Beauty and the Biz with Adam J. Rubinstein:
Former Chief of Plastic Surgery & Vice Chief of Surgery at Jackson North Medical Center.
Dr. Rubinstein shares his amazing social media efforts which is paving the way towards his upcoming, major network reality television series.
Learn the importance of complete transparency and more!
Welcome to Beauty and the Biz – Where we talk about the business and marketing side of plastic surgery.
I’m your host Catherine Maley, author of “Your Aesthetic Practice – What your patients are saying” and consultant to plastic surgeons to get them more patients and profits.
I’m excited to introduce Dr. Adam J Rubinstein, MD, FACS.
He is a board-certified cosmetic, plastic and reconstructive surgeon practicing in Miami for the past 20 years; in an area called Aventura which is best known for its Aventura mall since it’s the 3rd largest in the US.
Dr. Rubinstein is past Chief, Department of Plastic Surgery and Vice Chief of Surgery at Jackson North Medical Center. He’s also clinical faculty at Florida International University School of Medicine, as well as the Cleveland Clinic Plastic Surgery Residency program in Florida.
He’s an active member of several medical societies, including Aesthetic, Bariatric & Anti-Aging.
📖 Get a Copy of Catherine’s FREE Book
📲 Schedule a FREE 30-Minute Strategy Call with Catherine
👁 DON’T MISS THESE INTERVIEWS 👁
➡️ Robert Singer, MD FACS – Former President, The Aesthetic Society
➡️ Grant Stevens, MD FACS – Former President, ASAPS
➡️ E. Gaylon McCollough, MD FACS – Former President, AAFPRS, ABFPRS, AACS
✔️ STAY UPDATED! ✔️
Website • Blog • Podcasts • iTunes Subscribe • Videocasts
🤝 LET’S CONNECT! 🤝
Instagram • Facebook • Twitter • LinkedIn
Transcript:
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Hello and welcome to Beauty and the Biz where we talk about the business and marketing side of plastic surgery. I’m your host, Catherine Maley, author of Your Aesthetic Practice; What Your Patients Are Saying, as well as consultant to plastic surgeons to get them more patients and more profits. I have a real treat today. I have Dr. Adam Rubinstein and he is a board certified cosmetic plastic and reconstructive surgeon practicing in Miami for the past 20 years. What does that fly by it? He’s also in an area called Aventura which is best known for your yoga, you’re like the third biggest mall in the United States. Isn’t that amazing?…
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Number one most profitable mall.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
…I don’t know about any more though, but that is great. Dr. Rubinstein is past chief of the Department of Surgery and the section of plastic surgery at Jackson North Medical Center. He’s also clinical faculty in Florida International University School of Medicine, as well as the Cleveland Clinic plastic surgery residency program in Florida. he’s an active member of several medical societies including aesthetic, bariatric and anti aging, which I wanted to ask about little later. Welcome to Beauty and the Biz. Dr. Rubinstein. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
It’s my pleasure, Catherine, I know we’ve known each other for long. I think I understand that you want to be respectful and call me Dr. Rubinstein but Adams fine.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
I mean, I feel like I remember you starving. I mean, we’ve been doing this for 20 years, because I’ve been at 21 we must have been at the podium like oh boy like that these conferences a long time ago. Let me ask you this, because I don’t know why plastic surgery and why Miami?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Well, it’s two different questions. Two different answers. Plastic Surgery in my short answer is because it matches my personality. And once I knew I wanted to be a plastic surgeon, then I wanted to know and also once I want to be a doctor, then I had to decide, well, what kind of doctor am I going to be. I was working in an emergency room in New York, when I was in high school, and volunteering to get some experience. And they split into a medical side and the surgical side and I immediately went over to the surgical side. It was interesting to me and I remember a young girl came in maybe eight, nine years old, with the tip of a finger chopped off in the door. And the parents came in frantic and they had the thing and get wrapped up in some gauze. And we took the little finger called plastic surgery resident and he came down but his loops on and sat down and very meticulously put each stitch perfect there and I don’t have to watch the whole process. That is the kind of surgeon that I want to be if I’m going to do this. That’s my personality that suits the way I approach things and every little detail right and paying attention to the finer details. That was the spark for plastic surgery. I don’t know why Miami? Why wouldn’t you want to be in Miami?
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Did you grew up in Miami?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
No, I grew up in New York. Oh, but I did. I always had a sense. I wanted to practice in Miami because I love Southern South Florida. But I think the real kind of nail that drove home Miami was my wife came down here and did my general surgery training. And during my general surgery training, we met and I did a couple fellowships, one in San Francisco and then one in Houston. And we were dating through all of that time and in fact, we got married before I even moved back to Miami. It was kind of always in the cards once I started my residency.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Gotcha. And when did you jump from? I assume you started in a hospital setting and academia and then, when did you jump to solo practice?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
I didn’t, I went solo from the jump. I trained to St. Joseph Houston when that was the original St. Joe’s program and soon as I graduated the program and finished training, I came back and started practicing and I’ve always been in solo practice.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
How in the world did you know how to work the business side of things did you know?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
I have to tell you, I say this to a lot of you I talked about this we’ve on presented together a few times and doctors are notoriously some of the worst business people they do seem that…
Catherine Maley, MBA:
I give you guys credit though you were very busy learning how to be a surgeon while the rest of us were learning business you get a pass on that?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Well, maybe it’s certainly understandable but it doesn’t make it easier. I mean, you have to learn on the fly, otherwise you can’t survive. And especially someone like me who goes straight into private practice, you have to do a lot of learning as you go and learn quickly, otherwise, you’re in a sink, and you have to swim. We are at a disadvantage, because none of our training, whether it’s in residency in college, unless you happen to do a business degree to get an MBA, at some point, I have colleagues that did that. I considered getting an MBA, after I finished my training, because I thought, man, I’m having to play catch up on all this. And maybe I should get an MBA and get educated in all things that are business. But at the end of the day, if you have a pretty settled mind, and no kind of logical ability, it’s not that hard to figure out what makes sense and good business makes sense. You have to seek out some education. I tried to do things like this, seminars, webinars, learn what I could in different times when I needed it. And you have to, like I said, you sink or swim. And if you’re going to swim to go learn how.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Did you know right away who to hire, I find surgeons get caught up on that either. There’s the surgeon with the big eyes, who says no, bring them on, I’m going to bring on a staff of 20, we’ll figure it out. And then they’re the others who say, No, I’m bringing my wife on. That’s all my risk tolerance can handle. Where did you fall on that spectrum?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
I think both of those are bad ideas, on how you feel, but I know I’ve heard you speak in other having your significant other what is your, why you can go either way. You talked about having them as a good start but, you and I agree that it’s a bad long term solution, except in some rare instances, I know few colleagues that I couldn’t work with my wife, we kill each other. And she’d be the first person to say it, I’m not saying anything else. Cool. We’re both strong personalities. And it wouldn’t work when it works is great. I’ve had, I’ve seen a couple of colleagues that have worked that out. But it’s a lot of stress. And you’re stressed at work with the work related stuff. And if you have a family of kids and all that mixes in and it’s a soup, it’s hard to eat if you’re constantly eating it every day. Fr me, when I came out, I was on the lean side, for sure. I felt like when I came out, and this is going to take me a little bit but next tech was new and for those of you who are watching that are in plastic surgery.
