The Daria Hamrah Podcast
Do you want to change or simply improve your life? Take your business or your personal relationships to the next level? Have you ever thought why change is so difficult? Ever wondered how people become successful and we just call them "lucky". The Daria Hamrah Podcast gives you Dr. Hamrah's personal insights and pathways to his successes and what he calls "true happiness". Featuring interviews with some of the most successful entrepreneurs, authors and experts in their field, he shares their insights into what he calls the "Secret of Life".
The Daria Hamrah Podcast
Shaping the Next Generation of Plastic Surgeons with Dr. Ben Talei
Embark on an intellectual odyssey with the revered Dr. Ben Talei, as we navigate the often turbulent waters of aesthetic medicine and reconstructive surgery. Dr. Talei, who has a storied career that stretches from aiding the Red Cross in Spain to innovating surgical techniques in Beverly Hills, shares his profound insights on the art of maintaining confidence laced with humility. We engage in a candid discussion about the psychological complexities inherent in the field, contemplating the impact of personality disorders and the ubiquitous Dunning-Kruger effect on both surgeons and patient outcomes.
Our conversation with Dr. Talei ventures into the evolution of medical techniques, demystifying the integration of business acumen in advancing healthcare practices. He recounts his experience creating Cupid Lips, blending medical know-how with artistry to redefine lip enhancement. As we dissect the precise science behind facial aesthetics, Dr. Talei delves into his meticulous approach to talent assessment, imparting his wisdom on selecting surgical fellows that will shape the future of our profession.
As we peer into the crystal ball of facial plastic surgery, Dr. Talei champions the pursuit of exceptional patient care, urging a commitment to innovation over the complacency of outdated methods. The episode concludes with an enlightening exploration of the latest advancements and limitations in the use of facial fillers, prompting a compelling conversation on maintaining authenticity in an era of aesthetic enhancement. Join us for this thought-provoking episode that promises to enrich your understanding of the intersection between medicine, business, and the relentless pursuit of human beauty.
Contact Dr. Talei on Instagram: @drbentalei or @cupidlift
Tweet me @realdrhamrah
IG @drhamrah
All right, everyone, welcome to another great episode of the Dariah Hammer podcast. Today's guest is very special to me just because he is in a similar branch of business and medicine and he is actually at the forefront of our field and I'm very proud to have him here on my podcast to share his perspective and experience with us. So stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Dr Ben Tellay, out of Beverly Hills, california, who is a native of California.
Speaker 1:He graduated with a degree in physiological sciences from UCLA and then went on and actually studied abroad in Spain.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious to hear what he would let him to travel to Spain for education, where he worked for the sisterhood of blood donors at the Red Cross promoting donations, blood donations in Andalutia, spain, at the University of Mendez Pelaio, mendez Pelaio in Spain, and then took his talents to back to California, went to UCSD in San Diego where he got his MD, and then came to the East Coast, to New York, and did his residency at Columbia Cornell, new York Presby Hospital in Head and Neck Surgery and ENT and then further did a fellowship with world renowned surgeon Dr Stephen Perlman, as well as fellowship in reconstructive surgery, sloan Kettering Cancer Center where he trained with Dr Milton Wainer.
Speaker 1:Did I pronounce it right at the Vascular Birthmark Institute of New York and Manhattan Eye and Ear. So he has a vast experience in both aesthetic medicine and reconstructive, had neck surgery and something that is very unique, you know, usually most young surgeons they branch out early, but he did it all, and not only that. He's an amazing entrepreneur and very interesting person. He has a. He's a great educator and mentor to many surgeons all across the world, as well as myself from the distance watching his content and his amazing surgical videos, which are one of the most educational that I've come across in my career, and so I'm very proud and honored to have him on the show. Ben welcome from California.
Speaker 1:Thank you that?
Speaker 2:was the most impressive introduction anyone's ever given me anyway.
Speaker 1:Well, I just summed up the facts. So that's your own work and your own doing so. I didn't want to cut it any short because I think every experience in our lives and our careers there are significant for who we have become and our abilities and who we can inspire. So I want to delve deeper into how your path evolved, because we have a lot of listeners that you know, as you yourself are educator currently and educating young, from young students to already well seasoned surgeons. They all come to us with questions of how to do certain things or why we made a certain decision, even though it's unique to you and unique to each individual. You know, I think there are a lot of lessons to learn. Not everybody has to reinvent the wheel. We can just. You know, one of my models is just look at what successful people have done and just try to do the same. You know. You know, kind of like within, what makes you happy. But before we get into that, you know, I want to just get right into it with you.
Speaker 1:What is going on in the aesthetic world currently? It seems to me like it's a wild west out there and there's so much controversy, there's so much confusion there. You know, there's not a day we go on social media we see two different, quote unquote experts battling about different viewpoints, which is gotten to a point where the consumer slash patient or customer, whatever you want to call them. They are confused because they're trying to do their due diligence and research and, based on who they follow, who they listen to, they hear conflicting questions or or or. You know, I don't know about you, I get. There's not a day where I get a DM. Someone sends me a video where two people are arguing about a viewpoint and then they ask me what do? I think I'm sure you get those. So what's going on in your mind? Where is the confusion and why is there a confusion?
Speaker 2:Well, the there's two reasons why you see those debates. The debates happen either because there is no answer yet, which is because we're in this kind of ever evolving field and things keep changing and nobody's figured out the best way, and one person has a 70% success rate this way, the other one has a 70% success rate that way. That's one reason that you see it. The other is based on perpetuation of falsities and lies and things that have been told over and over again over time. And you have a debate between one surgeon who has a 95% 99% success rate and a surgeon who thinks they do, but realistically has a 50 to 70% success rate and in whatever they do and that happens probably more often and it's because the not as good surgeon or the one who hasn't evolved as much or isn't really advanced as much, has convinced himself or herself that there are many ways to skin a cat. And they've heard it over and over again that other doctors have told them no, there's so many ways and in my hands I can get this, and in my hands I can get that, and in my hands I can get this, and in some sense it's true where, yes, in one person's hand they do it this way, they get an amazing result. And that person's hand they do amazing with. You know a slightly different technique, but in most cases there is a better way.
Speaker 2:There is somebody who's better. This isn't you know these little leagues where they're giving you trophies for everything and everybody's equal. No, there are better surgeons. There are smarter surgeons, clearly more intelligent people who see things better, and more advanced surgeons. But the less advanced surgeon doesn't know the difference and so they argue and using as their defense, someone told them to make them feel better, that you can do it so many different ways and get the same result. No, realistically, in this world, things have advanced and they've advanced because someone was better, not because everybody slowly evolved. It's because one person came forward and had an idea. Another person came forward and had an idea. So obviously there are people who are better at things. It's just the surgeons who are not as good don't know the difference.
Speaker 2:They don't have the taste, they don't have the insight and they produce average results. And they perpetuate the average results by justifying it by always saying there's many ways to do things and they just don't know any better, and they attribute things to esoteric stuff. So they start talking about artistry, they started talking about evolution, they started talking about all these things that you can't put your hands on, they're not tangible, versus the good surgeon says no, here's my result. It's better on a hundred out of a hundred patients. I'm going back to make an excuse for myself, which is what surgeons do, right, you're on these threads and I'll mention mandibular ligament release, I'll mention whatever, and then to or skin release or whatever people are talking about, and to defend their viewpoint, rather than opening their mind and saying Ben obviously understands this, he knows he can do the technique I'm doing.
Speaker 2:He's doing it different for a reason. They say let me go find the one result out of 10 where I can prove my point, and they go grab that one photo of the one patient that they got it right on out of 10 and they show it to you. And that's the one they put on their website Right, and the other nine they're like oh well, just you know that patient didn't heal. Well, it's not my fault. That's why this depends on.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious because you know, I mean one would argue, everyone in our field, you know, has a relatively high intelligent rate of intelligence, otherwise they wouldn't get this far.
Speaker 1:I mean you could argue that and the way we learned all of this stuff is because we were curious, curious beings and we obviously learned this stuff and then we continuously learns. How much of this I call it what you just illustrated, I call it opinion, how much of one's opinion as a professional, even you or me, do you think is guided by our mentors in the past, and how much of it is guided by Because it's very deep psychology, what you just said, by true science, by current science, because science does change. I mean, I mean you read literature from just two years ago. It's based on literature that was Docmatized for decades and people assume it's correct and no one questions it ever. So how much of how much of us is influenced really by our mentors or by people, almost like religion, by people we Try to learn from, and how much of it should be really guided by curiosity and constant questioning of the way we're doing things?
Speaker 2:in your opinion.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, so as far as that question goes, I mean, we wouldn't be where we are without evolution and history. So learning the principles of plastic surgery is like reading a history book. You have to know your history, so you have to go and know your history about facelifting. You have to know about Massplication, which is history, it's ancient history. You have to know these things that you have to know about high smash, extended smash, skin only techniques. You have to know your history to advance and Figure out why are the new techniques better? Where did we go wrong? So you don't ever regress. So that's one thing.
