be happy and, for better or for worse, I'm a prideful person. I'm a very results oriented individual and if I don't think, I'm just gonna knock it out of the park with whatever service I'm providing. I don't want to do it because it stresses me out when I, when I don't deliver something. That's amazing. So I just made it simple for myself.
Speaker 1:I am there as a provider, I have a good eye, I have an artistic eye, I'm very good at assessing and being able to convey what the expected results are, and I just don't deviate from that so that I love that because that's how I practice and and that's kind of for me, what makes me happy, you know, knowing that I'm doing the right thing, even though I told no to a patient that came and said I want this and I'm like this is not for you, which is not only empowering but also make sure that at the end of the day, we do that based on results. You know, like you, I treat my patients result oriented. That's my whole philosophy. And it's funny because as soon as I, as you were saying these things, I was kind of like looking at you, I was like she totally doesn't look like someone that provides non surgical treatments.
Speaker 1:Because normally when you, when I, you can immediately tell because most people or practitioners or doctors that provide non-circuit treatments, you kind of see they're over treated themselves. You know their lips are too big, the cheekbones are too overfilled, they over both tux themselves, like their smile or facial facial muscles are not moving like they're supposed to. Like you know, something is off and I don't write any of that in you. So, like if I was a patient, I came to you, I would like totally trust you. I'm like, whatever you say, I trust you because when I look at you, you don't look over treated and you look totally normal. And you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:Right, absolutely and I see a lot of these injectors. There are like, if I see injectors, I'm all. Their cheeks are overblown, the lips are overblown. When they smile, you know their mentalism not even properly. Their smiles are crooked. It's almost like they overfilled their chin. They don't even know the jowls, they don't even know and that's what I'm getting at. They don't even know they actually think they think they look amazing and they're gonna do the same thing they did to themselves to their patients, because not because they're dishonest I don't know what they're doing, it's just they. They believe that's the look and I call it doctor or practitioner dysmorphia.
Speaker 1:So there's one thing is like that patient dysmorphia, I call it doctor dysmorphia and I talked a lot about this and because I asked myself a question a lot. It's like how would someone render these over treatments? Like why? Why do they think it's right? I mean, I thought they're dishonest people, I thought they're people that are just out for money. And then I came to realization when I looked at them. I'm like they look back at themselves. So it can't be money. It's like they completely their, their view of the norm of beauty is completely distorted. It has changed and they haven't noticed. And that starts with, and I got the idea from patient dysmorphia, from pay patients coming to me wanting more fillers. I'm like no, it's not going to look good. They're like yeah, but the effect is gone. I'm like no. So I had to show them there before pictures from five years ago and then they looked at it and then they realized, oh my god, I looked so different. I'm like that's exactly what I'm talking about. If I inject more, you even going to look worse, and that's the dysmorphia that we know. But then the one thing that I think we don't know, that we've also because we're humans, we're subject to, is doctor dysmorphia. What if we forget how normal is supposed to look, what beauty is supposed to look like, what facial harmony actually means today?
Speaker 1:Because of a lot of these studies that were unfortunately unfortunately, they're, you know, sub even the authors of the study. They're subject to these cognitive biases. Yes, they completely changed the norm of aesthetics and beauty because of the cognitive bias, just to justify why they should inject, why they think they can lift the face with fillers, instead of understanding the physiology behind is. They're just over volumizing. That's why it looks like it's lifted. It's not an actual lift.
Speaker 1:How do you navigate that in your practice, with your patients that come to you, they want more fillers and you realize if you did that they wouldn't look good. And I love the fact that you said you have a lot of pride in what you do, and I totally resonate with that and I think that's what keeps you safe and immune from doctor dysmorphia is your pride. That doesn't let you fall into that trap, because there is, no matter what you think. Anyone that runs a business somehow is biased and somehow wants to increase profit and revenue and then tries to justify it with oh no, it looks good, that's. You know. Such and such studies said it does that, so it must be true. How do you do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's what I will say. Kind of every area of the country and even sub pockets within each state almost have different aesthetics that people that you start to see pop up People specifically come to me for that very natural rejuvenation. So it was. It was very interesting when I did my cosmetic surgery training in California and I came back to Michigan and people in California, yeah, totally different world and people thought oh, you know, are there standards higher in California?