Nextec is probably the preeminent software package that we use to manage our offices. And when that was coming out, I felt like wow, this is like having one or two extra employees. Because it did much. I was able to stay lean, and I wore every hat even today and we had a couple of employees give notice. And we’re going to be replacing a couple people. I tell everyone, when I start bringing people in for interviews, I’m telling Listen, I can wear every hat in this office, I’ve done it, I have been the person answering the phone, I’ve been the person booking the cases, I’ve been the nurse, the doctor, the office manager, the receptionist I’ve done every position in my office myself, whether it was a short term thing, or I did it for a while, it’s important, I would definitely recommend every doctor getting a sense for what it takes to run a particular position. Because we all have a sense that what we do is the biggest, most important thing and without us, this wouldn’t be here. I guess that’s true and I’m a biggest most important, but certainly there’d be no practice without doctor. But there’d be no practice without your support staff too, add as good support staff can make or break your entire practice.
I can say that I’ve seen jumps in my own level of comfort, in our level of business production with different employees and I’ve seen the differences from great employees to people who are getting by the people were dragging you down, and you may or may not know. Your staff is key. In the beginning, I tried to stay lean, I still stay lean. It’s hard for me to stay on lean when I’m employing, I don’t know 10 to 12 people in a time. But it is when you look at what people are doing, I mean 1, 2, 3, and three of those, let’s say 10 are our staff alone and because I have my own operating rooms that adds to the cost. Then another guy including me, I’m in there as a fourth and there’s maybe 5 or 6 other general purpose, very specific purpose but office based staff that I employed. When I started, I had one, me and one other person. And at the time I was subletting, I was able to latch on to some other person to the main office reception services. You know that person or people, sometimes there were one that would answer the phones and I always had a separate office management system. It kept all my records separate from anyone I was with a time. That made a big difference, who was able to save me the cost of having my own receptionist, it did come at a cost of not being able to brand early and retrain your people to do things the way you want to do. But it was affordable and when you’re first coming out, there are in my first year of practice, I gross if I’m trying to remember this lady’s to give the lecture, we used to come. I used to give a lecture for HSPS for years, every year, the residence day, and I would give the lecture how to start your practice. But when I gave that I would always talk about how my income level jumped year after year. And I’d show my first year, my second year, my third year, and it grew pretty significantly each year. And it continued to grow, thankfully, and even to today. But my first year in practice, I want to say it was like 320,000 or 330,000 gross.
Catherine Malay, MBA:
You were in the black,that’s fantastic.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Well, we were in the black but that was my gross numbers. But I wasn’t the black. Yeah, I mean, we made money in my first year in practice, I think, because I stay very lean and I didn’t go build a marble palace, I didn’t hire 20 people to do my bidding. it’s a nice ego feed. And maybe it looks nice in front of patients, but it’s bad business. And I didn’t do that. I stayed lean and we kept it that way but that first year of revenue, I want to say it was 320,000 to 330,000 gross. And that what we did in that first year, what we can do in about a month in practice. Very significant growth, exponential growth, from when we first started, and, comes from steady, hard work. And if things do grow.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
How long did you stay in that pseudo office, were sharing or renting or whatever? Were you renting? Is that what you were doing it but
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah, I was subletting, I was renting a portion of the space there. I was there for 10 years, I was there for a good time,
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Oh, you live there for a long time. What finally made you go from that to Okay, I’m ready to jump?
Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Well, it was a nice office, we have a big spacious office nicely built out, we had operating rooms there and it was a good situation made for a long time. There was no incentive for me to move or change because the financial arrangements were great for me, I kept my overhead low but then things started creeping up. And the person that I was subletting from decided that the old rates, the beginning of the end was when he brought in consultants that decided he wasn’t making enough money off of his operating room. And he jacked his old rates up to a point that made no sense. I even went to him and said, Look, here’s the rate that I’m paying in the hospital, here’s what you want to charge me, this is cheaper. Why would I ever want to pay more to operate and have all the logistics and the pain in the butt of remembering everything and running everything here? It’s convenient, but why would I want to do that and pay more? And he stuck to his guns and I said look, you don’t go back to our original arrangement or find some reasonable number, some rate that is going to make it feasible for me, I’ll take everything to the hospital, because I have no incentive to stay here and up, it’s going to be paying more. I said, Well, that’s up to you, but this is what it’s going to be. I said okay and I took everything to the hospital. I did every case in the hospital for years and then I’m sure that he wasn’t happy with that. That became a little bone of contention who was because he went from maybe not making enough to making nothing
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Why would he do that?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Ah, I don’t like I said doctors are bad business
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Consultants though, Michelle. Oh, boy…
Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
That was going to call you, you’d have been reasonable…
Catherine Maley, MBA:
I personally would have said, are you kidding me? You have a golden egg here and leave it alone. It’s working beautifully. You’re all profitable and fat and happy by mess with it. That’s what I would have said but…
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Well, he became a little bit less fun and that was it. Honestly speaking it was a very comfortable situation. I might have stayed there. We were even talking about me taking over the entire space. Because he was thinking, well, maybe he’s going to cut back he might retire. And he’s, to my knowledge, different practice, which is crazy. He wasn’t young when I started. And what, 20 years down the line and he’s still going, God bless them but at the time, we were thinking maybe I would take it over, he could pay me rent, we kind of flipped the situation. When he wanted to slow down or work less or walk away, he could.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Great exit strategy, by the way.
Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah, I don’t disagree. I tried to make it attractive arrangement for him and that didn’t work out. I tried to kind of, cut up the space different ways, I tried to make a good business arrangement between the two of us. And he was kind of stuck in what he wanted to do, and didn’t want to negotiate away from that. The rest is history, because once I stopped doing the cases there, doing everything in the hospital, it became slowly over a two or three year period, more and more contentious to stay there and I didn’t.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
But it was time for you to grow. What’s your situation?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Well, I would have grown either way. I either grew by taking over the space there, and being able to use more, be more versatile there. But once I left and had the entire space to myself, it did open doors for me to expand, and bring on new services to be able to be more flexible. And it made a huge difference in the profile of my practice. It was more expensive to start. And it was a leap, because I had to take loans and finance to build out and I am in the penthouse of a tall office building here in Miami, and I have a 3000 square foot office, which again, is not overgrown. It’s a little tight when we get busy, but it’s comfortable. And, could we use more? Sure, I mean, I could have filled 10,000 square feet if I wanted to. But again, keep it lean, keep the overhead low and try and maximize the profitability of space because if you’re not using space, then you’re wasting money. We keep everything super tight, and use every inch that we have. And I have this space to myself about an operating room that is only mine. I’m the only person that uses it and I’ve got my full time staff at the office. I do have at the time when I was in the other office, I did have one PA for a while and then when I moved here, we ultimately when I went to this space for I don’t know, a year and a half, two years, while we built it, we have a temporary office in the building. And then we finally came up into the penthouse office and since then, I had a full time PA that is going gangbusters at two different institutions that work part time, part time they have their days and we’ve run the schedule that way.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
If I were you from a marketing perspective and a branding perspective, I’d make a big deal that it’s a penthouse. In your website, all you show us this big tall building that is very impressive but I didn’t catch the penthouse part in Beverly Hills. It’s a big deal. anyway, throwing that out.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
No, here in Miami I guess it is something that’s impressive.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
It’s a big deal. Yeah, people like it. Yeah, you’re the best. You’re on the top floor, that’s cool. You have a PA, and you have institutions, I’m torn on aestheticians, I’m telling you I’ve watched certain struggle with aestheticians. Have you had good luck with yours? And are they moneymakers? Or are they a pain in the neck?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Well, they’re not mutually exclusive. You can be a money making pan and…
Catherine Maley, MBA:
I shouldn’t say I very seldom do I see a killer aesthetician rocking it and with arrows pointing to the surgeon when it’s time for surgery and giving up that patient, to get them up that ladder and then bring them back down again to her but I haven’t seen great working relationships with the institutions. I have
Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
I have to say that we have a nice crew. I understand what you’re saying and I guess maybe an aesthetician could have some theory of retention of the patient if they were to kick them up for surgery or refer them to get an interest that’s more than what they can do. But our rules are pretty well defined and everybody plays well in the sandbox together and I do get surgical referrals from the aesthetician services that we offer. And they do continue to see the estheticians that they were seeing before. But for their maintenance, because we do complimentary things, it’s not exclusive. It’s not like, when you get surgery, you’re not going to need maintenance anymore. It’s silly. And we don’t talk to the patients that way either. They know certain, there’s things you can do in surgery and there’s other things that you do for non surgical services and aesthetician type things. And they’re both beneficial, it depends on the individual patient, what it is they’re trying to accomplish, and how those different services fit into the plan. And I have to say, I’m kind of surprised to hear you say that, because my aestheticians have been with me for years. And I’ve never had any kind of competitiveness between them, and myself or even much between them. It seems to work.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
That’s fantastic. By the way, do you incentivize them? or How are you handling the staff, keeping them motivated and keeping them on target, with your vision? Are you meet at doing any staff meetings by any chance?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah, we do staff meetings as often as I would like, we get into good habits then we break out of the habits, but we usually do it, we try to do one to two staff meetings a month, we’d like to do it every two weeks and we do it before our clinic days. Everyone comes in a half hour early, and we schedule everything half hour later. We have given our block that we have time for anyone to talk about issues they’re having or bring up some promotions that are coming up, make sure everyone’s in the know. And we all know what’s happening in the practice. It incentivization was your other question. Yes, I do. I believe strongly and we I probably pay for the revenue generating positions, I probably pay a lower base than most people are used to. But we incentivize them more generously. Their upside is significantly higher than they would get taking the salary. In fact, when I think about my PA, for example, when we hired her, we interviewed a lot of people.
And the model that we were using was a pretty generous revenue ship with a minimum draw. We would guarantee a pretty modest minimum and even from day one, since we hired my PA, I don’t think we’ve ever except during COVID. We were in a good situation to be able to afford keeping my whole staff and I paid everyone through the shutdown. When I did that, that was the only time that my PA had to invoke the minimum amount, her pay period minimums and that’s what she made during that time. But apart from that, even when we are open and functioning, I don’t think she’s ever been as low as her minimum, she’s more than covered it in the revenue share. When I looked at the two different models and what we would pay a PA, if we’re going to go full salary and what was going on in Miami at the time, she’s making about 30% to 40% more based on her compensation model.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
I want to back up I hope everyone heard that pearl, most people miss this, but you blocked time to have a staff meeting. Every office, I consult with says, We don’t have time for these meetings and you don’t have time not to have these meetings. The staff has got to hear from you personally. What’s your vision? Where are you heading? What’s new, what’s not what’s working? What’s not an all you do is have the meeting before your clinic day. It’s that simple. I’m glad you said that. Anyway, back to the PA is…
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Oh, I agree. Before we move on there and like I said, when we first started talking about it, I’m not good at making sure that we’re doing them every two weeks. But when we haven’t had one for a bit there’s a difference when things are not as smooth. People need to be aware. I mean, they need to hear from me, but I need to hear from them. I want to know hey, what were the issues we have? Any issues last week? Is there anything that we need to do better? Do we need any new stuff, any equipment? Do we need software that we don’t have? Is there some upgraded we’re not getting? And try and make sure we have everything we need that everybody in their position has the tools they need to succeed. Yeah, I agree. Completely it’s super valuable.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Regarding your PA though, are you doing reconstructive or are you 100% cosmetic?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Like 98% cosmetic.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Gotcha. she doing injectables, is that the point?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah, she’s doing injectables, light and laser energy treatments, we have, as you probably know, I’m one of the guys that’s kind of known for technology. I’ve got all the toys and she gets to play with a lot of, we offer a lot of different services, a lot of energy based treatments, light and lasers, emsculpt, ultrasound, Cool Sculpting, I mean, everything. And some of that stuff is done when it’s appropriate, based on Florida statute for my institutions to be able to do those, we get them trained. And they do some of those treatments. My PA, of course, is trained in all of them. And she does a lot.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
As a consultant, I always want to know the revenues by provider, do you have any idea that percentage of your revenues that are done by your own hand versus the revenue generating staff?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Oh, I can probably figure that out. Quickly, I would say, revenue, they’re probably generating between 15 to 20% of total gross revenue. [Inaudible]
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Well, do you have any plans because that you’ve been around 20 years, you’re definitely in a new phase where you start looking at living? Not yet, because you have a lot of energy, but a lot of surgeons at that age starts going, wait a second, I am the only revenue generator here. I can’t go on vacation, I can’t be sick, God forbid if I have an accident and they do start looking at that. Not even the exit strategy, the what if strategy. And I used to run a surgeon’s coaching club and we would say, if the revenues are, if you’re generating more than like 30% of the revenues, start looking at that, like start…
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
I would disagree. I mean, I started thinking maybe at some point in the not distant future, we’ll bring in another surgeon, there’s someone young, growing, starting out like I did 20 years ago, I’m amenable to that at some point I do feel comfortable because we have the ship sailing smoothly. I don’t feel bad about taking and besides the ship sailing smoothly, and financially, knowing that we shut down for two months, and everything was fine.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Good for you.
