Interview with Dr. Marco Pelosi III

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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.

Today’s guest is Dr. Marco Pelosi III.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III is one of the most talented, influential and well-known cosmetic gynecologists in the world. He is best known for his skills in cosmetic vaginal surgery, pelvic reconstructive surgery and whole body aesthetic surgery. He is consulted regularly by patients, surgeons, the medical industry and the media for his expertise, insights and innovative methods. He has won numerous awards for his work.

Dr. Pelosi III is the co-founder of the ISCG, the largest cosmetic gyn society in the world, founder and host of the Top Cosmetic Gynecologists podcast, and developer of numerous surgical techniques. He has delivered over 800 presentations worldwide and authored numerous scientific articles and textbook chapters on surgical technologies and techniques.

Dr. Pelosi III is board certified in obstetrics and gynecology, post-graduated trained in cosmetic surgery. He received his specialty training in Manhattan’s elite Cornell University medical system at New York Downtown Hospital. He has served as a Fellow and Trustee of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery and Fellow and Chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the International College of Surgeons for the entire United States.

He is in private practice with his father Dr. Marco Pelosi II, also a cosmetic gynecologist in a suburb of New Jersey.

Both surgeons are pioneers, speakers and teachers in the world of cosmetic gynecology.

If you want to talk more about your specific situation, just leave me a message at www.CatherineMaley.com or DM me on Instagram.

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Thanks so much and talk soon!

Visit Dr. Pelosi’s website

 

Transcript:

 

Interview with Marco Pelosi III

 

By Catherine Maley

September 15, 2021

Catherine Maley, MBA

Hello everyone. And welcome to Beauty and the Biz where we talk about the business, that 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.

Now today’s Beauty and the Biz podcast is with Dr. It’s interview with Dr. Marco Pelosi the third now he’s one of the most well-known cosmetic gynecologists in the world and specializes in cosmetic vaginal surgery, pelvic reconstructive surgery, as well as whole body aesthetic surgery. Now, Dr. Pelosi is co-founder of the, I S C G, which is the largest cosmetic Gyn society in the world and his founder and host

of the Top cosmetic gynecologists podcast. He’s in private practice with his father, Dr. Marco Pelosi, the second, also a cosmetic gynecologist and aesthetic surgeon in a suburb near New Jersey. So, both surgeons are pioneers, speakers, and teachers in the world of cosmetic gynecology and aesthetic surgery.

So, Dr. Pelosi, it’s a pleasure to have you on Beauty and the Biz.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. We’re actually located in Bayonne, New Jersey. So, if you were on Wall Street and you made a beeline for the Statue of Liberty and made a hard left, you’d wind up at my office.

Catherine Maley, MBA

So funny because I tried to, I Googled Bayonne and I.

I, it seemed, I said, okay, so what’s it near like Jersey City and then I was getting all confused and that’s why I just went with the suburban, of New Jersey.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Sure, sure. It goes Newark Airport, Bayonne, Hoboken, Wall Street.

Catherine Maley, MBA

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. So, the burning question, I’m sure everyone is wondering if there’s a Dr.

Marco Pelosi the second and the third. And is there a pending fourth, is he already here?

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Dr. Yes, Dr. Pelosi, the fourth is going to stay Mr. Pelosi. The fourth. He is in college right now at Costal Carolina, studying finance and marketing. And his plan is to be in the financial world.

Catherine Maley, MBA

Good for him. And then the store is your goal to keep this going.

Is this, is he going to be it’s very much required to have a Marco Pelosi the Fifth?

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Well at, at the pace that he’s going, we don’t want to be grandparents just yet. So, we’ve told them to put the brakes on things and just enjoy the college experience,

Catherine Maley, MBA

That soon to be determined, or maybe not maybe later.