Speaker 2:But people don't look at it as history. They look at it as Ever constant fact when it stays the same throughout time doesn't change, which is not true. Right, science changes. The other issue Is the biggest fallacy ever, which is what you just said, is that we're all intelligent. Okay, kind of, you know, but Obviously we're Relatively, but obviously we're not, because you still have bad results in cosmetic surgery all over the place. So Someone's missing something, and it's pretty common.
Speaker 2:So the real way to look at it is, and the way to strengthen ourselves and advance and not hold ourselves back, is Realize that what you said is right, but it's completely wrong and it's. Yes, we had to have a certain intelligence above the general population To get to where we are. But it doesn't mean, first of all, that we understand Things all over the place. It means maybe we can read a book, maybe we can take a test, maybe we can reproduce what somebody else did. It doesn't mean we understand beauty doesn't mean we under, we can open our eyes and see things that other people don't see. It doesn't mean we can criticize ourselves and advance. It doesn't mean that we think about things nonstop and have to improve them. It doesn't mean any of that?
Speaker 2:not at all. It just means that we made it to this point because we can retain information generally better than the general population. Now, within medicine, the thing that we do have to realize is yeah, sure, ok, rather intelligent people. Is that good or bad, right? Have you? Have you met a narcissist before? Yeah, play, you've met a narcissist? Ok, have you ever met an intelligent narcissist? An intelligent narcissist is one of the most dangerous people in the world. True, because they can convince themselves of anything, and they can convince themselves that they're right, and they think that because they're intelligent which they are that what they're saying must be right. So these are the most dangerous people.
Speaker 1:Do you think we have a lot of that in our field? Do you think like proportionality?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're so plastic surgery is filled with cluster view personalities, whether it's narcissistic, histrionic, sociopathic. We have a higher rate of it than all other specialties, whether it's facial plastics or plastics. Plastics is here, facial plastics, next oculoplastics, next derm plastics, least in the level of how much cluster be you have in them. But there's a lot of it. And the thing we have to realize is humility is what gets us far. Now, confidence and humility have to go hand in hand. You can't be an unconfident surgeon. Ok, so how do you be a confident surgeon who still has humility and criticizes themselves constantly? It takes a special personality. This is why some people really advance a lot more is because they're able to criticize themselves. Yet they have enough balls to learn things, retain things, see things and then try to advance themselves. So they're OK with being failures. So this is where the advancement comes from, and from realizing that none of us is of high intelligence. So you know, yes, general relative to the general population, but to me that's not impressive. Impressive is Albert Einstein. You know, this is true intelligence and these are rare people. So instead we have to assume that. Forget the rest of the world.
Speaker 2:Look at just within medicine, within medicine itself. Whatever specialty you're in, there is going to be the same standard deviation. You're going to have average all over here below average, above average, and you're going to have the outliers, and so you have. That's what we need to really be looking at, to say this does exist. Yeah, and the average ones are not the ones who are right. They're not the ones who are advancing us. We need to be the people who are at the extreme, on the top 5 percent, top 1 percent of this, top 1 percent of the population. Everyone look at it, that's advancing things. If not, then all these average people that I look at were average surgeons, and there's nothing wrong with an average surgeon. The world needs them. You know you have to have average surgeons.
Speaker 2:But that the average surgeons just, instead of opening their mouths and defending their mediocrity, they shut up, they sit back, they learn, they advance and they keep advancing and just listen to what other people say who are at the top if they can't advance it, rather than holding it back. But what they do is their cluster B personality, their average in terms of let's just call it talent, and that average person with a cluster B personality is a narcissist and what they do and their competitive and their business minded, and what they do to drive their own business is they defend everything they do and they drag the whole field back. And you have these people in charge of major journals, which is what we've seen forever. They're in charge of major journals. They're megalomaniacs with average talent and average intelligence, but a whole lot of arrogance, and they hold back the field because they want to defend what they do, because they can't admit that they're wrong, whereas the good surgeons are always asking themselves where am I feeling? Why am I?
Speaker 1:wrong. Yeah, this is very deep psychology. I actually accidentally stumbled upon the science of I don't know if you're familiar with the Dunning and Kruger effect. Dunning and Kruger were actually social psychologists from Cornell University and in 1999, they started studying the relationship between competence and confidence. They wanted to know what is a relationship. Is it true that you have to be competent in order to be confident, or can you just be confident even though you're not competent? So it's called the Dunning-Kruger effect. So what they noticed is that let's break the population up in incompetent people, kind of like a curve incompetent people and then mediocre and then extremely competent. So they found out that the highest confidence level is in the least competent, and then that confidence drops as people kind of start learning, because as they learn they find out oh shit, there's so much I don't know. I thought I knew this. This is really hard, and that motivates them to up their game, to start learning and studying and just becoming better, which takes a long time until few of them actually become experts. And as you become an expert, your confidence level goes up.
Speaker 1:But here's the problem, and they studied it on their psychology students and across different universities in Florida and East Coast, west Coast. They in OBGYN departments, general surgery departments. They tested the concept of the Dunning-Kruger effect Because they wanted to know if it's true, if it's reproducible, if in fact the least competent people are the most confident. So, for example, they asked residents after they took the mock board exam in the OBGYN department and I think it was at Jacksonville Florida how they think they did the ones that scored the poorest. They actually were very confident that they did amazing. So the gap between how they think they did let's say they thought they're going to get an A but then they got a C or a D that gap is called the Dunning-Kruger effect. And so I stumbled upon it just to read a little bit about psychology because, like you, I'm also an educator, so I wanted to know how I can communicate best with my students, residents and fellows and how I can really get into a head and teach them what they need to know in order to advance. And then I stumbled upon this and that's when I realized everything you just said is really kind of based on that.
Speaker 1:And the highest predictor they found is intellectual humility, which is what you're mentioning it. But intellectual humility has nothing. What they found and that's according to them, has nothing to do with actual intelligence, but more so with how much knowledge one has, meaning kind of like someone like you, the more knowledge you have, the more intellectually, intellectual humility you will actually have. And they found that relationship to be kind of parallel and it's not a predictor for actual intelligence, because one could be very intelligent, but because maybe they're stubborn, because they think they're right, maybe they're too righteous and they don't open themselves up for maybe a new viewpoint, they rob themselves of the opportunity to learn something new. Like both, even you can learn everyday something new.
Speaker 1:I know you're probably one of the most intellectual, humble experts that I've known and I've been following you for many years and I've been watching your videos and intellectually humble people, they have no problem in saying, hey, I don't know what the reason is, but this is one of the things we should find out or investigate. But certainly we shouldn't take some dogma for which is like maybe decades old as our script, just to take it as it is and not question it so as to the consumer. Now back to the patient. How can the patient protect themselves or actually know who is who? How do they know that they should listen to Ben Tellay versus someone that is just and, by the way, the Dunning and Kruger also found out the least competent ones that are excessively confident. They're actually the loudest.
Speaker 2:They're the loudest out there, yeah of course, yeah, this is the way of the world.
Speaker 1:So they have the biggest microphone, so people tend to listen to them. And the experts, which are also confident, they're not as loud. They just say what they know. Because also another fallacy there is for someone like you they think that because they know it, everybody else should know it, because it's a second nature. I mean, it's easy, right? No, it's not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we call this that's undereducated, over opinionated. That's the way of the world and you saw this with the people who have figured this out is the newer political campaigns and you see it with what's going on in the Middle East now.
Speaker 2:You see it, with the Trump administration was the biggest one to do it. They start taking advantage of those people and targeting those people. They target the most hostile, least intelligent, which is the same person in general. It's like a barking chihuahua. So they go after them because they are very confident that everything they know is true and you can tell them anything and they take it as a fact. And now they live by those facts and they bark it at everybody else and to a point where they'll threaten their existence. So this is something that big marketing groups which you can put them in the group of propaganda marketing, all that have really really gone after this, because it's really numbers that they're going after. It's not convincing the intelligent people anymore. It's trying to get the most hostile people on your side. You convince them of whatever you want pretty easily and they scare everybody else to quiet down and not express their opinion.
Speaker 2:And this happens in medicine too, in a different way, in a softer way, but this happened in. Massplication is the easiest way to really show this. You can talk about this in micro show surgery micro show surgery with Brent Technique versus Nagata and all those. It happened there too. But you can see it in face lifting and massplication where it is the more insecure. In general, less talented have to defend their businesses because they have no talent and they rely on marketing. Those are the ones who are the loudest and most adamant in holding everybody back. And this whole Kruger effect that you're talking about is very applicable to most of the population, to all of the population, because you do have true genius out there. True genius exists. It's not me, it's not you, it's no offense.
Speaker 1:But it's just not. You're very humble.
Speaker 2:No, but it's not. It's not either of us. There is true genius and I've seen true genius. I've met a couple true geniuses in my life and there's only a few that you'll be in the entire life. Who in?
Speaker 1:your mind that you have met In your mind, because I know it's obviously opinion based and is a true genius, or has been a true genius in our field. Can you drop a couple of names In our field? No one currently or in the past and in history, in high school.