DR. Adam J. Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
I take a week off, two weeks off, here and there. I don’t feel bad about that. And I do have my PA, my assertions running. There is some revenue generation when I’m gone. It’s hard for me to be away for more than two weeks and even two weeks kind of feels like an eternity. But I took a week off, it was spring break. We didn’t have to do much of anything but my kids were at school and I had already planned to take the time off and we did.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Nice. Alright, let’s shift to marketing but I also want to ask about your building. Are there any other plastic surgeons in your building?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
No, we have a cosmetic dermatologist across the hall from us and we have a good relationship. We share supplies, when one runs out, we can borrow from each other. We refer patients back and forth when it’s appropriate. There are a number of dentists, there’s a facial plastic surgeon in the building and likewise he’ll refer stuff and will refer stuff down to him. But thankfully no and Beverly Hills you can have 10 on the same floor. We don’t have that here.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
But in the surrounding area because Evan Torah is that they say it Evan…
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Aventura, Oh yeah, I’m in Korea is kind of like a Beverly Hills.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
In my head is Yeah, I can imagine that attracting an awful lot of surgeons. how’s the competition there?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
I don’t view it as competition and I don’t worry about there being other surgeons never have enough work for everyone to do well and it’s up to the patient. We have different personalities and different styles and different things people will perceive that we’re good at and other things that other people are better at and it’s up to the patient. In fact, I encourage patients, they come across consultation, go ahead and make sure you see two or three other surgeons, make sure you’re choosing someone you feel comfortable with and have a good vibe with and you appreciate the parameter, good communication between you and the surgeon. That’s what you want to have, is a recipe for a good result. If it’s with me, grinds out patients because they say well, what are you the best at or who’s the best? I said, Listen, there is no one best, there’s a lot of great surgeons and even here in Miami.
We’re lucky we’ve got a lot of good surgeons here and we’ve got a few that maybe aren’t great and maybe aren’t even plastic surgeons that are doing plastic surgery. You got to be careful, make sure you seeing the properly trained board certified plastic surgeons but then among us see a few two or three and get a feel and I don’t feel that it’s competition and remember, I was in an office share with another plastic surgeon when I started, at a time there were as many as four of us in the same office. And we all had different practices and we had attracted different types of patients and I never felt that…You always have a competitive feeling when you know someone seeing somebody else in the office for a consultation, but by far and large, it was never an issue. I never felt like it’s true competition, patients going to choose to the good shoes. If you provide good service and you do good work, then you’ll get your shipper.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
For sure. I love that attitude I wear. But you plastic surgeons are competitive by nature. It can be they, can make it can be tough that way and it’s easier to live in your own. Worry about yourself.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah, l agree. But beyond that, well, worry about yourself to a certain degree and don’t have a jealousy towards other plastic surgeons. But you also have to have a certain amount of caution and kind of generally public awareness. Down here also in Beverly Hills. You guys have that there too. There’s a lot of charlatans out there. There’s a lot of internists that are dabbling in cosmetic surgery. And Doc’s and radiologists and gynecologist that suddenly decide that operating above the pelvis is a good idea. And all of that is rampant in Miami. Those are the people that I care more about. I don’t fear competition from them. But it’s less safe for patients. They are not aware. They don’t know unless you tell them. And for as long as I’ve been seeing patients by, no patient is shopping around which I don’t discourage us. Okay, but who else are you see? And Dr. Jones, and Dr. Smith?
Well, you should know that Dr. Jones is a board certified plastic surgeon, I think she could do a good job for you too. I think it’s a good place to go visit. Dr. Smith used to be an emergency room doctor and took a weekend course and liposuction. And you should know that before you make that choice, you might want to stick with board certified plastic surgeons. I don’t discourage anyone from seeing any doctor they want to. But know what your know the choice that you make?
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Well, that’s the scary part of marketing because a good marketer, can you serve a good surgeon, at least in the long or the short term? buyer beware, and education’s everything. By the way, have your patients grown with you as you’ve grown? Or gotten older? Do you find that your patients and your procedures are shifting? How is that working? Are they attract? Are you still hanging around like this small fish like young breast doc patient? Or do you prefer more mommy makeover or more facelift kind of patient?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
I find that in certain markets like New York. And to some extent, a little bit in Beverly Hills to surgeons get known for a particular procedure. there’s the nose guy, and whether the tummy tuck lady and the facelift doc that’s known for that. And for me, that’s never been what I wanted to do. I have a pretty broad practice, on any given operating day, I could be operating on face, breast or body, male or female, I have a high percentage of male patients compared to the average practice.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Why many men and are you doing that on purpose? Or is it happening organically?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
No, it me sloppy here. It happened that way. And I like again, if you treat people well, and you do good work, it gets around. And I’ve always been sensitive, I think a little bit by design, because I’ve always been sensitive to men wanting to feel like the doctor has a certain expertise specifically for men, because people believe that cosmetic surgery is primarily for women. And the numbers bear that out it is but it’s not. I wouldn’t say it’s exclusively for women, of course, and the people that are taking care of lots of men, I’d say even 20% to 30% of my practice is male.
Unknown Speaker 4:33
Wow, that’s a lot more.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
I mean, the average practice is around 10. Yeah, for sure. we’re two or three times the average volume of male patients. And then there are some practices that men gravitate to as well. There’s some practices that specialize in male patients and they’ll have 80 or 90% male patients, also give them whatever procedures they do. But I love the variety of what I do. I like coming in and having different tasks every time I step into the operating room, and male, female patients, older, younger, simple cases, primaries and complicated cases, I enjoy the complicated tertiary cases. The complex, breast redos that have already had four or five operations and things aren’t working out. That’s a nice surgical challenge. And I enjoy doing them and thankfully, we’re typically able to get nice improvements for patients and that’s fine. And I’ve done a lot of secondary and tertiary facelifts as well.
Those are a little bit less fun. But they’re good challenges. I’ll never forget, I did. There’s a professional sports team owner, that came to me and I did his fifth facelift. And he’d had the four previous procedures were all done, I think three of them by one surgeon, one of them by another. But it was all the same flog, I remember making the incisions and we had a plan his neck wasn’t well dealt with. And he had this done numerous times. And I made my decisions and as soon as I released the tissue and began breaking the skin, getting the incisions completed, everything sprang forward, where I had a gap about this big without having taken any skin out, without having or even done much of a distraction that sprung forward, because all the pressure was under from multiple procedures that were done probably not in the best way. That was a particularly dramatic and traumatic experience. The guy you enjoy the challenges.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Did you get a great result.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
He did well. Thankfully, it was I needed a couple drinks after that case, it was probably due to my blood pressure. I made the decision is oh my god am I even going to be able to, I know I can close it because it started that way. My blood pressure was like 200 over 100. As soon as I saw that thing popped over. They’re difficult but they’re also very rewarding. That’s what I liked about the tertiary test cases. I’ve been doing this long enough where I feel comfortable taking on almost anything. And I enjoy the tough challenges. I do get to see my share.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
I don’t hear that very often at the meetings, we’re always talking about the unhappy patient. And my host field is always voice select carefully. When somebody says I’ve already had four are usually my limit is two, if I’ve already had to have something. And I’m going through the third. That’s what I say. I would say that’s a beware.
Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
No. But well, for sure. I agree with you. I think it is beware but it depends on that patient had for prior facelift but never the neck was properly treated. I knew I could get an improvement in the neck. I didn’t expect his cheek to fly forward two inches, but you get into the situation, and you know what you’re getting into, and you do your best work. Yeah, that’s all you can do. Yeah, I agree with you but I’m not typically there’s a difference between someone that comes in and has had, three revisions on her breast and each of the three different doctors, in her opinion is a complete moron. It didn’t know what they were doing but you’re going to be able to fix it. That’s a huge red flag for me. But if they come in, and they say, Well, I had it done and we have this issue. And I went and had it fixed but it wasn’t quite right. And I had another issue and I went back and had it done third time. And we still didn’t get it right. And I have this new problem because of the last operation. That’s a not uncommon cascade for some patients, where for whatever reason, it didn’t go well. Sometimes it could be a problem patient.
But more often than not, you can kind of tell, been around long enough, you can kind of read between the lines of what’s going on. And you also know who they’ve been to see, down here, and I’m sure you have in Southern California too. We got a lot of chop shops here where buy one, get the second free and these crazy promotions and they’re throwing in two free areas of life. Oh, you know that the whole thing cost $3,000 you get to a place like that you’re not getting the most experience through the most talented surgeon at the table. And, when you’ve had two or three operations and those kind of circumstances, it’s not hard to understand how things didn’t go well. In that situation, it’s one thing but if I have someone that is legit Susan for a facelift and had a revision, by some other big name around town as well known and then came to see me as far as they can’t get it right. That’s a problem. But it’s not the same thing as someone who’s been to a high volume low price clinic and had two or three operations and nothing went well, it’s a different story. But it’s not hard to figure out what is a patient of need, given their history and their attitude and which one is a patient that well, maybe this is one we probably ought to do.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Let’s talk about patient attraction and conversion. Before we talk about social media, because that’s going to be a separate issue, what are you doing to get patients to you? And are you good at converting them? Do you have a system for that? How’s that working out for you?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Well, there’s a couple of things to talk about here. But to me, this goes back to your staff. The number one factor, in my opinion, for converting your consults is your surgery coordinator. I’ve had great ones, I’ve had lousy ones, and I’ve had some in between, and you live in diet by the person that’s going to spend a ton of closing the case with that patient. I am very happy right to have a terrific surgery coordinators, and she’s been around the business, she’s experienced and great with people. And my practice is not a hard sell. I don’t think I’m the best surgeon for everybody. And I don’t think every patient is the kind of patient I want to operate on. And I probably tell almost as many patients know, as I do, yes, someone comes for a consultation, I don’t need to have 70% conversion. It’s not what my goal is, my goal is to be able to be competitive with the patients that come in, and that I can do a good job that can have a nice result, and are good patients and prepared for the surgery process and the recovery, and they’re going to get the best out of it.
And I’d say I don’t have the numbers recently. But I say our conversion is usually between 35% and 45%. Sometimes it can jump up to 50% or a little higher. But I’m good with that, I don’t need to be 50%, 60%, conversion or more. Because patients need to be able to make their choices. And also another thing I should say is, here in the wild west where you can get a breast augmentation for $2,500 out the door. And that’s no exaggeration, that happens even as low as $2,000. I’m kind of expensive. My practice is one of the higher price practices in Miami. And we’re kind of top of market cost for patients. And we’re also not attracting the patients looking for a $2,000 breast augmentation, they recognize the value in going into someone’s private practice has got a lot of experience, it’s going to give them a level of care that they expect they would like to have. And there’s a cost for that. I don’t focus much on my conversion numbers. I certainly do watch them, because if it falls off, you want to know why. Where’s the disconnect? But as long as we’re staying, 40% to 50% conversion, then I’m great. I’m very good with that.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Well, I’ve noticed as it’s gotten more competitive, and there’s social media and internet marketing, there are a lot of leads, secret sauce in today’s world is figuring out triage them, getting good at triage them because I don’t even think it’s fair to say, Oh, my conversion rate is 50%. If you’ve done a killer job of qualifying, then that changes that number, or the relativity of that number. Do you charge a consult fee?
Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
No, that’s a great point.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
See, has been a very big deal in today’s world, although you’re in Miami and you have to know your audience. Some audiences, i mean, I’m in our super affluent neighborhood, they wouldn’t pay for a consult fee. If you kill them like issues.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
But there are doctors in Beverly Hills that are charging $200 to $500 consultation fees. I will tell you it’s a differentiator and it changes the respect people have for the time on the schedule and we don’t have a consultation fee but we do have a no show fee. We do collect credit card numbers and we authorize the card in advance. We know it’s a valid card.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
I was going to say that running it ahead of time so that they’re real clear that you’re serious about it.
Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
And we do authorize it, but we don’t run the charge fully through unless they don’t show up. And we ask for a 48 hour notice, because if they call the day before and say, Oh, I can’t make it, we don’t want to be a stickler about it and alienates someone, and if we’re able to rebook the time, then I won’t charge them. But if they don’t call and they don’t show they get charged, because it’s having a little skin in the game. And that has completely changed. And we wouldn’t have a day or even 50% no show right before we instituted this. And that we have it, pretty unusual for me to have more than one no show on a consult that
Catherine Maley, MBA:
I highly recommended. I call it a reservation fee. But in today’s world, you have to have some type of skin in the game. It’s too easy not to show up, they don’t know you. And your time is too valuable. I want to talk about social media for a second because I looked on your site and you have almost 60,000 followers, good job. And a few things that you’re doing on social if you do live surgeries, stimulation, scavenger hunt, VNA, which I thought was cute. It’s a video, it’s a patient asking, or somebody asking you a question on a video, then you’re answering it on video, and you almost seem like a newscaster who does those special segments, you have a voice for that. And you’re very good at that good for you, then you had beauty bash, you had an influencer with 254,000 followers, although she spoke Spanish, I don’t know if that was helpful or not, but she gave you some good coverage there. And then you have this, it’s not all the same, hashtag. Let’s talk about your social media, because you’re doing a good job.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Well, thanks. I’m about to speak in a conference about the use of social media and growing your practice. And there’s been a clear evolution, you kind of stealing the thunder a little bit, I’m going to spill the tea a bit right. But there’s been an evolution in the way that social media works for a practice and the way that people look for a practice, not much social media, but an evolution in the way that people speech, seek out services, whether it’s plastic surgery, or anything else, when you and I first started doing what we’re doing, back then it was still in the era of you got to be in the Yellow Pages, or people aren’t going to find you. And, for starting around that time, and certainly, years before, kind of the biggest, baddest ad in the Yellow Pages and attracted the most eyeballs. And that’s what people would do. And right around that time is when the internet was taking hold, and becoming a thing that wasn’t going to go away and the Yellow Pages started to dwindle, then you had to have your web page. If you didn’t have a web page, then you were nobody, like your business card. Don’t look at me for the Yellow Pages, don’t, go searching for me check out my webpage.