All right. Then the next big burning question is all about Hurricane Ida while I was researching you, I’m out in California. And I don’t watch the news anymore for lots of reasons, but I realized, oh my gosh, you guys had 12 inches of rain in a very short amount of time.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Well, luckily, I live on a golf course and it’s, it’s a landscape in a way that the water flows past us. But we’re out in Hunterdon County where there’s a lot of farms and little old country roads, little bridges. They’re very scenic. Those are all gone. So, there was a lot of flooding. There were a lot of people who were, you know, texting, driving and oops.

I’m in three feet of water. One of my nurses. She lost her car. She she’s in the city, she’s closer to Bayonne. And she drove into like three feet of water. And we joked because she’s like just under five feet tall. And I said, you’re lucky because you’d be the first one to drown. And her husband came to get her in a brand-new BMW, one day old and he lost his car.

Got totaled. So that was a disaster. If I showed you the Facebook pages of our local friends of how much devastation this little storm caused, it’s shocking, it’s mind boggling. And luckily it didn’t kill the infrastructure on the major highways the electricity wasn’t out in as many places as in past storms.

So, all in all, it could have been a lot worse and you know, it could have been allowed better, but I think everybody is recovered enough that it was just like a bad couple of days. Well, I’m

Catherine Maley, MBA

sorry to hear that. And now I know out here in California, we’re having, once again, the wildfires that we apparently never know are coming, but they happen every year and they’re so out of control.

Ah, I don’t know what’s going on in the world, so we should probably talk faster, you know, before the doom

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

hits, before we get flooded.

Catherine Maley, MBA

So, let’s talk about how did you just a quick story about your journey? How did you get from what medical school into practice with?

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

All right. Well, the family biz was, was OB GYN for many years.

And my father made himself famous in the 1980s with the laparoscopic surgery and just got back surgery where the surgery was done through tiny incisions. And what happened is that I went into the family business in medicine, in residency. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. In a, in a, in a medical school.

I first, first, first of all, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a doctor. So, I took a year off to go travel around and figure things out. And so, then I said, okay, I think I want to be a doctor. And so, I just went into medical school or a wide-open field. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to go into, but it was in the back of my mind that I could just step into an established Gagne OB GYN practice that was low.

And in the 1980s, you could call the regular medicine profitable and a great place to practice. So, I got into my clinical rotations third year and fourth year, and I was a guy that always liked to operate. I was very proactive, aggressive, big mouse, and, you know, so I was always getting into people’s faces and they liked the, you know, when I was in the, or, you know, I could chat shut.

And, and so I became very friendly with all the general surgeons and everybody was trying to recruit me to go in the plastics and into colorectal and oncology and even the guidance and the guide you guys thought I was just going to automatically just step into there. So, after a few more rotations and a few more rotations, I decided, okay, I’m going to go into OB GYN.

And I applied to a bunch of programs. I wanted to be in the city. So, I matched at the New York downtown, which was a branch of NYU. It’s right down on wall street, down by the fish market, by the Seaport. So great place to be and a great, we were the highest paid residents in the country. So, I always told my friends, I’m pulling it down just as a resident.

And when I finished training, I was very good at endoscopy elaborate. It could be, cause I was working with my father’s friends’ weekends, I would just fly somewhere and he would just fund every. I go to the Mayo clinic. I go to the Cleveland clinic. You name it. I met everybody who was a big. And so, I was already getting known as the, you know, the next Pelosi a laparoscopic endoscopic surgeon.

And I was in the doctor’s lounge every day at the hospital, watching these guys who were my age now, 50 something. And they were bitching and moaning. I said, oh, every year the malpractice insurance goes up. Oh, every year the reimbursement goes down and it was still. But I saw the writing on a wall and I said, I don’t want to be that guy when I’m 50 bitching and moaning that they’re not happy with their career.

And I know I liked surgery. I always liked these statics and plastics. It was just that at that time, there weren’t many to opportunity many opportunities outside of the core. So, if you didn’t come out of the core and there was no internet to search, there was no Google, you know, it was very hard to find the, that kind of training.