Speaker 2:In high school there was a kid in high school Is one of the only kids that I looked at ever to this day as really being genius, and one kid in residency Not in my residency, but in anesthesia. And I know genius, I can tell, I can see in their eyes, I can see what they understand. And they're not just intelligent by the meters that we have, because this Dennis Kruger effect or whatever it's called. We don't know how they're measuring intelligence versus understanding. Understanding is different. Understanding is in farce. They call it au revoir. It's like someone who sits back and just understands things and soaks in things. And they're softer Because you can be sharp in something where they can measure by how you retain. Who knows what they're doing. But they're two different things.
Speaker 2:But I've only met those two geniuses. They were positive geniuses who really promoted things and accelerated things. But then there's the black hole genius, which is the most dangerous genius, which is like my dad. So my dad has a narcissistic personality disorder undiagnosed. He has got a gambling disorder Undiagnosed, yet he grew up as a child prodigy, true genius. When you're comparing intelligence levels as far as understanding goes, pure shit, like knows nothing, and the problem with those geniuses is they are the most dangerous because they have pure genius, pure confidence, but nothing useful and it tanks every. So you look at it a lot. Are you comparing? Like social, are you?
Speaker 1:talking about social emotional intelligence versus analytical and. Yeah, useful intelligence.
Speaker 2:I think they call it social.
Speaker 2:You can call it street smarts, you can call it intuition. He's got shit intuition and that becomes the most harmful person to be around, because they're true genius and nobody can say they're not, but they're a black hole genius. They just suck in everything around them. So what these guys are talking about and I've never read their studies but they're talking about the main population, main population where you have intelligence and you do have these extremes, the way that I teach. So how does the patient choose who's the good one, who's the bad one amongst all these people? Especially when you have these fucking dangerous geniuses around, it's very difficult.
Speaker 1:And the bigger question is how do the doctors Because you never want to poop, because you never want to trash someone, but you still have to tell the truth. I mean, how do you do that? How do you navigate?
Speaker 2:Well, so I first. I teach my residents, so the residents, doctors, visiting fellows, I teach them First off. Never assume everybody, what everybody does is correct. The proper assumption is that if what everybody did were correct, everything would be perfect. Everything is not perfect, so your actual assumption is that what everybody is doing is incorrect in some sense not totally wrong, but no, that's great advice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when you're learning something new. Realize you're just learning something. You're not learning the correct thing. You're not learning. It's not the Bible or how everyone says is your fact. It's not. It's not constant, and we have to learn everything as history, which means pick up everything you can soak in and absorb everything around you.
Speaker 2:You can go to the worst surgeon in the history of the world and come out with something very positive. They can teach you something. They're still intelligent people, so they still have something, even the one that makes everybody look fake. You go watch them. You're like, oh shit, I learned the most amazing trick that just changed my career, even though all the results are total shit. So I tell them look at the world that way. When you go learn from people biggest name, smallest name absorb everything, whomever they are, it doesn't matter. Just absorb. But don't assume for a second any of it is correct now or will be in 10 years.
Speaker 2:Then you have to really look at the photos and analyze yourself, and this is where the patient has to really do their homework too, and doctors have to do their homework. Look at the results, because as far as the doctors go on, what you're learning from the doctors are like oh, but this doctor said you can do all this volume reduction and you can do this and you can do that, you can do that. I'm like, well, that's really fucking creative that they came up with all that stuff. But the more creative you are, the more dangerous you are. Look how simple I do it. I do just a few things and I'm showing you 10 out of 10 results, or actually 99 out of 100 or 95 out of 100. There's always something wrong, right? 95 out of 100 where I'm getting it better than they are in their one out of 10 they showed you I go. So you have to really look at that and understand that the simpler it's explained to you, the simpler it is most of the time, the better it is.
Speaker 1:It's kind of interesting. I just lectured at this eye face conference, which I think you are also part of, and I talked about the temporal brow lift, which is a very simple technique. I actually do it exactly the way you do it. I've been doing it like that for over 10, 15 years because I come from the endoscopic brow lift and this is just pretty much a lateral approach of the endoscopic brow lift, to simplify things, and I always get consistent results and it's very simple to me.
Speaker 1:But in literature there's so many different techniques on brow lift. I mean so many and you were the first person that I ever listened to that actually broke it down beautifully, to the point that it made it so clear and obvious and describing how the brow age is and everything. And it doesn't age vertically. I mean, all of these things are obvious, we all know these things, but yet the techniques we choose they're completely contradictory to all of the stuff we know and we just it's almost like we pick techniques just because someone else does them that way or we were taught that way and we never questioned it. Now, so at the end of my lecture it was a long, it was almost like a 45 minute Q&A session afterwards, one of the longest I ever had every single question. It appeared that almost no one it appeared to me like no one was listening because they were so caught up in their old ways in what they knew from the past.
Speaker 1:Even though I presented it very simple, technique, even anatomically, I did a whole anatomic description of all layers and approach very simple, like my fellows. They literally see one and then the next one. They do one perfectly. You know that speaks for its simplicity. Anything that's simple is reproducible and if it's reproducible that means it's simple. But what shocked me and some of the questions came from very renowned surgeons because they announced who asked the question and I thought, well, maybe they tuned in later, or. But then, exactly what you said. They were asking how that compares to some other techniques which are way over complicated. They have nothing to do, even conceptually, with the anatomy and physiology of aging. So I don't even know why people even perform them and it was a little disheartening.
Speaker 1:It was disheartening because I felt like, well, either I'm a poor communicator or people are just too caught up in their old ways. In your opinion, you're a great educator. You travel all across the world, you talk to surgeons from all kinds of cultures, ethnicities, medical, surgical backgrounds. What, in your opinion, is this the problem? Why are we so caught up in our old ways to the point that we don't even hear something that's so simple laid out in front of us?
Speaker 2:Well, one of the reasons is, yes, we're poor communicators. So I've given these lectures the brow lectures that you're talking about and I used to have a lot of kickback from people what do you mean? Same things. They bring up the old stuff, the old stuff. It's like they weren't even able to understand. I began to understand the brows so well that I realized that the way that we were teaching it was just so wrong that I had to reteach that first. So I went into, instead of surgical technique, just all concepts, and I don't even waste my time on surgical technique anymore, I just talk about concept only, because people can barely understand that.
Speaker 2:And the thing is they have these old theories, and their old theories are supported over and over again by a two out of 10 success rate or a five out of 10 success rate, and it's like a broken clock is right. Twice a day. I've seen this a million times. And what they do is they look at when the clock is when a clock broke at two o'clock, right, and then they go look and when it's actually two o'clock, they look at it. It works, it works, it works. And so this is what they do and they perpetuate it. The other is they don't even know how to tell time. So brow lifting specifically, they don't know what a good result is, and that sounds crazy, but they don't know what a good result is. So half my lecture, when I talk about brow lifting now, is getting them to understand what is the actual result you're looking for. Because they're so used to looking for a big change, because they have failures and they think that the way to fight a failure is to get a bigger effect. So they think you know not that they pulled in the wrong direction, but not enough in the right direction or whatever. They don't realize. So they keep pulling harder in the wrong direction.
Speaker 2:And so I teach them in the beginning. I go, you're not supposed to make someone look like a surprised idiot. I go. The brow lift is specifically intended to relax the face because you have strain that occurs with age and changes in the brow shape that occur with age. They're happening because of the dynamic of the brow and if you reposition the scalp, the dynamic of the muscle corrects itself. If you're not in the right position, the dynamic stays and is compensating always. So I keep teaching them this, but they don't know what the how to tell time is my point. So they don't know what a good brow lift is. They don't have no idea because they've been shown a million different ones and they start getting impressed with big changes rather than proper changes, which for me. I keep trying to look at my afters. They look more relaxed. This is the point.
Speaker 1:People are the wrong end point. Do you fall to the educational system from universities, residencies, fellowships, whatever? Why is there so much discrepancy in the understanding in something that's conceptually fairly simple and evidence based? Why is it? Why is it? Why is it? I always ask a question why?
Speaker 2:Well, our understanding keeps getting better. So previously, if you're looking at brow lift texts and this, and that they're all focused on brow shape, brow arc, brow, this and that, because they didn't get that. The aging brow looks different because of the dynamic changes that happen in the muscle from strain.
Speaker 1:So you think it's evolving?
Speaker 2:all the texts. It started wrong. They started talking about the wrong thing to begin with and everybody keeps picking up and trying to evolve the wrong thing, instead of going back and saying, oh well, that wasn't the problem. The reason we're over correcting and the reason we're this and the reason people don't like endoscopic and all of this is because we're looking at the brow incorrectly, so we keep repeating the old ideas and then.
Speaker 1:So what makes? You so what makes you the person you are to question everything and to try to improve? Was it your innate nature? Was it one of your mentors, from Steven Perlman to others who you trained with? Who do you think instilled that curiosity in you? Or is it just? Your innate nature.