Speaker 2:I argue that the Midwest has way higher expectations, because they want to get their procedures never look like they ever had anything done, don't have a recovery, you know? No, they don't want their friends to know. So the standard to me is much higher, and often people come to me because of that. That is what their goal is, not as what they're looking for, and so in order to achieve that, I think there's a couple of things that have to happen. Like you mentioned, we have a facial plastics background. We understand anatomy a little bit different than somebody who took a couple courses. Nothing personal, it just is what it is.
Speaker 1:You know if you've played it.
Speaker 2:If you don't facial fractures or anything. I'm not conceptualizing where the nerves are. I have seen them. I've seen the vessels, I know what fat pets look like. It's just a different ball game. The other layer to that, and this is something you can't teach and it's you know it. I wish it was. It's not always. There has to be an artistic and inherent artistic ability to the provider. You could be, and I tell people all the time. There's some nurse injectors that are Great. I mean, they have like a really good artistic eye. There's some plastic surgeons are amazing. Surgeons have no right putting filler in people's faces because it's not good and you just have to know where your strengths are. And when I was in fellowship I did not want to be put in that filler room. I was like I am a surgeon, I am not doing filler and I was not excited about it. Then I started doing it more and I realized what I could do with it in a very natural, rejuvenating manner.
Speaker 2:So you discovered your artist and I tell people my world exists in half millimeters and it's always been that way. You know I'm it's like an OCD tendency. I can walk into a room. I know when a pictures off by a millimeter over here, and so that part comes easy to me. I can look at a Drives me nuts.
Speaker 1:If I see a picture, it drives me nuts same and so that helps you.
Speaker 2:You know, when you're doing your rhinoplasty is and you're doing filler and you're doing these techniques, it makes it easier to for you to do your job. And if people don't have that skill, it just cannot be taught, unfortunately. And I would say, you know, I jokingly say, out of 10 people who get filler, we always notice the five that got the bad filler, not the five that got the good filler, and so we see a lot of that walking around and I agree with you, I don't think they're being Necessarily money hungry. They just don't realize that they're not providing a good result yeah, I think it's the artistic eye and yeah.
Speaker 1:And the thing is, you know there is a I don't know if you're familiar with the dunning Krueger effect. Done you so, dunning and Krueger with social psychologist from Cornell who described that? It's Usually, you know, if you don't know what you don't know, and when you don't know what you don't know, especially, the less you know, the more confident you are. You think you know everything, and I think that's the problem with a lot of these new Doctors and injectors getting into this business. They have taken a course and now they think they're masters and they stop learning after the first year because they already consider themselves experts and they their whole views completely distorted. And also, interestingly, they're the loudest. They're the ones who speak loudest because of their confidence, yeah, and they kind of Guide the whole narrative where the most experienced ones are just quiet, sit back, just do their own work. They even assume that everybody knows what they know and so they don't go out and teach, so which they should be the ones going out there actually teaching, as opposed to the other group. So that's kind of fascinating and I try to integrate that as one of the first teaching points when I teach my fellows I make familiar with that, so they Start a journey with more high degree of self awareness, realizing it's like, okay, let's stand a carpet here and let's take the slow and let's just figure out.
Speaker 1:Learn first and and I think that's the part that kind of gets lost in whenever your training is a very short amount of time, which doesn't give you enough context to learn more every day, as opposed to just more. I guess the learning in those areas is more technique oriented Use this technique versus that's that technique as opposed to okay, let's learn more about the physiology. What actually happens five years, ten years from now, after you injected fillers? And then, based on that, how should we treat the patients today? Looking at five or ten years, instead of assuming all the filler disappears after a year, which we know, it doesn't right. And so how do you? How do you guide these conversations with your patients? And then, what is your strategy? Focusing on non surgical methods, what's your philosophy when you tackle anti aging? Yeah, when you, when you have to choose between volume and tightening, how do you do that? How do you determine that?
Speaker 2:Good question. So I and I educate during every single consultation. So, even if you're coming to me for Botox, you will get a thirty minute consultation and we will talk about the rejuvenation process, and I like to break it up into three pillars of rejuvenation. So, and in part of our facial plastics. We know there's a fourth component in there, but yeah, really breaking it down into three. So the superficial skin, addressing superficial skin, fine lines, wrinkles, poor size, sun damage, etc. That's one umbrella For rejuvenation.