But luckily, I found that Jeff Klein, he had just written a book. And he’s that dermatologist from Southern California, that, that came out with two MES that liposuction. So, I hunted him down through the phone book directory. You remember that stuff? Yellow pages. And I got into his course and I brought my father and we looked at two missing local anesthesia, and we looked at the liposuction and we said, dorms are doing this we’re surgical.

We should be doing this. And so, we rounded up some friends and family, and we did a little bit of light at the one and we went back and we worked with clients some more and little by little, we started doing liposuction. And from that point we started meeting people at meetings. We’d go to a guy named meeting and they’d bring me a friend who was a plastic and a friend who was a derma friend who was facial plastic.

And we speak Spanish because I was born in south America. So, we flew down to south America and we trained with tons of plastics and tons of surgeons that normally nobody in the states has access to. So, I had a lot of training that most people. Haven’t had that opportunity to have, and we brought it back and we, we got our hospital privileges.

We documented our training and we set up a surgery center in our office. And we do cases here now for the past 20 years. Everything I had to toast we’re well-known for the cosmetic guy need, because we’ve pretty much pushed the specialty into the forefront. But we still do a lot of body contouring, liposuction, tummy, tucks, all the work that normally everybody does when they’re in the field of plastic aesthetic work.

And we’re really, really, really. Packed right now during the pandemic, because everybody’s switched gears, people who said in the past, I’m going to wait for the right time to do this. Now, now is that time in their mind that they have the ability to work from home. They have the ability to just use, you know, the virtual side of their, their business and say, I’m going virtual this month.

And that’s when they do their thing. They’re not traveling as much. So, they have a little more. And they’re getting paid. They’re getting a lot of stimulus from the government. So that’s going on? We’ve got the crypto, boom. I don’t know if you’ve been into crypto, but crypto is making a lot of money for, for a lot of people.

And they’re usually younger people because the older people, they don’t even know how to work an email, but these young people that are making a killing. And I talked to my son who’s in college and his friends, you know, all the finance kids are just crushing it in these new markets. So that’s what I’m doing.

That’s where I am right now. And that’s how we’re really having a great season here. Then we hope it just keeps going.

Catherine Maley, MBA

So, what’s it like working with your father? I, I have watched several practices. Partnerships are tough enough, but family, you can be even tougher. So, what are the pros and cons of.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

All right. You know, imagine that there’s like the three camps. Okay. One camp is family, the way you grew up, you know, and you have that, that sort of a relationship that then you have the professional relationship you know, father and son, like going fishing together. Like there was something together that doesn’t happen too much.

In the beginning. We did, you know, when we first started working together, we started trying to feel each other out. Like, he’s like, this is my son and he good, or, you know and I’m sitting here at my old man crazy. So, we figured each other out and then I have my own clinical side and he has his own clinical side where, you know, we, we see the same flow of patients coming in.

The demographic of the patients is identical, but we each run our own show. And every once in a while, on a big case, let’s say we’re doing something that has a left side and a right side. And they’re both really big, well, we’ll work together and. And speed it up. But more often than not, I work with a surgical tech and he works with a surgical tech on any of the major cases.

And you know, that allows one of the guys in the practice to be doing the consults and the follow ups while the other one is, is using the operating room because we run a, a one hour set up

Catherine Maley, MBA

and then how do you. The skillsets of business marketing, managing staff, how did you figure all that out?

Because not everyone’s good at all of those things. And I would assume you want to use your strengths so

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

well, I, we graduated both. We, we both matriculated in the university of hard knocks and carried it out. And initially when you run a medical practice and you bill through insurance for medical indications, it’s pretty, it’s pretty set how you run that.

You have a coding person and a, whatever you do get coded and submitted, and there’s a whole rigamarole of processes and delayed. And that that runs automatic. We have, we have been running that style of programs since the 1990s where you know, the medical insurance and the coding w became a big deal.