Speaker 2:No well, I've been curious forever. As a kid. I would just sit there and everybody's talking in the car and I'm just staring out the window looking at things, just understanding the world. That's how I've always been. The thing that really changed me, I'd say positively, wasn't a specific mentor at all. It was in medical school. One of the first things they started teaching you is looking at outcome based results Period, and you either understand this or you don't. It doesn't matter about the science. Forget the science, okay, of how to read results and read studies. That's a whole other thing which, in plastic surgery, never happens. It's extremely rare to have an actual evidence based study in plastics. It's very difficult because it's an artistic endeavor and you can't quantify these things. It's mainly photos. You know it's like so and people think it's science, but it's not. But just understanding outcome based meaning live your life like this. Live your life like this. If everything in your life is turning out perfectly all the time, you're doing it right.
Speaker 1:That's your outcome?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if your life isn't perfect, if something's wrong, if you're stressed, if your kids are mad at you, if you know you're getting fat, if you're getting a heart attack, if you're whatever, however you want to look at it, it means that whatever you're doing is obviously wrong or else you would have had the right result. So when I look at surgery, I'm doing it the same way. I keep looking at it and I keep saying why is it not perfect? Why didn't I get it right? Why didn't I get it right? I'm obviously doing something wrong. Obviously it's not, and sometimes it's me, sometimes it's the surgeon who taught me, sometimes not, you know, not any specific surgeon. All the articles you read, all the things you know, sometimes it was them. Maybe they just didn't have it right and I need to figure out what's wrong with it. Or I need to figure out what's wrong with myself. Why am I getting it wrong? You know, I was using TXA for a while. Holy shit, all these things were going wrong because of me. I didn't know, because I didn't understand the cause and effect of it. And then I look at it later, finally, and I look back and I'm like holy shit, it wasn't perfect because I was introducing something that was bad, you know, unhealthy. So, either way, that's the mindset that got me to change over and over and over again.
Speaker 2:And then when I built my practice was the other. When I was building my practice, I called a lot of people to seek their opinion. And this is when I really realized in my life that you cannot seek the opinion of the average. So when people talk about common sense, common sense is average, it's common, it's what common people would understand. I need it to be not the common, I need it to be the best, and it doesn't matter if it's in medicine or in marketing or whatever it is, I have to be good at it. It's a game.
Speaker 2:And that's when I realized, when I called everybody and they said, oh, just hang a shingle, just go work for a academic, just do this, just do that. I realized that all these people lived an average life and they had a 10 year course until they were decent, 20 year course until they were fully established. I don't want to be that person. I want it to be the two to five year. You know you can't rush anything, but I want it to be the two to five year. And I know people out there have done it. So why am I listening to the common people? Okay, I listened to them to learn my history and to learn where they went wrong.
Speaker 1:So what did you do? And then I really have to look at the top. So what did you then?
Speaker 2:end up doing.
Speaker 1:What did you end up then doing?
Speaker 2:Well, I started looking at the top 5%, top 1% in all these fields not just medicine and how they accelerated. How did they do it? What are they doing differently? What are they seeing differently? Right, Everybody else goes left, you go right. So what is what are they doing differently? Or how are they approaching it?
Speaker 2:And then you know, one of the things you realize is that there is no correct answer for anything for anybody. So if you ask what's your secret, my secret is to trying everything. It's like it's it's shotgun approach. You do a thousand things Fail, fail, fail, fail, fail. Oh, that one's it. Let's go and you kind of keep going, and the faster you can do this, the faster you evolve. This is why good, you know, high volume and surgery is good because you evolve faster and you find your failures faster.
Speaker 2:Otherwise it's like a needle in a haystack. You'll never find it in 20 years of failures. You have to find it within one year. So in my practice that's how I grew it was realizing quickly that everybody I was asking was leading me to in the wrong direction, because they kept telling me the same thing. And I'm like, if it's that easy, why isn't everyone successful? You realize, because, just like. You're talking about education and universities. Universities are not teaching you to be intelligent and smart. They're teaching you to be average. It is teaching you what everybody can understand in a book. It's what's average, and that's why high school is harmful the way it's structured.
Speaker 2:That's why university is harmful the way it's structured, because you don't take advantage of true geniuses. True geniuses suffer in those areas because they're being taught to be average, not conformity. You know people think it's conformity. It's not conformity. It's that they only know how to teach you to be average. They don't know how to accelerate somebody because they're not accelerators themselves.
Speaker 2:I had one teacher in college who understood this. It was an education class and we go in the education class and the first thing he says is our stereotypes good or bad. And then people are like well, stereotypes are bad, stereotypes are bad. And he says no, stereotypes are actually can sometimes be true and they can be good. And like an Asian as smart, as a stereotype. And he says who's the, the people who have the most PhDs and whatever in this world. After he says this, and everyone was the Asians, he's like no, by large percentage is the Jews. He goes, he goes.
Speaker 2:You have to understand that stereotypes may be right, they may be wrong. Sure, what you understand about education may be right, may be wrong. We understand about what you think about the world may be right, may be wrong, but the people who accelerate in this world are the ones who go after their strengths and who support each other, and that's why you see in, like Jewish community and the culture, they accelerate because they help each other and they focus on strength, not failure, and when you're looking at most education, it's focusing on failures. It's focusing on you suck it, math, make your math better. You suck it this, make that better. And there's some truth to that. But really, the people who accelerated in this world in any form of arts is because they found what they're strong in and they keep accelerating in that, and that, for me, was another thing that really changed the way I look at things and how to not really be average, because everyone else teaches you to be average.
Speaker 1:Now you have a very great understanding and sense for business entrepreneurship. At what point did you know that you have that or did you have someone that mentored you in that regard? Because everybody knows that doctors are not the best businessmen and nothing gets taught in medical schools on business and entrepreneurship. Where did that come? Did you have a mentor or was it just innate to you? And also, I want you to talk to me in that regards and what you're doing as far as business and entrepreneurship within your practice and what your secret sauce to success has been.
Speaker 2:So with business, there's the part with just numbers and not understanding them, which I still fully don't. That's because in our educational system here in the US, they never teach us finances. It's probably the most important thing of anything you could learn of all these subjects that they teach interestingly, and it's what's not taught. I don't know if I'll ever be really good at finance stuff. However, what you had mentioned about entrepreneurship I like being creative and I like doing things For me. I like being good at things and technical things and things where I can actually measure my change, knowing that I got better at something Business or marketing or brand development or business development or practice growth. How we want to look at it was one of those things where I hated the idea of it at first because it seemed dirty to me. It seemed dirty to mix medicine and any kind of business. I just wanted to be a pure doctor healing people, helping people, that's it. But then I started doing it and I started looking at not doctors, because doctors suck at it. Right, I suck, you suck.
Speaker 1:It's not in us.
Speaker 2:We don't know how to do it. So I started looking at everybody else in different fields. I'm looking at my friends Chris Jenner, I'm looking at this hairstylist, I'm looking at this artist. I'm looking at all these different people. How did they do it? And I started just taking little tips and tricks and tips and tricks from the successful ones, because we don't know what we're doing. And then it became a game for me and I started to like it for a little bit, or not even like it. It just is a game and you have to be good at the game and I like playing games, I like being good at it, I like creating, I like doing something new. And my practice kind of grew like that where I just started trying all these different things and no specific thing worked. It wasn't Google AdWords, it wasn't Yelp, it wasn't real self, it wasn't seminars, it wasn't all the classic stuff everybody did it was like in my place, Beverly Hills.
Speaker 2:By chance this thing worked in the world. By chance this worked, so I just kept growing it and it got to the point where I even am having fun now growing my new business. I'm doing this new two new offices. One of them is called Cupid Lips and you just had the grand opening.
Speaker 1:It's like my baby yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, grand opening is February 29th. But I had a soft opening, yeah, soft opening, and congrats, yeah, and this became for me another artistic outlet.
Speaker 1:Tell us a little bit about it. What is that for people that don't know you that well or don't know what I mean? Everybody knows what Cupid Lips are, but what's a business model?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Cupid Lips is my lip center. It's not a lip clinic, it's not a lip store, it's not a lip anything, it's a lip everything. So the idea is you walk in and the front of this whole place is retail, where you're walking into like Sephora and it's only that and it's beautiful and that's part of the fun of it is making somewhere pretty, and I'm not good at that. My friend is an artistic genius, antonio Tadresi. He's a designer and architect. He did it, but with me, like telling you know, he extracts things out of you. He is very, very talented and we made this place that you walk in, you feel amazing and you're just like, oh my god, and you look around and it's great. So that's step one where it's fun.
Speaker 1:I like the Al Pacino picture.
Speaker 2:So, that has a history to it, because this is where they filmed Gina's hair salon, which was his sister, was my location, so that's why we have that Amazing. But it's a product place and the reason I wanted to make a product place is because there's all these lip products out there and nobody knows what's good or bad, and so we're trying to make a place that is not necessarily doctor researched or this and that, but it's doctor approved, meaning I look at the product, I looked at what's in it and I said you know what? This is a good product and we're going to carry it and we're starting slow. We're starting with like 10, 12 lines and then we're going to get to like 100. So we're going to have online and in person and really try to sift out like what, the what, the ones are that a doctor would approve.