Speaker 2:The next one is skin tightening and, as we know, that's not just the superficial skin, is the structures under the skin that play into quote, laxity. And then the third component is volume loss, and I love getting visual with people. I break out the picture of the facial fat pads, explain how, when we lose volume, you know, we start to deflate a bit, we get separation fat pads and that's where we get shadows. So, okay, now my patients understand. These are the three concepts that I'm working with in. What do I have in my arsenal, from a non surgical standpoint, that I can use to address each of these? My framework is not an either or it's not a volume versus skin tightening, versus this it's. We need to do something in each of these, regardless of whether in your thirties or seventies, so that we get a more natural co-op, harmonious rejuvenation, and that's when I started playing with. That is when my results just were so much better. So Ask somebody in their thirties barely still in their thirties skin tightening is still important.
Speaker 1:It's still I wouldn't be able to tell so.
Speaker 2:I love it and I tell people listen, I didn't wake up like this. I use all of the same treatments that I'm recommending to everybody else so.
Speaker 2:From skin tightening from a non surgical standpoint, that's our energy based treatments. Then when you pair that with volume replacement which the reality is starts in our late twenties and early thirties that helps with the shadowing effects. So in women often times we get the tear trough deformity, a little deflation. Here you know be my 10 come into play. You know my, my marathon runners. You know that's quite the volume replacement job there and I don't throw the kitchen sink at them all at one time. Never recommend. So I like starting with skin tightening first, or rejuvenating the skin so that the skin envelope is nice and healthy, then delving in to the volume replacement and a lot of people come in my office saying, listen, you're never putting filler Botox in my face, ever.
Speaker 2:But when they learn to trust me and then I have their best interests in mind Then through these other treatments they understand, okay, this is what she stands for. And so often times I can get them a better result and they have gained their trust and we kind of work through that. Part of the unique part of my process is having the surgical background. I talked to them about surgery, about those options. So often times people come to me for jawline and chin concerns you know Lack city in the jawline or a double chin. I walk them through what a face and neck lift result is and I tell them I don't offer that.
Speaker 2:If they are a face and neck lift candidate, I tell them straight up you are a face and neck lift candidate, this is what I have to offer you from a non-surgical standpoint and this is your expected results. Some people say you know what I am. I think I'm looking for that face and neck lift tightening. I refer them out. I want them to know every single one of their options, even if I don't offer it, and I think that what that's what makes my process a little bit more powerful is because they know they're getting a totally comprehensive consultation and recommendation.
Speaker 1:I think, with anything we do, trust is the biggest thing, and a lot of patients come to us with a lot of fear, a lot of distrust, distrust in the whole industry as a whole because, like I said, I always tell my patients is that the reason why they're fearful, because they only see the bad results, because the good results they don't even know that they're based on treatments. It's not like these people done, just reverse age. Something was done which is so done artistically and appropriately that they can't tell. So there is this bias that they have and I think it's important to really mention that to them because it makes them think, and every time I say that, they sit back and think well, yeah, I guess it makes sense, you're right, I never consider it that way. I'm like well, yeah, it's like with anything else. So now, how do you?
Speaker 1:Now you talked a little bit about the concept of beauty, that it obviously varies in Michigan and the Great Lakes area, which is actually very similar to us here in the East Coast and the Washington DC area and in Germany, where I grew up. In Europe in general, especially northern and central Europe is more conservative, and then further you go to the southern European countries, that gets a little more extreme. So it's interesting that to see that the concept of beauty varies, which is fine, you know, I think people have to feel good about themselves, have to feel good within their community, and we don't have to necessarily convince them of anything. I think one of the things that we should do and I love how you practice is to really offer them what makes them happy, what within the ethical and moral boundaries that you practice to, to guide them and I think they're lucky to have you as a consultant.
Speaker 1:I mean, you and I absolutely it's so refreshing to see someone else that practices the same way, has the same values, because I don't think people know enough about people like you that they are out there. They just have to find them. Find them now. How do you, other than inside your practice, how do you communicate who you are, with the art, with your, with people out there? I mean, do you have a social media presence? Do you spend some time on there? And, if so, how and what do you do? I know you told me Before the podcast that your fellowship director made sure that you get on that flag and and how's that going?
Speaker 2:yes, so Good question. I think it's kind of funny. I so to relay that story again. When I got out to my fellowship in California, I did not have an Instagram account. I was not very active on Facebook and I program which is crazy as a millennial right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I was just very.