And people would go check it out, you have the information about you there. And that’s how people will learn about you. Then as web pages became more popular, Google Search became popular. That’s how people would find you, they go looking for the service. And then you’d pop up as sort of like going to the elevators and flipping the plastic surgeon and you see who’s here. The Google search would call out based on SEO, SEO became important and you manipulate your site that way. And then people that were good at manipulating SEO, would start these directory sites, plastic surgery calm, and you would pay to be on those sites, because they had the SEO thing worked out. And they could game the Google algorithm and make sure that their services were at the top of the search and you would pay to be on those and those listings were competitive to you pay to be at the top of the listing. That was the next phase, then Google algorithm got hit to that and they started making everything very local and you’re kind of back to SEO. But social media has become the new Yellow Page. People don’t go to Google to search for services as much as they have historically. They’re sitting on Instagram or they go to checkout on Facebook and they’re going to search, plastic surgeon, Miami or whatever.
They’re going to be looking for breast augmentation, facelift, Miami, whatever. And they’ll get a list of people who are servicing, who provide those services, and Instagram. It’s sort of like a little mini dynamic website in your hand for each individual business. You can have little behind the scenes views you can have typical day in office type of stuff, you can show your specials, and show your before and after, as we do I do a lot of other creative stuff that not everybody will even want to do or what would be able to do it. That’s the cool thing about social media is that you kind of do you I’ve talked about this before where I was in clubhouse, and I was on a panel in clubhouse. Those of you don’t know, clubhouse is like the new thing. It’s the latest thing, it’s all audio, and you jump in there and you enter a room. And there might be presenters talking about something and anybody at any moment could become a presenter bringing up on stage and say your piece, and I was a presenter in clubhouse, we’re talking about growing social media and I always give the advice of you do you. For me, I like doing these kind of creative educational things we do funny stuff, we’ll talk about this not all the same, I want to talk about that. And we do a lot of video production, which you have to have the staff to be able to do.
And we do a lot of stuff, but that’s my bread ad I stay consistent to my brand. There are other surgeons out there that have special talents that they may want to highlight, there may be someone who’s a sculptor, or a painter or a sketch artist, and they might do something creative with a time lapse video of them doing a painting or a sketch, and showing off their talents. Or maybe they have an interesting hobby, and they go out boating, or horseback riding or skydiving or who knows what. And sharing a little slice of you, and your practice and your personal life is important in social media. And it lets people know you, patients come in having known me on Instagram for a year or two years, or a Snapchat or whatever. And they feel like they know you. Because they kind of do, you shared a lot of you on social media. Patients do come in knowing you to a great extent and it begins to build a relationship.
I’ve heard you talk about this, and I talk about this a lot to people that are thinking about building a practice, it’s all about the relationship with the patient, patients come to me and they will spend, they’ll pay a premium to see me because I’m not the cheapest practice in town, they willingly make that choice. Because of the perceived added value that they’re getting, they feel like they have a relationship they know they seen what I do. And I’m one of fairly few surgeons, we don’t know anybody in Instagram or Snapchat. Maybe one or two exceptions that share as much as we do in the operating room, I pretty much do a guided tour of every surgery every day. And not everyone does that a little snippets here. Vario about Star surgery, maybe this than the other little snippets. But we try and share everything because my whole style and brand is transparency. Honesty, this is how we do it. When we get great results, look at the great results and when there’s a hiccup and someone’s having trouble dealing and we’ve got a wound issue, we show that to look this happens. This is part of having surgery, we’re not going to hide it, we’re not going to only show you roses and cherries, we’re going to show you when there’s a thorn. And when there’s a thorn we deal with it, we show you how, and we take you on the journey with us and with the patient. And that has transformed how patients will learn about practice and when they come in, in my case, if they been following me for a while they’ve seen it all. They know what my practice is about. It’s better than any brochure, or any website could ever demonstrate.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
For sure. Are the patients giving you patient consents for all of this social media, video and all of it.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah, 100% we can send everybody that comes through the door. And if they don’t give consent, maybe we don’t feature them.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
But if you’re doing surgery every day, and you’re showing all the surgeries, are you sometimes showing a body part?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
It’s interesting and Instagram doesn’t matter, we still get concerned we don’t even show body or we get consent to any portion of a patient that has given consent to be sure. 100% would never show anyone that did not know that they were going to be featured. Most patients can’t wait to see it. The most of my surgical and I started asking every patient asked you to watch your surgery later. And I’d say 80% say yes. And even the 20% that say oh I don’t know if I could watch that. Or no, even most of those still give consent to be able to post it. They’re a little squeamish and honestly, it’s like, they don’t want to know how the sausage is made. They want to enjoy it.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
For sure, I was shocked when I was on YouTube several years ago and they were showing like, not you, but surgeons were showing gory. I thought, no one’s going to watch this. They’re going to be grossed out. Then it turns out those are the best, the best number of likes. I mean, they apparently the public loves the gory.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Well, let me tell you, what do you think is the number one TV show on TNT? No bosses? Is he? Oh, bravo. Yeah, TNT, Dr. Pimple Bow. Number one network.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
I hate that word Pimple Bow.
Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
I know but that’s the point. I mean, it is disgusting. And how many times can you watch someone do that? Yeah, apparently a lot. It’s a popular show. And she’s made it she’s parlayed that into something fantastic for, if people love it, good for her and then again, that’s her brand. That’s what she does. That’s what your bread and butter every day is seeing these kind of patients. And she made a whole TV show out of it and God bless her. That’s great.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Back to you, what kind of team do you need to pull off the social media efforts that you’re doing? Because you are going above and beyond most? What does it take to do that and the time?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Well, first of all, the doctor has to be proactive in it. I’ve had numerous social media managers through the years, I’ve had maybe three or four different social media managers, and each person brings a different skill. And I’ve kind of got it worked out where I know what I need from that position. And where we’ve got, I have a full time Social Media Manager, his job is wandering around here taking behind the scenes, photos and video. Hi, Paul.
Paul:
Hey, Paul.
Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Paul is around and he’s taking video of a lot of stuff, taking photos, a lot of stuff, in the practice, I have two high quality cameras that we keep around tripods, we have two lighting packs, audio equipment, I’ve got a full production capability. But if we do much video in my practice, we’ve got a lot of stuff that we use. And, Paul does primarily the video content, and he’ll put together, he’ll take photos, and we’ll put together some photo posts. But probably 85%, or 90% of my posts are video.
And he is in charge of the production, video editing but I guide it all, the doctor has to have a vision to know what’s going to be, a good demonstration of their brand and what you want to put forward. I can have the most brilliant Social Media Manager in the world, but they’re not going to know the various types of content that you could produce. We know you can look and see what other people are doing and get motivation and try and copy what seems to be popular. And that’s not a bad way to go. But at the end of the day, it’s got to be something that jives with you and your breath. That’s where the doctor has to be active. And I’m very active in planning what we’re going to put up probably to a fault, honestly, because I hold back what probably could be more prolific posting, and it hurts the growth of the brand. Because I don’t want anything ever posted I haven’t seen and approved. And I’m busy, that I don’t get a chance to go through a lot of it on a timely basis. Stuff that we wanted to post a week ago may still be sitting in the hopper waiting for approval until I get time to sit down and check it out. But as you might imagine, I’m very particular about even the way it’s edited. I want to cut this out bring the volume up here, Leon, it’s right being a director and producer. And you have to get to me, you have to have that mindset because this is you that’s being represented. It has to be proactive that way but you could free the reins a little bit more than I do.