For the aesthetic side we run it differently because it’s a completely different specialty it’s, it’s nothing to do with insurance companies. So, we, we know we have we re we hired an MBA. We have an MBA office manager who just knows how to run business. So, you know, we, we pretty much tell her what we’re trying to achieve.

And then we go back and forth and we bang out how that can be achieved in a streamlined fashion that makes sense financially and manage you. So that, that’s something that we just learned and you learn it by talking to people. You learn it by, by, you know, you taking like MBA stuff and applying it to aesthetics, which is not always as easy as it sounds because MBAs in general don’t have a subspecialty of any type.

They just go into the market and they figure out what their focus is. And so, you sort of have to do. Work it and tune it and tailor it as you go along. And you know, there are best practices now, more than ever there there’s access to the resources online. So, it’s pretty easy to find resources.

Sometimes that’s a double-edged sword because you got so many choices, you don’t know which choice is the best choice. So, you’re sometimes kind of overloaded with stuff. But yeah, we have financial people that we trust. We have other professionals that we trust. We have people like you who you know, just provide information and resources that that help us along the way.

Catherine Maley, MBA

Well, I do have an MBA and I have brought my MBA skills to the plastic surgery world. Mostly kicking and screaming because most surgeons would rather be in the, or, you know, then talk about the, the, the business side of surgery. So yeah, so there there’s a room there for everybody. So, is it a dictatorship or is it a partnership?

Like, does your dad get to call like what happens when you don’t agree on something? Do you just not do it?

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Oh, no, no, no, no. We, we, we figure it out. No, it’s not a dictatorship. In the beginning, you know, you have a guy who was running a practice for 30 years and he hires a new hire who doesn’t know anything about the business.

You can’t expect to have a parody at that time. You know, that’s, that would be insane. That would be like, you know, rookie pilots saying, right. We’re going to fly this way. And the old man is going to tell you, you can’t do that because, and Alicia, 100 reasons. So when, when we got into aesthetics, I think it was a different scenario because we were both getting in at the same time, fresh.

We each basically we’re starting at the same baseline. He had the old Fox wisdom of just working a medical practice. I was more a sponge for the technology side and now I’ve become even more into marketing. I’ve taken courses. So, for the last I would say 10 years. He is deferred all of that stuff to me.

So, when I say we should have a marketing plan that does this, he’s like run with it. When I, when I tell them we should reframe our, our marketing strategies to do this, this and that. And he just says, run with it. And when we work with marketing people, you know, I I’ve been in their field in their world for so long that.

I understand their language and they understand what I’m saying. So, w we sort of, you know, we can speak the same language, obviously. No. But when you explain it to me, you don’t have to tell me what a, you know, a KPI is, and I can tell you, okay. You know, let’s just talk about what your strategy is.

Catherine Maley, MBA

It is so helpful for surgeons to at least know the basics of marketing and business.

So at least, you know, when you’re talking to an expert, supposedly they know what they’re talking about. You know I; I hate to go into a conversation completely blind, not understanding anything and hoping to God I’m talking to an expert that really has my best interest at heart. So, nothing easy about that.

Let’s talk about staff for a second, because one thing that I’ve noticed when there are two surgeons in our practice sometimes if there’s not the one big leader, they have a tendency to pick the surgeon. They like the best, or they’ll go over your head and go to the other surgeon. Do you have any of that happening with staff or any tips on managing staff?

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Yeah. Yeah. I would say, you know, every, every staff has a different personality style. Some people are good at just following and they follow perfectly, you know, like soldier, they tell them to do something and they do it exactly. Other people are problem solvers and they think they see the problem.

They see where you are. They see where you’re trying to go and they improvise. And it’s good to have both types of people, because if you have somebody who just follows everything, you say your process is never going to improve because you’re not tweaking it. You’re not seeing it from a different perspective.

Whereas if you’re looking at it and the person is like a problem solver, They might say, you know, I’ve watched you do this, I’ve watched your father do this. I’ve watched him do what you do. I watch you do what he does. And when you guys do this, it always comes out smoother. So, we sort of tweaked our styles based on the commentary of somebody that gets to watch both of us independently.