Speaker 2:I guess I was kind of anti for a while and but understanding that it's a platform to convey information. You know, when I changed my perspective on what I was using it for, it was different because I kind of felt like we, we how did that happen? We all do, I do it, how did?
Speaker 1:that happen because you are, you are anti, so meaning, yeah, but you have this judgment. I want to really unpack that. You had this police system about social media, what it actually means, and you were obviously judging it like we all judge things based on lack of perspective or knowledge about it. That's like why politicians, you know, have us like puppets. And they're the puppeteers because they know how the human brain works, yes, and so obviously the environment you live in and people that were around you, obviously they influence us. There's been studies on it. It's a tripartite, you know, rule of influence science and influence that is set by people that are around you your parents and then your friends and they influence your beliefs that you have. So, and then also fear of judgment, right, so tell me a little bit about why you felt the way you felt about social media and then what made you change that belief.
Speaker 2:I think, going into it. I think the overriding concept that made me feel a little, maybe become a little bit of a naysayer was and I still feel this way, even about myself I think we spent too much time on it. In general, I think sometimes we forget to put the phone down and experience what's happening right in front of us. So that was kind of my a little bit of what led to me feeling like an aster going into it. Now Dr Hi-Avi he was like listen, you're going into cosmetics, you need an Instagram account, like yesterday.
Speaker 1:Oh, you didn't even have an Instagram account, yeah.
Speaker 2:I didn't even have one. So yeah, I know, and so I begrudgingly kind of started one. Now I have three. Now I have a personal one, I've got my business one, and then I've got my. Yes, and I'm always slow to enter into to social media, things like I literally just started a tick tock account, like like a couple of weeks ago. I'm getting there, I'm slow and you're lucky.
Speaker 1:You're lucky, you don't have to dance on tick tock anymore, because when I got into tick tock you have to dance.
Speaker 2:That was another part. I was like, listen, I was talking to my marketing people. I'm like I'm not that person, I'm not going to create that content, I'm not going to be dancing around. This is not my vibe. You know, I'm super direct, I'm an informational person. So now I think I'm finding a way to convey information that feels like me, that does bring some people value. So a part of it is it is a time issue, I'm having you know I I was listening to another one of your podcasts I think it was with Dr Nyak, about you know how we have issues letting other people manage our social media accounts versus us managing it ourselves, and that was always a hiccup for me, because I want absolute control of the content I put out because it's important to me.
Speaker 1:You know.
Speaker 2:Now I'm trying to figure out ways that I can incorporate into my schedule and still deliver high end content that I feel represents me and is genuine. So I'm getting there. I'm probably slow to the game, I think you know I just started.
Speaker 2:A tick tock account tells you something. But my patients and I love my patients they like Dr West, are you doing anything to talk or you should be doing this, you know? And so I love that. They give me input and they're super supportive and I use our ideas. And I just had an acutite patient on Thursday and she's Younger and she said to me you know what? I cannot find videos of the, the actual process like what it looked like. And I went on YouTube and I saw I don't know who it was, somebody that was like super aggressive With doing something and she's in. It freaked her out. So she volunteered to let me videotape myself Walk in the park. Let's put this out there.
Speaker 2:So she's very gracious and so I appreciate people like that. We're willing to allow us to use them to help other people that are in their shoes are looking at getting these procedures. They understand what they're they're getting into, so yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's a very important that's.
Speaker 1:You know, I told you before like we're more of a media company, first, you know, trying to communicate with our audience from an educational standpoint and ethical standpoint, because there's so much information out there, and then If more of you are out there putting out information, it weighs against a lot of the other misinformation that's out there and I think we have a responsibility.
Speaker 1:I look at it as we have a responsibility to Educate the public, just because they need to be enough diverse information out there so that the viewer can judge for themselves, can see both sides and then make a judgment or enable them to ask the right questions. And I think for us that's an obligation, just like we have an obligation To you Within the informed consent before we do any procedures on patients, to inform them about the benefits and you know and the risks. Now, with more, did you work in with any social media influencers and and if not, what do you think of influencers today setting certain trends that makes Patients come to you wanting those treatments and Really being dead set on wanting a certain look, and how do you have that conversation with them? Yeah, what do you agree or disagree?
Speaker 2:So I feel super comfortable telling people no. I think it served me well.