And allow someone who has a good concept for social media and for plastic surgery or whatever specialty you might be, to be able to take the ball and run with a little more than I allow all to do. Because I don’t want to have any hiccups. And I don’t want to have something accidentally go out and have something in it. It wasn’t supposed to have or be missing something that I wanted to demonstrate or have captions that I don’t think are the messaging that I want. You know it if anybody particularly you are, your role is 100% needed, no matter what, but the amount of your role will vary. And my case I’m very particular and I direct and produce everything myself along with Paul, my social media manager and we have an administrative assistant that also helps out in calling different assets out getting photos off of our archives, making sure we have the consents for everybody before we publish, doing some of the legwork, but we have a today tomorrow. We have an influencer coming in that we’re going to film. We’re going to be doing an Instagram Live at some point this week, tomorrow with a big influencer, who is also a patient and she was gracious to share her surgery with everybody openly, though. We’ll talk about that and other stuff. You know anything get creative.
Thank you for the compliment with the news thing. We have a TV concept, we’re waiting for a contract from a major network. Hopefully that’ll come through COVID put the kibosh on that for a real long time. I’ve been waiting for a contract since COVID. Shut the country. Wow, wait, Hollywood, it went away for a year. And we’ve been sitting and waiting. And everything’s starting to ramp up again hopefully that will come through. We do a lot of stuff and one of the things that we’re going to do, kind of following along and your brand we’re about to do with the size of TV show, which is major network, we’re going to do more social media stuff, we’re getting ready, I used to do a radio show for years. I think I had you as a guest. As a matter of fact, on my radio show. Years ago, I did a show called New reflections and, we would do a weekly show live, an hour long show, and we’re going to reprise that. And instead of doing it on internet based radio, we’re going to do social media live, we’re doing it live, Facebook, live, YouTube lives, and you have guests and talk about different things related in the business and beauty in general. Keep your eyes open for naked beauty coming soon.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
You might be surprised, you might not need Hollywood, you’ve got this social media thing down the cache, it would be nice to say you’re on a TV network, but I don’t know, look at some of these influencers. They’re crushing it, maybe you don’t need help. Or maybe Hollywood might be icing on the cake, but you still have a good cake. Well, thank you. Do you have any idea how many hours a week you’re spending on social? Because I must say a lot of you surgeons who do it nobody realizes what goes into it? There’s a lot of work goes into that.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah, there is that’s why you have to have a full time person if you’re going to commit to social media you need to have someone that coordinates but not could be someone that does other marketing things for you if you’re not as intensive as we are. We produce a ton of video I mean, today alone call how many clips you think we didn’t server today? 40 or 50 clips in one operation. Each of these clips could be as long as a minute. That’s a lot of video. And that’s being done live while I’m operating. I certainly can’t do it and it’s kind of like me people. People also criticize it since I’m talking about I ought to address this because people can raise the IRA Oh my god, you’re spending 40 minutes in surgery doing social media. Yes, but it doesn’t stop me from continuing operate. It’s in the stream of the surgery.
Oh, we did a tummy tuck today as I’m making my incision, we’ll be doing a clip Paul will be there and I’ll make my incision and as I’m taking the knife and I’m making my as a job, we’re beginning surgery. You can see the marks here there, we’re going to get down, and then I do my dissection and today we found some unusual scar tissue you don’t see on every case because the patient had smartlipo with some other energy mixed down some room movie and that was done. And as we’re doing it on I encounter that’s okay. Paul’s put a clip out and I’m taking the boat and I’m opening things up and say okay, right here you see there’s this white stuff that you see this is scar tissue that’s probably left over from the smartlipo that she had or the renuvion that she had. And it doesn’t slow me down and surgery, it kind of comes along for the ride, but you have to have someone who knows what they’re doing. And you know that can be their full time. They have to be there in the or you can’t do this after the fact.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Anybody trying to compete today, you are going to need to add a videographer to the payroll I have everyone has if you are trying to be a personality of any sort or an influencer or a brand. Video is the way to go. It’s people like it.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
We’ve been doing it. This has been two or three years of production that we’ve been doing. And right it’s part of the flow. Yeah, I’ve had Paul or the guy before Paul or the person before that for two or three years. And, we’ve got a good system down, Paul knows what’s up, he knows, he’s around in the operating room, we’re doing surgery, we get it done fresh. We also do subtitles on if you’ve watched our story, but it’s a good tip, subtitles, it’s been shown particularly in YouTube to increase viewership by 20% or 30%. Because people like to nobody listen to this here in the office, this will work. And they can’t, they can’t have the audio on. they’ll sit there and they’ll flip through, they get their phone out, they’re flipping through watching videos but they can’t have the sound on. when you have the subtitles, they can sit there and watch it and they can know what you’re saying without having to have the audio on it doesn’t help them for watching videos at work. And it does increase viewership. All these little pearls, they make a difference, and you kind of learn it on the go.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Like anything, you have to jump in and do it, and then it becomes habit. At the beginning. It’s real crunchy, you don’t feel it’s awkward, the staffs awkward, you’re awkward, it’s all awkward, and it’s good. And that is smooth. And it’s fine. Yeah. And it’s necessary.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah, it’s 100% necessary, yeah, you need to commit to it. And if you’re going to commit to it, then you have to have the staff to do it. If you have one person that knows what they’re doing, you can produce enough content for the average practice. And the doctors role is going to dictate whether or not you need to have another person that does part of it. And you got to be proactive and be a part of the process, it’s not going to happen passively. This is not something you can let your marketing team produce for you and spit out it’s that will never work.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
And you also have to have a relationship with the patients to cooperate, and help you help you.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Well, I know. I was worried about that when we first started doing it. Because I remember I started doing it three years ago, we started doing this and there weren’t that many people doing what I do in terms of like showing all the live surgery and sharing all the patient experiences. And when I started chat, I don’t know if everybody’s going to this is going to fly and everyone’s going to consent to this but we had to start getting consents, there will be occasionally a patient here or there. I don’t want to do any of that social media stuff. I don’t even have a profile myself, and I don’t want to be out there, our high profile patients, most of them prefer not to have it out there. Some of the higher profile Instagram influencers, it’s what they do, everything’s over that.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
That’s why I don’t like a lot of that is a limiting mindset from the surgeon. A lot of people will do what you ask them to do, especially in today’s world, there’s much transparency and authenticity. It’s easier than ever, but I’m sure some will say no, but the majority will say yes, when the surgeon asked them, I find that helps a lot, too. And if you say it conversationally, what I’m trying to grow my practice,
Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
I explained and for me, it’s not growing my practice, we’ve got 60,000 followers on one account, I’ve got another 35,000 followers on another account. And for me, it’s not much growing the practice as it is being able to share the experience, because there’s a lot of patients out there that may be like the one you’re about to operate on. And it’s very reassuring and educational, to be able to see all while I’m kind of like that patient, I look like her and they see the process, they see the patient come back for her follow ups, or his follow ups. It’s a fully transparent and honest and open experiences being shared. They can get the real deal, that’s what we’re about and it’s why I do most of what I do in social media and also why we launched the hashtag campaign, hashtag is not all the same. And that’s a big deal that we’re working on right and I get that is not a practice growing endeavor. It’s purely edutainment. Trying to educate the public with funny messaging with entertaining videos that are on a topic that’s important. This is something that people should back up if hashtag is not all the same, was designed and created because here in South Florida like we were talking but earlier, there are a lot of people doing things they probably shouldn’t be doing in my opinion. And people think it’s like buying a sweater, you go into Saks Fifth Avenue and you see a certain sweater for sale, and it’s $200. And you go into Macy’s and that same sweater is for sale for 75 bucks.