Some, some staff are you know, they have obligations that are unpredictable. You know, somebody’s got the screaming little kid that gets sick. That’s where they’re going to be. When the little screaming kid gets. So, when we have certain people at certain times a day in certain positions, we already know that that’s a possibility.

So, we have a backup person. So, we have sort of like a sliding kind of job descriptions. So, everybody does their basic job, but they can shift into an additional role. That might be necessary when somebody, it just isn’t available to do their function.

Catherine Maley, MBA

You have the backup plan. I am going to do a talk on contingency.

There needs to always to be a contingency. If all goes to hell, what’s, you know, you might as well plan for it because it’s going to happen.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Yeah. You don’t want ever want to be whatever process. You have to have a single point of failure because that that’s, that’s always a bad idea. If you ask an engineer and they build a bridge, you can’t have a single point of failure.

You have to have a backup. If a piece fails. For sure.

Catherine Maley, MBA

So, let’s switch over to marketing your new favorite topic. And you have such an interesting way of your specialized. And I love that, especially in marketing. When I talk about like external marketing, you need to get known for something rather than be the Jack of all trades to everybody offering everything.

So, I love that you specialize has that worked in your favor. To get your name out there or does it, do you feel like a pigeonhole sheet?

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

No, no, no. It’s, it’s got, it’s gotten me huge marketing power because if you take the marketing credo, which is just a focus, your marketing and dominate a small segment, you know, they say that the blue ocean strategy picks an area where there’s nobody there and just become the big.

Yeah. And that little area with the internet, you’ll be able to attract tons of people from everywhere. When you’re in a, an area where it’s the red ocean, you have all the sharks feeding. The only way to stand out there is to once again, create your niche is so we create our niche in cosmetic guidance.

But with a very broad net. So, my patients that come in for cosmetic guidance are flying into my office and the ones that are coming in for bodywork, lipo and tummy tucks, and such are driving to my office. But they’re all looking for something unique for the cosmetic it’s, it’s the, it’s the limited supply of specialists and for the body work it’s, first of all, it’s the good work as shown on our social media.

And the fact that we have the ability to speak Spanish fluently, which attracts a large clientele in our particular area, which has a lot of Latino patients. And the way that the Latino market works is if you have one Latino client, they bring you lots of them because they love to do things in groups.

They have to bring you to their favorite restaurant, bring you to their favorite hairdresser, bring you to their favorite store. And bring you to their favorite cosmetic surgeon. So, so once you, once you, you, you hooked up with, with those kinds of client clients in the Latino market you’re in a good place and they’re loyal.

They’re very loyal. So, if you treat them right, that they keep. I’ve

Catherine Maley, MBA

seen that over and over. You get one Hispanic woman and next thing you know, you’ve got her sister, her mom, her cousin, her aunt. They’re amazing. Yeah, there’s very good word of mouth referral sources. So, when it comes to. Yeah, I noticed you got a brand-new website.

It’s lovely, by the way, it’s gorgeous. And I want to commend you on something you’re doing very, very well that I hardly ever see. And that’s your photo gallery and your videos. You’ve gone to great lengths to get that photo gallery. You’ve got lots of photos. They’re all consistent. With the same background with the same stance, the same lighting.

What, how did you do that? What kind of processes you have to have some processes to make that happen? How can you just explain that? Because social proof is everything in our world and I don’t think enough energy or focus is put on what are you showing people online? And your Instagram is excellent and your photos are just excellent.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Well, thanks. I’m glad. I’m glad you like. Yeah, w we, we put a lot of attention on featuring things. W with a, with a solid background, it’s either going to be a blue background or it’s going to be like a beige off white background. So, all that you see in the before and after is the change of the work. I when I first started, I called my photographer, the guy that shot my wedding and I brought him in here and I said, listen, I want to take pictures of the human body and the face, realistic photos, nothing artistic.