Speaker 1:Thankfully, my demo aren't you afraid that? Aren't you afraid that they're gonna go somewhere else and fall into another trap? I educate and how do you so?
Speaker 2:I always educate on my why is behind things. So if I say you know, I think that filler is a really good example, the whole Phenomena that has surrounded Lit filler I kind of. I have noticed recently it's almost kind of to one of your points this dysmorphia that's developed over the last five to ten years and women and men who get lit filler and then they notice a little bit of it has dissolved, or maybe a little bit it has migrated. They instantly think that they need more. I refuse now To go into somebody else's lit filler and touch it up. It's usually a hot mess and I don't want my results tied to that. And so and I tell them I say listen, I think some of your filler might not be in the appropriate place. That could create issues for you long term. The best thing that I can do for you is to dissolve this and start clean. I can get you a better result Because of that and you will have a better result over the next two years because of that.
Speaker 2:Just about everybody has said okay eventually. But it is and I don't take this lightly dissolving lit filler. We think, like you know, no big deal it's. You're dissolving filler, you're doing something good for your patient. Dissolving lit filler in somebody that has a little bit of that dysmorphia which is a lot of patients it is psychologically traumatizing.
Speaker 2:I have probably had five to ten people in the last ten years where it was so traumatizing when I dissolved it that they didn't come back for a while. They were so scared to go through that process again and I we leaned into the discussion when they came back and we called me, checked up on them. It was just so psychologically disturbing once their lips were dissolved that that needs to be taken into consideration and anybody doing lip filler needs to have that understanding. When people are asking for more, they don't see what we see. So you know I equate. It is kind of like women who have a breast implant deflation. It's really, really traumatizing.
Speaker 2:They feel disfigured very difficult process until you can replace it. It's very similar to that and they often just don't see it. Sometimes they don't even see it until you show them the before and afters. So it's like this is what you look like before, here's what you look like when we dissolve it and here's what it looks like when you replace it. And it's also very frightening to me. I've done a lot of filler dissolving over the years and when you, when I realize where this filler is being injected in their face, I'm just like, oh my gosh, it's like they were so deep in the muscle and, and it's just, it's a little bit disturbing and it's very unregulated right now in the United States. So Patients need to educate themselves and we need to be there to educate them. And, kind of going back to your original question, in the consultation I feel really comfortable saying no and I explain why and I always let them know what I can offer them.
Speaker 1:So when you say unregulated, how would you like to see that? I know it's hard to Come up with something, but how do you think we could do a better job regulating this? To regulate who can inject, who cannot inject yeah. And then how do you think the aesthetic business world is going to think about that? Yeah, or even I think I'll let that happen. I mean, these pharmaceutical companies are so influential do you think they even gonna let that happen?
Speaker 2:So I've thought a lot about this in recent years and I don't know the answer, the right answer, but I do know that something needs to happen. That is, a minimum requirement of certification.
Speaker 2:And then, in addition to that, some baseline gold standard training, and it cannot be a couple of weekend courses.
Speaker 2:It's just not okay.
Speaker 2:You know, for a frame of reference, over the course of my residency and fellowship I probably took, out of my own free will, 8 to 10 courses and I still didn't feel comfortable, like feeling like I was doing amazing.
Speaker 2:It took additional work and then, after your first couple of years of injecting, now I feel super solid and even when I felt like I could have used you know, I just needed more experience I was still probably better than the majority of the people out there injecting. So I don't know what it would look like and I guesstimate that it would be state by state as it currently is, because we're not going to change the entire system. There needs to be baseline certification, safety and ongoing educational requirements. I caught wind of something in Michigan I think it was either last year or two summers ago where they were trying to push something legislative and I only saw part of the bill that said that only NPs, pas and physicians were going to be able to inject filler, which would have rocked the Michigan business circuit, because most of these places are being injected by nurses who just have a physician who's signing off on the filler purchase.
Speaker 2:So I don't know that it's necessarily fair to take somebody who's been injecting for 15 years and tell them all of a sudden now you can't, even though they might even be better than the physician down the road.
Speaker 1:Right, you have to close the business. That's the worst like what are they going to do? Is they're going to go bankrupt?