Speaker 1:That's the idea for you guys have makeup artists or anything. Do you have any makeup artists there?
Speaker 2:No, we're going to have makeup people who help out with stuff, but and we have actually a location if we're going to do makeup stuff for events but the other part of it is lip noninvasive meaning injectable laser, radio frequency, nano fat all this stuff that you could do to the lips. That is not surgery and not makeup, something to make the lip sexier, better, whatever or more natural. So we're the place where you come. If you have these big, nasty LA lips, we take it back to normal. We're expert at dissolving, we're expert at refilling. We know how to deal with this stuff.
Speaker 2:Now, of course, we do all the other things as well, with noninvasive under eye filler and Botox and lasers, but our focus for marketing and branding is really just the lip. And then we do the lip lift, which is the cupid lift that we do once, twice a week there at the location. So people, they want a permanent result, they can get it, and we do quality control. So I'm going to set this place up in Miami, I'm going to set it up in Newport, I'm going to set it up in Dallas, Toronto, eventually Dubai, riyadh. So I'm going to have it in some of my favorite places to hang out, so I can hang out there.
Speaker 1:What happened to New York?
Speaker 2:New York is a hard market. I train there and I love it there, but it's going to be a little bit of a harder market, I think, for me, just the way it feels Like Miami. It's made for cupid lips. When you walk into cupid lips you're like this is Miami.
Speaker 1:I could tell you, I lived in Miami, I trained in Miami, so I would say probably in Miami and LA are number one and two in that regards, when it comes to lips.
Speaker 2:So that's what it's going to be, and we even have an area where we can put art for lips, where you can buy art lip art by lip artists. And we're going to have cupid compendium, which is an online video library for surgeons and injectors who want to learn injection technique not just for me, but from my friend surgeons or doctors or injectors who I would think are master injectors or radio frequency anything. Really. I'll start it with lips, but really go do the whole face, because injection techniques people don't know what they're talking about and there's so many master injectors and anatomists out there that are like self-proclaimed who I think are a joke.
Speaker 2:When I know anatomy and I look at what they teach, what the fuck are you talking about? You do not know anatomy. That's textbook anatomy. I get it. Not real dynamic physical anatomy you don't get it. This is going to be really to teach all that stuff muscle, dynamic and all that's going to be included. All this is going to be in the cupid compendium. That's amazing. And then we have the cupid calculator, which is an app that we've developed to actually show for the first time ever, what a lip lift can look like. No other app can do that and I've figured out what you're doing.
Speaker 1:I think that's going to be very valuable, because I think the lips change the appearance of one's face more so than anything, even to me, more than the nose. I mean, up until now, I always thought the nose, but when you see and, by the way, and I'm not saying this just because you're here and you're on my podcast and I don't want to just be tooting your horn but I've never seen a good lip lift result other than yours, and I'm not just saying it because you're on my podcast is because it's so hard to get it right. It's so hard to get it right and if you get one millimeter wrong, you really could make someone look terrible and right, and it almost makes someone look like they had a clubflip repair. If you over shorten it, if you over shorten the center portion and don't address the lateral portion, it's like so many things can go wrong. And you have this amazing way to measure things and I want you to tell the audience how did you come up with these measurements, Because I think it was.
Speaker 1:I don't remember two years ago. We're lecturing together at the talk meeting and you were lecturing on the. My lecture came right after yours. Yours was online and you actually were talking about your lip lift measurements, but you didn't really talk about how you came up with it. How did you come up with that?
Speaker 1:Because you would do all these measurements Like how did you decide, is it the chicken or the egg?
Speaker 2:This actually came from trying to teach people. So I kept trying to teach people how to do it and they would go back and do it wrong and I would show them on their visit. You know, this one, you have to go laterally biased. This one, you have to go more asymmetric. And I would eyeball the lip, I'd look at the lip and I would. I'm good at measuring like to the half millimeter. At some point I got good at it from just seeing so many.
Speaker 2:So I at some point realized that what I was teaching them wasn't sticking. And it's not because it's a complicated technique for surgery. They could do the surgery. They just couldn't figure out the measurements, because that's some kind of like understanding of looking at the face and being able to like say, okay, this needs to come up more than it needs to come up more, whatever. So I went back and I said, okay, let me find a way to teach them. Maybe I can do some measurements because I kind of know what I'm doing, and let me just go see if there's a way to put some math to this, even though I hate math. So I don't hate math in general. I was great at math as a kid. I don't like mathematics and beauty. Mathematics and beauty they're contradictory in general.
Speaker 2:Most of the faces shouldn't be mathematical, it shouldn't be strictly numbers. Ratios are off all the time. So I went and started measuring and I saw holy shit, what I've been doing this whole time is creating a slope between these relaxing intention lines that I've created, and doing that actually got me to perfect the slope. So some cases I'd have a failure on the lateral lip, some cases I have a little asymmetry, shape change. All this and this allowed me to like go, perfect the slope where I actually figured out the real numbers. So I went and started measuring them. My friend's trying to come into my house, Sure man.
Speaker 1:Someone's breaking into your house. Should I call the cops?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I started measuring these slopes out and I got the numbers for a cupid and I evolved it and once you get one, you find the next one. You get one, you find out the next one, and then you see a couple failures and you're like, ah, got it. So it took a little while but I figured it out and now it's something that I made it initially to teach others. I thought I was okay.
Speaker 1:Did that improve the teachability of it?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, teachability is way improved because I also understand the lip better. But what it really did was change my results. My results kept getting better and better and more consistent, especially on revisions. It saves my ass all the time and I measure things out. Sometimes I'm like, oh my God, I didn't see that in the picture and you can measure the disparity.
Speaker 2:And not just that I got to learn the difference between anatomy of the sub facial lip, the sub nasal lip. I got to understand what makes people look angry versus happy. What is it that makes this person look mad? Because the lip goes too far there and then down, you know. And I started to realize all these things about lip character. So the calculations really helped me out because I realized that I could write a book about lip shape and lip character and how that projects onto other people. So someone would look at just like if you have ptosis. They look at you and say, okay, you look tired or mean or mad. The lip can do that, and so I've got this better understanding of it through that, and now that's what we call the Cupid Lift is using that algorithm.
Speaker 1:I think the risk with lip lifts is because technically it seems like it's a very simple procedure and it is a simple procedure, but I think the-. Simple technically, but the hard part is the diagnosis and then the design, and I think that's why it's such a rabbit hole, it's so tricky, where a lot of people get themselves into trouble, and it's very hard to correct once you get it wrong. It's very difficult to correct, especially when it's over-resected.
Speaker 1:And so, guys, if you're listening if you're in the market for a lip lift, I swear to God, just buy a damn ticket and fly to Beverly Hills. And because I'm telling you, it's not as easy as it looks, because it's all about the diagnosis and design and that requires a certain eye and artistry and that's the stuff that you can't teach and that's why, personally, I don't do lip lifts, because I take my responsibility very seriously and if I'm not good at something, I'm not gonna do it and I'm certainly not gonna try to learn it on my patients account. So I stick to my faceless, my rhinoplasty, and you will see all my lip lifts. Now, ben, I have a question for you as someone that's educating and teaching. How do you? You have a fellowship, right? You train fellows. Like what are they? They spend a year with you. Yeah, I have residents and fellows, so I'm a professor in Mexico.
Speaker 2:So I have my Mexican residents come in for one month at a time and then I have a fellow who's there for one year and, yes, it's largely like an observational fellowship and then they have their own cases. The second half of the year.
Speaker 1:So how do you pick them? If someone wants to reach out to you, how do you pick them? Because I'm sure you get hundreds of applications. So how do you pick them? Because you can train only so many people.
Speaker 2:Well, my prior fellows were mainly plastic surgeons and then now I'm part of the American Academy of Facial Plastics, so they're facial plastics or plastics.
Speaker 2:So there's a you go to the AAFPRS website and you apply through the fellowship program and it can be plastic, you can be plastic surgery or facial plastics. It's actually a blend and we look through the applications and anybody who seems remotely decent or intelligent or likable we have them come through, even if it's somebody that I may not ultimately take. And the reason for that is I'm doing them a favor. Like they may not know it, but one of the biggest, best fellowships I had was the interview process, was going through and learning what different people had to say, their approaches, their viewpoints and their techniques, all of that and the different personalities. And if you don't see that in your fellowship interviews, you may never see it because you get to see 20, 30 people in a row. So for that reason, if it's anybody I'd like to have for the day, even I just invite them to come, even if I think I may not take them ultimately.
Speaker 1:How do you assess their artistic, how do you assess their artistic ability? Because much of what we do I think most of what we do has to do with an artistic eye. Now, if you don't, how do you search for that? How do you find that person that has that artistic ability?
Speaker 2:You're not gonna get all winners. So, ultimately, who would pick? You have a way? Well, most of mine is. Number one thing that cancels you as an option is if you don't have a good personality. So if it's somebody who, let's say, is uptight, cancel culture, this millennial bullshit. You can't make jokes, things like that. Good luck, you're not coming to my office. Get the fuck out Like it's not happening. I'm gonna be around somebody I like, who can take a joke, and I do not care for this new culture that's going on. They can all go eat shit.