And maybe you go into Walmart, and a similar looking sweater is there for 25 bucks. It’s the same sweater, with probably differences in material and some small differences. But you can buy the $25 sweater and still look roughly the same. Big difference when you’re talking about health and your life and death, and having a significant procedure is going to manipulate your face press your body. And people don’t make that connection, especially with things like liposuction. People feel like oh, it’s like, Oh, I’m having lifeboats no big deal and they don’t do any diligence. They don’t check out the dock that might be doing the surgery. Prices right. My friend Jane was there last month and she has a nice result, seems okay, I’m going to go ahead and do it. it’s not all the same. All doctors are not the same. All clinics are not the same, techniques are not the same. You it’s and if you want to go to the $2,000 breast augmentation clinic and get your surgery, though, that’s fine but know what you’re choosing because it’s not all the same. These videos are trying to drive the point home because it’s easy to reconcile in your head. When you’re a patient you’re looking at why should I pay Dr. Rubinstein $6500 for breast augmentation?
Well, I’m going to South Miami and get it done for $3,000 is less than half, why would I not pay the $3,000? Well, there’s reasons and getting your surgery in my office is different than going to the chop shop where they might do 10 of them in eight hours. And you can’t have high quality and high volume too easily to get, someone’s got to get and the quality is not the priority in my experience in a place that is trying to drive lots of patients through for that same $3,000 surgery. It’s got to give him and we see it, we see the revisions. The whole point of the campaign is to say this is not all the same. We’ve produced five videos, we’ve got three videos that we’ve released in that campaign is another two videos that we had made earlier and put out separately but not as part of the campaign that we’re going to rerelease with the campaign
Catherine Maley, MBA:
We can see them on the internet?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah. If you go to hashtag go to my Instagram, our latest one is called zooming out and you know all these videos is these three that we’ve done, it’s not all the same campaign gotcha. All of them are driving a certain point home the first one we did what was the first one was the boat captain or the Okay, the first one was the boat captain. The boat captain one is called pilot this and I want to give it away. Check, they’re all funny. It’d be worth your time to go check them out. You’ll enjoy it. The first one is called pilot this, the second and it’s about going to see a boat captain to hire him to take us to the Bahamas. And second one was called you want fries with that. And it’s about drive thru plastic surgery. There’s you may have heard about Dr. Miami, his old big deal about drive thru Botox, which I know most of my colleagues would agree is a bad idea. But I can’t say why are you doing drugs with Botox? It’s stupid, don’t you that no one’s going to listen to that. I sound like a crabby competitive doctor. Okay, instead of complaining about it, we took the ball and ran with it. Why stop it drive through Botox like I drive through plastic surgery. Try that, you should check out that video and it talks about that and then NUMMI is our latest and that’s about mail order plastic surgery.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Oh, dear Lord, where are we heading? All right, t’s time to wrap up and I want to cut a couple questions about mindset. Is there anything in particular that’s driving you to do all of this work extra more than a lot of others are anything? How was it?
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah, sorry to interrupt I at an Easter brunch with, dear friends of ours yesterday and we were talking about this, and I showed them the new me video. And we’re talking about that, and it’s a labor of love. It’s a real passion I mentioned before, this doesn’t grow business for me, this is not something that, brings people to the office, nobody cares about the funny video, no one’s going to choose their plastic surgeon based on Oh, that’s the guy that was in that funny video, the new me thing that’s like, I’m going to go see him for surgery. No one’s going to make that connection but I feel that we have to be the stewards over our own profession. I am my brother’s keeper and my In this scenario, we’re all brothers and sisters in this industry. I feel like we all have to shepherd the industry and try and promote safety because I see not a small amount of patients that have had unfortunate outcomes from procedures that probably should not have been done, procedures that could have been done a lot better. Procedures that should have been done by someone who is properly trained in plastic surgery and not dabbling but patients don’t know, you mentioned earlier, it’s caveat emptor.
But I often say for those of you watching a caveat emptor buyer beware. But I often say that the end doors don’t know how to copy. And it’s our job to educate people and make sure that they’re making their best choices. That’s all I’m doing. I’m aggressive about it, I’m passionate about it. It does take a large portion of my time, took over staying on the tail they know how busy I am. And they don’t have time to do this. How much are you spending on this? But I feel it’s important that when we’re able to carve out a couple hours here or there. We do and we get it done. And what, please do go check out at Dr. Rubinstein rap last surgery, truce at Dr. Rubinstein and be able to see those videos, check it out. Send me a message, you’ll email me afterwards, text me afterwards or send me a DM and tell me what you think. Because, it’s an important message to get out there. And not enough people are doing it. I don’t mind being the guy that’s going to stand up and say, Hey, the Emperor is not wearing clothes. Everybody notice the Emperor is not wearing clothes.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Last question, is there anything that we don’t know about you? Because you’re pretty transparent, give us one thing that we don’t know about you.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Let me see if I can get this open one sec. Where the hell is? I guess you can see me.
I would say something you don’t know about me. Well, I would say the TV show would be one of them. But that’s I say the things that I do that maybe I don’t share on Instagram or Snapchat as much. I’m a musician. Oh, the piano drums and bass. I’ve been in a number of bands through the years…
Catherine Maley, MBA:
What kind of music?
Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Everything but mostly pop classic rock, that kind of stuff.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
So you could be like a cover band.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah. It’s mostly cover stuff. I’ve written a lot of music too. But the stuff we do with the bands is the cover music.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Well, there’s some to fall back on in case the plastic surgery doesn’t work out. Yeah.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah. Well, I’m not sure if I’m hoping for that or not.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Thank you much. It’s been a pleasure talking with you Dr. Rubinstein. And I hope I see you at a meeting someday soon in real life without masks.
Dr. Adam Rubinstein, MD, FACS:
Yeah, no kidding. I I’m hoping for that too. And that these coming soon. Oh, I sure hope.
Catherine Maley, MBA:
Alright, thank you much, everyone for listening in on Beauty and the Biz and if you enjoyed it, please subscribe and give us a great review if you feel inclined. If you’ve got some feedback or questions for me, please leave them at my website at www.CatherineMaley.com. Or of course you can DM me on Instagram at CatherineMaleyMBA. Thanks much, we’ll talk again.
#beautyandthebiz #podcast #podcastforsurgeons #plasticsurgeons #cosmeticsurgeons #marketing #plasticsurgery #stafftraining #businessconsulting #strategiesforsurgeons