Speaker 2:Right and that's not appropriate, but I think starting by setting some baseline standards from a safety standpoint is very, very important and I think if enough bad outcomes are reported to the licensing, boards some change will happen, but a lot of people don't record things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the thing, and I don't know how that's going to change. To be honest, I think what can change, though, is that continuous studies in the field demystifying certain ways that we treat patients today and questioning the studies that are used as landmark studies to justify why we should be injecting more filler than we are supposed to, and I think a lot of more studies and science can actually help us more than like some legal thing or some legal changes that would lead to a lot of litigations and political fights, etc. I think, at the end of the day, if we let science talk, patients are smart, they're going to get educated, and if someone knows sugar is not good for you guess what? They're going to eat less candy and they're going to buy less candy. And if you're a candy store, well, it is what it is right. You know people are more health conscious nowadays, so a lot of these soda companies like Coca Cola, their you know their profits are going down just because we live more health conscious. It's not the 80s anymore, and I think science always prevails, knowledge always prevails, and I think it's our obligation to educate them.
Speaker 1:So, with within that, and what is your goal now for the next, as we're coming towards the end. I know we've been talking for an hour and a half, but I remember I told you I don't know how long the podcast is going to be. Where do you see the? You know your future. Are you going to write this out or do you have a master plan, something inside Like what is what is Dr West planning and doing In the next I would say three quarters of your career? This is just the first quarter Okay.
Speaker 2:So one thing I can tell you confidently is that I will probably make multiple career changes and I don't know the exact timeline, but I've learned that my brain kind of pivots on this like three to five year consistent timeframe, and I always thought that was because, you know, undergrad was four years and medical school was four years and then our residencies are five to six years. But I have that internally. I will likely continue doing the, the non-surgical aesthetic piece, for a long time, but I view that as kind of a platform from which other things are going to culminate.
Speaker 2:So, you know, as my kids get older and if I decide I want to start working more, I don't think I'm going to expand the practice, I think I'm going to dive into other things, trusting my gut. What's that?
Speaker 1:Which are other things as.
Speaker 2:I don't know yet. I have a feeling there's going to be an educational component to it. I don't know what it looks like yet, and I'm good with that not knowing exactly what it looks like yet, because, like everything, else in my career. Organically, these opportunities come into my universe, into my orbit, and I have learned to pay attention to those opportunities and see what can come from them so.
Speaker 2:I am confident that I'll know it when I see it. I anticipate something educational. I have a feeling at some point beyond seven years from now that I'll probably be dipping my toes into. So, to back it up, I love creating things. I like the process of solving a problem or kind of and I think labeling it a problem isn't even correct Finding a solution for something, and I have a feeling.
Speaker 1:I will. A challenge that's probably a challenge, exactly.
Speaker 2:And I have a feeling I will likely, beyond seven years from now, find myself in a position that is totally outside of aesthetic medicine, and that this entire journey was practice as a small business owner, entrepreneur, getting involved in some other platforms like speaking engagements, consulting, etc. That will help me in this other arena, and I don't know what it is yet that's exciting, we'll have a discussion in seven years and we'll see where we're at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exciting. I think part of the excitement of life is not necessarily knowing where a world leads, as long as it's something that makes us happy, it's something that we chose and not someone else chose for us, and I think that's part of the thing about life that makes it interesting and, I'd say, worth living. Absolutely Not necessarily knowing the outcome, and I've thought a lot about that when I watched movies where you could go into the future and I'm like I don't know if I would want that, because that would take away the whole joy of life, what everything is about. Totally. So I totally love that. So, within the closing of our conversation here which was amazing, by the way I learned so much I can't believe it. So I'm going to have to write a lot of notes down myself afterwards and good reality checks personally. So thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:And I think that's why we're here today is we briefly talked about vision, goals etc. And we talked about before the podcast. When we're just chatting, when we're earlier in our career or as students, they ask us to define a vision for ourselves and we're just learning and rather I would call it struggling to learn certain techniques and the stuff that we today see as small stuff. And then someone comes to us and we want their advice and tell us well, what's your vision Like? What the hell are you talking about?
Speaker 1:So how would what advice would you give your young self? You know, dealing with all these challenges of the fear of the unknown, wanting to achieve, achieve, achieve, having these goals and being so worried about whether you're not going to make it, you know what would. What advice would you give yourself if you were meeting your own 20 year old self?
Speaker 2:Oh, my 20 year old self, my goodness. So going to a 20 year old self, I would say again kind of how I alluded to this. You know now I chilled out plenty. But don't stress out about a lot of the things that you're currently stressing out about, because they don't matter In the end. They don't matter, just like when you're a teenager. Nothing you stress out about when you're a teenager, really kind of the same way in your 20s.