Speaker 2:So and this is coming out of even my program, colombian Cornell, which was classically, we were rough, like we were. We used to get tortured and you could say anything to us and do anything to us and we were fine, not like that. They're little princesses now. So even those programs that were rough, the New York programs you know New York was rough Like the New York programs now they have like work hours and oh my God, I don't wanna overwork. So that's number one. You're not even getting close to me because I don't wanna be around and I'm not doing a fellowship because I have to. I'm doing it, it's fun for me. I lose money doing a fellowship, I lose time and I have to pay them and they're not giving me anything in return. I don't need them. So that's number one.
Speaker 2:Number two becomes like how well did they listen? So do they get it? Is it somebody who comes in and is saying I know, I know, I know, or like huh, interesting, oh, I didn't see it that way. You know, like it's a different person. This is how I pick my nurse injectors. This is how I pick people who work in my office. I'm very harsh, I'm very insulting. And then if they're resilient and they listen and they truly get it, you can see it in their eyes, you can hear in their voice. They can't act.
Speaker 2:If they really get it, I'm like, wow, this is someone who's teachable, cause I don't expect anybody to come in and be an artist. I don't expect anybody to come in and be a genius. I don't expect anybody to come in and be already talented. I expect them to have some innate talent and innate ability to understand. If they have those two things, they're going to be a strong surgeon. Now, if they have, on top of that, true insight, self-criticism, drive to work their ass off, you know, and they're curious and want to do everything all the time and see everything, and instead of taking a vacation they go see a surgeon. You know, if they're that person and they have a little artistic kind of creative mind, then they're going to be great.
Speaker 2:Yeah well said, but you're not going to get all of those. You may not get all of those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I tried to get some pointers because I'm faced with that challenge every year as I myself have a fellowship and so far I had great luck. I love my fellows smart guys and very curious, and so I was trying to you know, see how you shop for artists, and so you know, you, you. Well, let me tell you what I did.
Speaker 2:We. So it's myself, Richard Zumalem, who's my co-director and current deer. We sat down at dinner and we looked through all these applications and you know, before I used to just meet the person and say, okay, you know, I'll take you, because it wasn't a formal fellowship, Sure.
Speaker 2:If I like them I. We looked at it and all of us came to the same kind of conclusion, which is we really only ranked like out of 40 people. We ranked like three, four or five, something like that. Like maybe four or five people, that's it. We didn't rank any others because I either want those people or I don't want a fellow. I'll just pick someone later If I want to have someone around.
Speaker 2:I have residents, you know I don't give a shit. Why would I want to have somebody around who's again, you know, annoy me and or embarrass me after they leave and my, you know they have my name on them forever and if they go around and say I was trained by Ben and they're doing these shit surgeries, it's embarrassing. So we only ranked like four or five people maximum. We threw away all the others because we weren't convinced that I'd want to be around them for a year. Some of them because the way they looked at me, some of the way because the way they talked. One of them tried to interview me. Get the fuck out of here. So I don't know how you do your fellowship, but I'm extremely offensive during mine and if they can take it, that's step one.
Speaker 1:You know I tried to find a line. You know I was in a very abrasive, malignant residency myself at the University of Miami and I don't know if it's an East Coast thing or what it is, but you know, I don't know. But the one thing that I look for is because when I every opportunity I got during my training and I was very lucky is, I was always grateful for an opportunity. I would do anything. Basically, all the things you said, kind of like that was me. So I look for the same thing. And there is, I think. I do agree. I think this new generation has gotten softer, has gotten a little bit more what's the word entitled? And, like you said, I had I had.
Speaker 1:They were interviewing me, I'm like wait a second, I'm doing this for you. I'm not getting anything from it, you know, I just do it because I enjoy teaching and I want to this field to progress. I want to butt out surgeons that do it the right way at least my way and not the wrong way. And so there are people, obviously, that are grateful for it, for the opportunity it like when you and I mentioned these things and I, during the interview process, I talk about it and if and you can you absolutely right, you can tell from their facial expressions how they take it and if they get it, you know it. And so, but the one thing I can figure out, if they have that the artistic eye because that you learn, you'll never know it's just like towards the second half of the fellowship, then you will. I look for it through asking questions. So, for example, hey, what do you think looks wrong here? Or what do you think looks right here, or why is this a great result, or why is this a bad result?
Speaker 2:And then, based on how, they find out and diagnose it. If they're creative and curious, they will develop this.
Speaker 1:So, but you know I'm not an artist. Let me show you something.
Speaker 2:It's getting here fun enough, like I can't paint for shit. Okay, this is I mean granted this is outside.
Speaker 1:Is that your boat?
Speaker 2:It's my boat and I did it. This is at Alec Monopoly's house. We both did a skin tightening treatment together and we were a little bit high on the medication.
Speaker 1:Hey, it looks good. It looks like a Picasso to me. Yeah, the Picasso with the headphone Point is.
Speaker 2:I'm not the painting kind of artist, but as long as you're like, really creative and curious and you like to look at things and understand things, they'll develop. You know my current fellow, she's developing it. The surgical technique is the first thing you learn understanding the face. It takes forever. It's like the ABC, it's like learning the alphabet.
Speaker 1:You know you gotta teach someone the alphabet before you have them. You know design a poem and then write a poem. In a way it's like beautifully written. So I know everything is stages Me and you went through the same evolution and you know you have to learn the basics first, the principles first, and I think anyone doing your fellowship is lucky.
Speaker 1:They might not know how lucky they are until like maybe 10 years into their career, because I think the most important thing, what I value the most from my mentors, is the principles they taught me. Not necessarily a technique, because you can watch a video and learn a technique, that's whatever, but the principles. That's the one thing. I think I take that responsibility most seriously and I tell my fellows I'm like, look, whatever you learn here is only maybe 10% of what you're gonna do for the rest of your career. However, the principles will pave which road you're gonna be on. And that's my job in the short one year to teach you the principles. So, from being empathetic surgeon, from being a ethical surgeon, from being a curious surgeon and for not believing any dogma or any statement, always questioning everything, if I get that through you in that one year, your career will be successful, no matter what, as long as you don't fuck things up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and interestingly so, I learned from my two main mentors well, three probably, but my two main mentors who guided the way I act are Pearlman and Giacomo. So Pearlman, C Pearlman I was with him for three years in residency and he taught me a lot about surgery, a lot about how to deal with people and like how to word things, like even you know the things you wouldn't even think about he was just good at, naturally. And then Andrew Giacomo was my fellowship director for my fellowship over there in New York, really taught me how to, you know, question things in advance, beyond what everybody else is doing and you have to be the best. And because I was convinced by others that kept talking about oh, but recovery times, but if someone wants something, minimal, but if somebody wants just, a little bit of a bullshit and they didn't understand, like they weren't there to be the best, those people who say that they're not there to be the best.
Speaker 1:It's an excuse that all of that is justifying what you don't want to do. Well, they just see things the wrong way, you know. I 100% agree with you.
Speaker 2:I 100% agree with you. So he's the one who taught me no, you do this, you do the best, you do this to get the best results. And he told me to there's a role for what these people are talking about. There's a role for the little, this little, that it's just not for us. Let them go to somebody else. Let somebody else do that for them. We're only here to get the best results. That's it, period. And that made my life easy, because I don't even have to worry about these tiny. How do I do less for this person? How do I do? No, if they want less, they want to do the lesser stuff. They can go to somebody else and there's a role for that in this world.
Speaker 1:It's just not for me Not for what I want to do. I want the best result.
Speaker 2:I want to look at my before and after, have a good day, move on to the next one. That's really what I want to do.
Speaker 1:I love what you just said, because that's exactly that I think. Most of us that settle for less or mediocrity it's just a really subconscious justification. While we don't want to walk that extra mile and we don't want to choose the hard way, we want to choose the easy way, and then we justify it well, the patient doesn't want it. It's like no, no patient. No patient signs up for a mediocre result, like I don't care how much you pay, whether you pay 10,000 or 100,000, no patient wants a mediocre result. And so that's the biggest bullshit that people talk about and they say, even in meeting. Sometimes, you see, in a meeting, that's the introduction, the reason why I choose this, because I have patients that want this really.
Speaker 2:Which is fine. There's a place in the world for it. It's just I don't know.
Speaker 1:The patients don't dictate for me where it goes.
Speaker 2:I think if you give?
Speaker 1:patients two meals one tastes amazing, looks amazing, and one looks like shit and tastes like shit. I think at the end of the day, patients or the customer is gonna look at the value and either they're not gonna eat because if they can't afford the great one, they're just gonna go and make themselves a sandwich. They're not gonna eat some shit that they get like food poisoning.
Speaker 2:So some people eat shit and like it. Some people eat shit and like it.
Speaker 1:Now you're a foodie right, is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, just a bit. You're a foodie you offer.
Speaker 1:Also, I saw you offer sushi and your. How did that come about? It's just like some fun thing or it's another kind of creative thing Are we gonna have a tele restaurant? Next year in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 2:It's one of my goals in life? Yes, to have one eventually. I've never had any formal training, so I don't know about formal cooking techniques and things like that.