Speaker 1:For the teenagers in the audience. Can you give us an example? Because every teenager probably has heard that from their parents and probably right now listening to us rolling their eyes? I actually do have a lot of teenagers and young students listening to the podcast, because I know that, because they reach out to me, they say I love your podcast and I was first surprised because I thought my podcast is more for, like, the young business owner and but a lot of the other audience are listening to this podcast so I want to make sure they don't roll their eyes and they're not sitting there. It's like, well come, exactly what you need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I could probably write it off 10 examples. So when you're a teenager, body image is huge. We always compare ourselves to other people and worry about how we look and how we appeared other people. The less you can care what other people think of you, the better and part of that is something that you will just learn with age to relationships, any of the relationships you have in your teens. Don't stress them. Most of them aren't going to be around when you're older. Now, that's not always true. My two brothers-in-law married their high school sweetheart, so I don't want to, you know, downgrade high school love, but don't stress the breakups. Also, for my academic A type go, go, go.
Speaker 2:Individuals. A lot of the little minutiae that you worry about, your volunteer activities, all this. Don't stress out how much you you know what you look like on paper. Ask yourself what you're getting out of whatever activity you're getting out of it and maximize it. If you love sports, love your sports. Play them because you love to play the sports. If you are involved in other extracurricular activities, you know I don't want to step on any parental toes here, but don't just do things because other people tell you to Do it, because you get enjoyment out of that, and the sooner you learn that the better, and it will guide you later on.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God, I love the last sentence you just said. I absolutely love it. I got goosebumps because I think we're really good. I think we're we're programmed to way too early to do stuff that we hate because someone told us we're supposed to do that and it will help us in our career journey or whatever we're trying to achieve. And that's why so many young kids are depressed, suicidal, just because they're getting crushed under the pressure of all that you know expectations of achievement Set forth by their parents, by their friends, in the entire school community.
Speaker 1:So please, guys, if you didn't listen to the entire podcast or you accidentally fast forwarded to this, just if you just listen to Dr West last sentence, please engrave it somewhere where you see it every day, because I totally agree with that and you should live your life because you love what you do, not because someone told you that's going to get you point from point A to point B. Otherwise you missed the whole point of life. And, jessica, I love, love, love your story, thank you. It has inspired me and reminded me to continue to do what I love and then not listen to other people that think I should be doing something else, because, at the end of the day, what I got from you is a growth mindset means both business and personal, and so thank you for the reminder, thank you for this amazing, genuine conversation.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, I have enjoyed myself thoroughly, so thank you for having me. I hope yes, I hope we're going to be joined together on a podium soon, yeah, and so hopefully they'll get us back on stage together. I would love to work with you on stage and I think I love your philosophy, I love everything you stand for, everything you did, and I think, dr Hayabi, if you're listening to this, you should be extremely proud, because if she was my fellow, I would be like dancing right now.
Speaker 2:And thank you, Dr Hayabi, for everything. You always have to appreciate your mentors.
Speaker 1:And also Dr.
Speaker 2:Tauer, who worked with Dr Hayabi. She was instrumental as well, so they were a great group, great training and helped my trajectory Fantastic.
Speaker 1:Job well done. Job well done everybody. Jessica, thank you so much. Thank you, faria. Thanks for coming out. It's been a blast and I will see you soon and have an amazing weekend and celebrate your son's birthday.
Speaker 2:Yes, you as well.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you, have a good one. Bye, jessica.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye, all right, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this podcast with Dr Jessica West, when her inspiring story and making a 180 and changing her career and choosing both life and career, which is something that many think of but not many have the courage to execute upon their wishes and thoughts, so hope that inspired you. It certainly did inspire me to make some changes in my life and my work. And if you enjoyed this conversation, please, please, please again, do not forget to leave me a review on Apple Podcasts or comments on Spotify. And special thanks to Lorraine Dryden from Achieving Accreditation, which is a consulting firm that has helped us to with the accreditation of our surgery center, and so for anyone that is looking to get their surgery center accredited by the Triple HC and with the highest standards for patient safety and care, I highly recommend them. They're called Achieving Accreditation and so their information is going to be down in the caption, so I highly recommend them. And thanks again and hope you tune back in next month. Bye-bye.