Speaker 1:It's a tough business, so make sure you partner up with the right people. It's a very tough business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I'll do eventually. I have a couple of friends who are like actual chefs, but I've been cooking since I was a kid and for me it's always been fun to create new recipes. And what I do is I go shopping and I just walk around and find whatever new thing and I imagine what it would taste like with something else. I bring it home, I look what's on my counter, I make something totally different and I make it once and never make it again. And sometimes I really like a recipe, so I'll just evolve it, make a couple different things, but for me it's a little game and I had made so many recipes at some point I forgot I started to hashtag them or put them on Facebook. So it was under Blendtale's kitchen and I had a Facebook page for it and then a hashtag and eventually I said, oh, let me make an Instagram page for it. But that was only for like a year or two that I did that, so there aren't that many photos on there, but there were just recipes that I would make once, never make again.
Speaker 2:And I do a lot of sushi sashimi, because I used to race both these other boats, so my mechanic is actually who's retired from racing now, but he's a fisherman too and he goes out to Mexico, 500 miles off shore, he's fishing and he comes back and he barely eats fish himself. So he comes back with all this stuff and gives it to me, and I have all this yellowtail, bluefin, yellowfin, you know, to Ono, and that's why you'd see a lot of sushi on there, other than the fact that I like it Interesting.
Speaker 1:So what's your favorite Persian dish for the Persian audience?
Speaker 2:So one of the first things that I made when I was a kid was actually a dish. It was a mix between reime and Ooh it's my favorite, which is Reime and Badinchu.
Speaker 2:And I made a dish, a lentil dish. I combined them and added a little jalapeno and some different potato stuff and it was actually one of the best things I've made since that time. It was amazing, Great. My mom taught me how to cook Persian food in general, so she had left to Iran to go pick up my grandma when we were like 10 years old and that's when I started cooking Persian food a lot Interesting. So I was making Kreme, Rormasazi, all that stuff when I was about like nine, 10 years old or so.
Speaker 1:Amazing, amazing. So last question, before we get to our rapid fire, to wrap things up, based on everything that's going on, the Wild West that we started off with in our field, what do you think the future holds for facial plastic surgery? What are, in your mind, going to be the biggest breakthroughs in our field, even though it's a surgical field, but let's look at facial aesthetics in general, not just surgery, but also what do you think our future holds? And by future I'm not talking about in 30 years, I'm talking about the next five to 10 years, while we are being used to our own practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so lots changed in results because of social media and exposure of results and things like that. And the things that have changed are the patients are seeing more natural results. They're also like it's Google now on social media, so they just see there's all these options out there whether they're good or not, but they're exposed to them, which is it's cool. The other is that we're seeing that the fandom is changing. So before, when we used to be fans of only the people running the journals and people who are able to publish, or the academicians, now we're actually seeing that, wow, like Joe Schmoe in Texas is getting the most incredible results doing so-and-so technique and even though he's not lecturing, he's lecturing online and he's got this new medium of teaching. So I think that evolution towards better techniques is happening faster because there's not as much-how much more can you justify fucking smasplication? Give me a break. How much more can you do it? It's a joke at this point, I know it is.
Speaker 2:People can't hide anymore and keep defending everyone else and each other because the old people are getting so old they can't defend it anymore. They're not on social media. The young people is who you have to speak to now and defend yourself against. And they are no fools because, even though they lack the experience, they are on the social media pages and they see all these results and you can't deny it anymore.
Speaker 2:You can say whatever you want about smasplication, but in the end, proof's in the pudding. You've got these photos and so I think that a lot is advancing towards these people who are pushing out the results repeatedly, and then you really see the results and you see who the best ones are and we're learning from them. So we're not learning from the 90-year-old rhino surgeon anymore, who has a lot to offer again for history and understanding. But the newer techniques are coming from Carlos Neves and they're coming from Giacono and they're coming from everybody else who really are proponents of change change where change is needed, not change where no change is needed. There's a lot of people who like to talk about new things for the sake of having something to talk about, because their lives are boring, which happens 50% of what we're seeing.
Speaker 1:That's how it used to be when everything was based on publications. People used to just publish bullshit, just to publish, and it was completely worthless.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it still happens. It still happens, but we are going towards more natural because of this. So is there still a?
Speaker 1:place for fillers, by fillers I'm talking about. So where in your mind is a place for fillers? And how do we protect our nurse injectors and PAs to get rid of this type of cognitive bias, because the truth of the matter is that's pretty much the only tool in their toolbox, and how do we protect them from themselves in order not to expect too much from it?
Speaker 2:What is one of the so one is really stopping all the bullshit about euphemisms and how you describe it.
Speaker 1:But how do you do that? Biostimulers, how do you do that?
Speaker 2:You just have to aggressively teach people. I mean biostimulator. Using the word biostimulator, it's a joke. It's like calling a nuclear bomb biostimulator.
Speaker 1:Or like liquid facelift. That's another one I love Liquid facelift, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, those are marketing tools. So those are liquid facelifts. I don't mind so much. Those are little marketing tools and it's like before I've done a photo. But biostimulation is a real bad euphemism For.
Speaker 1:Well, it is a marketing tool too.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's what they use.
Speaker 1:It is it's a bad.
Speaker 2:It's a harmful one, because liquid facelift doesn't harm anybody. At some point you have to know how much you can put in a face and you're not going to get a facelift. I get that, but biostimulation does harm people because you think it's a vitamin, you think you're injecting college in a healthy way.
Speaker 2:So the first, and you're not. You can get a poison to benefit you, as we've seen with Botox, but it's still a poison. You have to know how to use it and when people call something instead of a toxin, they call it a modulator or whatever else. It's harmful. You should know the potential damage that these things can do to use them better. So biostimulators are not inherently bad, but the way they teach them is inherently bad, because they tell you that it's just beneficial period and they think that telling you anything else means that, oh my God, it's sacrilegious and you can't use it. Instead of, this is a product when used properly is great. When not, it has major risks. But the people doing it they think that if they speak badly against it in any way, that instead of making use of it more safe and precise, that they're just telling you not to use it. So they don't. They're black and white. They're not understanding that we don't live in black and white. So fillers are fantastic.
Speaker 2:I love using fillers. I can use it for muscle modulation. I can use it for volume contour. I can use it for a lot of things.
Speaker 2:But I know it's a when you say muscle modification.
Speaker 1:What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2:Muscle modulation. I can get muscles on the face to work better. How so? There are certain muscles that I can get to work better and I can improve color on the face with filler placement. So I know it's a whole nother world of filler teaching, but if you look at people who smile, get big smile lines and a little bit of a dip on the chin, that's a muscle modulation. So I know how to change the muscle function with putting filler to support the muscle. So many smiles again in and out here on the zygomaticus is because it's that the fascial expansion of the zygomaticus, and it's in that because there's no support under it. And I know how to put filler under it to get the muscle back into a shape where it can function and flex better. Somebody's hyper flexing around the lip and around the mouth.
Speaker 2:I know I'm not doing Botox. I'm adding filler to put a spacer in between the skin and the muscle which disperses the energy to the skin but also diminishes the amount of muscle flexion by causing some resistance. So these are things that you can do with filler that are so easy to do. So I love these things. Most people don't understand those things. They don't understand color, they don't understand muscle function and then they don't understand the limits of filler. But I love doing filler. I'm probably one of the better teachers of it. Even though I don't teach constantly, I know how to teach it and so I love teaching it. I love doing it. It's just it's taught wrong All everywhere.
Speaker 1:So that's the problem.
Speaker 2:So hopefully the people you come across understand filler and there's no definitive Everyone's like. Filler lasts forever. Filler goes away at six months.
Speaker 1:No, the answer is.
Speaker 2:Maybe you know it's like some people who goes away, some people doesn't, some people who kind of does, some people who changes. That's the reality of it. And when people realize that, they start to become more responsible with how to use it, because then they realize you don't serially keep adding it on the face, you don't serially do all thorough to people because you're not serially stimulating collagen, you're serially causing fibrosis at some point. So radio frequency, laser fillers, these are things that change the way the face functions and stimulates the face. And when you're stimulating the face you got to understand how simulation can be bad. So you have to do it with respect to the face.
Speaker 1:And I think it's very difficult to teach. I think the way all of these things are taught in like weekend courses or in a one week course, which is there is no way, and the educators that are selected to teach, I mean, I think there is so much lack of structure in a very quickly advancing science and I think that's why it's a wild west out there, and I think it's really up to the consumer to do their due diligence and find the experts and, like you said, based on results, just look at who gets the good results. It's not that hard and as opposed to just getting suckered into a pseudo science, that was great advice. Now let's go to our rapid fire, as we're concluding here, and so the first question is quickly name the procedure you find most rewarding to perform.
Speaker 2:I know it's hard one, but Well facelift is the facelift the most rewarding because it's not the most technically difficult for me or anything, it's just the one that you do like one thing and you get so many improvements in facial function and facial appearance. So you lift the face neck and you see, the brow gets better, the eyes look better even when you don't touch them and it's because you've kind of altered the dynamic of how the muscles pulling the things like that. And facelift for me is like the biggest bang for your buck for facial rejuvenation.
Speaker 1:Love it, Feel the same way. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received In your life? Not just wrong.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's. My mom told me, benny, you're not perfect. You know, it's always about improvement, improvement, improvement. She told me that a million different ways. I can't quarter once, but that was her viewpoint was always you're not perfect. She would call me perfect. Funny enough, you know, you're my. You know the Farsi. They say little, perfect, golden, golden dick, but oh, golden.
Speaker 2:But then she golden, we need, yeah. So she, she would say really like it's about improvement, improvement, improvement. Always improve yourself, don't blame anybody. That was like two things. She would say Don't blame anybody else, and just that's great advice I love it, I love it.
Speaker 1:Give her a big much from me for that advice. Who was your hero growing up? Einstein, my hero from childhood.
Speaker 2:From. I was reading his books from when I was second grade, like seven years old. Yeah, I admired that kind of intelligence in the world more than anything, because I, I was always very curious about the world and wanted to understand the world, and not just science. Science is kind of the world, you know, but I just wanted to understand everything and I I admired him and still do, because we're never going to get to somebody like that, you know, but it's just that's like that's the coolest thing ever to me. And then, yeah, past that, it's like anybody who's talented in any field, like I just admire them. You know, I see singers, I see painters, I see racers, you know F1, anything like they do things we can just never do. It's like it's just cool to cool to watch. You know, I like watching people in the extreme. I like watching my friend cook. You watch my friend cook, michael Voltageo, and it's another level, like when he's cooking. It's like it's just things you can never do. It's like it's so cool See.
Speaker 1:I'm like you. I'm, I get inspired by excellence. It doesn't matter what field it is or what part of life it is, and I mean, it's one of the most inspiring things to me in life Ever since I was a kid. Every time I saw excellence, I just to me, it was like you know, watching something beautiful, and so I really, I really feel you there. What is the greatest, biggest mistake you've ever made?
Speaker 2:That's a girlfriend.
Speaker 1:Other than other than women.
Speaker 2:Other than women. I'm a little bit of a per day to Latin pop style. I'll tell you that right now. Okay.
Speaker 2:That would be the biggest mistake I've. I don't have many regrets in my life because I don't mind failures, like they don't hurt me, they don't draw me back, you kind of just. It is what it is. You fall and you keep me. Like you know, I wouldn't have gotten a good at skiing if I didn't fall a bunch of times. The only regret I had in my life was that there's no other regrets really, like everything are like little minor regrets Like ah, I should have done this, should have done that, but didn't draw me back. So not many other things. I mean there's little things where I wish I had done things sooner in life, but I'm in a decent place.
Speaker 1:So what, what? What are you going to do when you retire, If you retire?
Speaker 2:I've got so many things, so that's not. A. Retirement is not an issue for me, like it is for most people.
Speaker 1:What's the number one on your bucket list? What's going to be the number one thing on your bucket list when you can't talk about the number?
Speaker 2:one thing. It's not. Uh, I can't talk about the number one thing. It's a secret, it's perceived as negative by most of the world, so I won't, I won't go into it, but I have an artistic endeavor of me revisiting people of the past, which will be very fun for me. But, uh, there are other things that I have planned with. I want to get back into racing cars, boats um, you know, I've got a lot of hobbies and it's not just those things, so there is no end to the things that I will be doing.
Speaker 2:The second I have time, and you know, with Cupid, like I love growing this thing and I'm growing the Beverly Hills hair group, which is our hair transplant stuff, and like, uh, I developed a lot of things for hair that I never published and, uh, it just wasn't, you know, exciting to me. Once I developed it, it was fun developing, and then, once you finished developing and it's not any better I kind of lost interest. But I have a lot to give to the world for that. So there's a lot I can do and I don't think I'll ever fully retire, but certainly I'm going to become hyper selective on whom I operate on and do less days a week. So I've already taken it down at four days a week, but, uh, that's what I'm going to do, probably at some point when, instead of retiring and it's not going to be that far in the future Uh, I've, I'm, I'm getting close to like plateauing on certain things and surgery, and if I can't improve them, I get bored and it uh.
Speaker 2:What excites me and makes me work hard is the challenge chance to keep getting something better or creating something. If I can't create, I I feel very boring, Like I feel like it's like someone telling a joke over and over again. You know, um, it's not exciting to me to do that. I don't want to be somebody who, you know, puts Ikea furniture together and calls himself a carpenter.
Speaker 1:That's like, that's not me, love it Porsche or Ferrari.
Speaker 2:It's always Porsche. I'm looking at a Ferrari right now, so there's a Ferrari hanging right over there. I love.
Speaker 1:I love you for that answer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ferrari is a more beautiful car, like you can't say. It's not like Ferrari and classics that I want to have a collection out of a collection of Ferraris, but if I had to like, drive myself to death and be the happiest driving, porsche wins um on the driving front. And don't forget, porsche has the Carrera GT, which is one of the greatest cars.
Speaker 1:It's actually my favorite car in the world, the Carrera GT. You know, I grew up in Germany, so Porsche, to me goes, is very near to my heart. So yeah, I'm a Porsche guy. Um, early bird or night owl, which one describes you best?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm, I'm unfortunately both I, um I. I burn the candle at all ends. So when people talk about like the work hard, play hard, I kind of just laugh at them. I'm like you're. You're a joke, you know. Like the way I've lived, my life is pretty severe. Um, I would prefer not to be an early bird. So if you want preference, I would rather be a night owl. I'd rather not be up at five in the morning. It's just for me to be efficient, I have to. Um, when COVID happened, I was waking up naturally at 10 am every day, so my body wants to be up at 10, even though my alarm clock in my head wakes up at five, five, 30. Interesting.
Speaker 1:I feel that I'm the same way. Now, last question.
Speaker 2:We're Middle Eastern, I know.
Speaker 1:Um, my wife goes to bed at nine. That's when my my brain starts functioning. Um, you're go to last question. You're go to relaxation after a hard days of work. What's your go to thing? You do.
Speaker 2:I had a funny answer that I was going to say but let's not say away from happy ending, so it's joke, it's total joke. Um my, my relaxation after work is really like coming at home plopping on the couch Like you had a shit day, like you had a shit day.
Speaker 1:You're like you know screw all of this.
Speaker 2:I like to just watch. So I have this like special place in my house. Um, I like to sit on the couch eat while I stare at my cars, my car, my cars are behind my TV.
Speaker 1:It's like a glass, like a glass wall, or something.
Speaker 2:It's a wall, yeah. And so I'm staring at the cars while I'm eating and like for me it's having, it's like staring at someone you love, you know, for somebody who's single. So you like stare at the cars and I like talk to them and I say, like I get warm, fuzzy feeling and I get butterflies and I talk, I say I love you, so for me, that's.
Speaker 1:And they don't complain either. Right, and they can't complain, they can't talk, they do you have to take into the mechanic? Oh, that's true, it's okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:So for me it's like when I'm exhausted, my happy place in the world is on the ocean. Nice, throw me on a boat. And I've instructed my brother, uh, when I die, to throw me into the ocean. And he's like, oh, cremate you. I'm like, no, throw me into the ocean. But he finds that strategically to be difficult. So we may have to do yeah, that's going to be.
Speaker 1:either way, that's where I want to be is in the ocean. Beautiful Ben dude. Thank you so much. It was um very inspiring uh conversation. I love you for who you are, for coming on and giving me the privilege and honor to just chat with you. Shoot the shit for an hour uh and 30 minutes actually now, and um, I I'll definitely come and visit you next time in California. Uh, even if I just loaned for the car, uh, your car collection, just to you know, check out your.
Speaker 1:Carrera GT, which is my favorite car in the world, the best car in the world, thank you. Thank you, ben. All right, buddy. Thank you. So, um, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, uh, how do they get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:Uh, they can contact me. Instagram is the easiest. It's just Dr Ben Talib. So the R B E N T and you're the one responding, and then my not always if you're really good looking over, but it's a. It's usually my staff response because there's a lot of messages on there. And then there is a Beverly Hills centercom is our website. Uh, there's a beautiful consult form on there now. Uh, courtesy of Dr Mike Nyax. Genius, and how he set up his website.
Speaker 1:Uh, so perfect, which he was a previous guest on this show and I know you guys are good friends and uh any question that I should have asked you that I didn't ask. No, sir, you, you, you got to the heart of it. Thank you so much, ben Love. You Keep on with the success. Can't wait to see uh all your future endeavors and uh definitely will come and visit you next time in California. Thank you, sir, my pleasure.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. I can't wait to to watch us talk, Thank you brother, appreciate you Everyone episodes over.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed my conversation with the one and only Dr Ben Talib from Beverly Hills, california, and, uh, please, please, please, don't forget to leave me a review on that lie tunes or put a comment on the Q and a section on Spotify, and thanks for tuning in Until next time, bye.