I just want to reproduce what the ICU. And I just want to have a up, but I can put the patient right there and just bang out the pictures. And he said, no problem. I will set you up. I will get all the equipment and you just pay for it. And I’ll use my professional discounts. I said, great. So, he set up the whole rig for us and I shoot with a tripod.

I shoot with a studio flash right behind. The camera and we have a little, a spot painted on the floor and it’s as simple as that. And so, we just snap and shoots snap and shoot, and we just keep turning the patients. And then we roll with that. For, for the videos we bought professional video lights and just inexpensive high-def video cameras.

And we have a ton of ’em all over the place. So, when you come into our, in our facility, The first thing people say is like, you guys look like your videographers and the photographers. And we said, well, we were in a visual way in a visual business, and that should be front and center. Part of the equipment that you get and relative to what you spend on a laser, it’s just less than the tax on a laser.

It’s. It’s easy to do. And I wanted to get really good with the videos. So, I just went online and took a little online course on how to use premiere pro, which is a video editing software. It’s what the standard is for pretty much all the video experts and you know, anybody who’s smart enough to get through med school is, you know, easily able to get through one of these little online courses and in a short amount of time, just figuring out the basics of video editor.

To do what they need to do and it’s not elaborate well, I’m not using any 3d stunts. I don’t use doubles. I don’t have like aliens landing in the operating room. I just want to reproduce a little snippet of what we’re doing and be able to just share that all over the place. And we also invested heavily in sound equipment because nothing is worse than a video with bad sound.

And when I started doing podcasts, I got really into quality audio. Because I realized that the difference between a good video and a bad video is it’s usually the audio you can get by with lousy image. If the light is off a little bit, but if you can’t understand what they’re saying, So

Catherine Maley, MBA

true. So, when it comes to getting the photos taken, I hear it over and over and over.

I can’t get the patient to come back for their after photos, but I say to them, it has to become part of protocol, just like surgical protocol. You have to have a protocol to get that patient from the, from a to Z. And the Z part is get them back for those photos. Any tips there on how you’re making that happen.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Well for the out-of-town patients, sometimes that’s not possible. I’ve had patients fly in from Europe, from Asia and they’re done. They’re not going to come back on an airplane for 15 hours just to snap a picture. So, for those people, I just tell them, you know, set up your, your phone and I’ve made a few instructional, a little video, cartoony ones to show them what I want you to do.

And some of the most basic recommendation I tell them is take your cell phone, put it on video mode, prop it against the coffee cup, stand about five feet away and do a slow 360 real slow. And I’ll just do some screenshots off of that. And just, just make sure that you’re a blank background, like a pick, a solid-colored background, so that that’s the easiest way to do.

And they could just email it to you or Dropbox it to you. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with Dropbox but, they’re, they have a I think w within the Dropbox where you can send out a link and even if the person doesn’t have dropped. They can use the link; they can upload any video and you’ll receive it into your folder.

So, I use that a lot, so they don’t have to worry about the file’s not too big or whatever, and it’s totally encrypted. So, for people that are worried about HIPAA compliance, it’s, it’s totally compliant because it has the right level of.

Catherine Maley, MBA

Right. I either love cause I look at everyone’s Instagram accounts.

I love when the patient sends in their photo, even with hair and makeup and clothes on and just saying, I’m just loving my new look and they just tell their story about you know, the, the journey, you know, what it was like before, what happened during the journey? How I feel. And then if you can do a screenshot where you show them before photo and then they’re after in real life, I think, I didn’t know that those are very compelling.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Yeah. That’s, that’s the finished product, you know, it’s, you know, because people don’t walk around in a, you know, it’s mostly the way underwear, you know, in a, in, in the real world, you just want to. That person looks great with clothes on. I wonder what they do and that’s really the whole point of it is to look good in the in the wild, the natural environment.

I

Catherine Maley, MBA

completely agree. So, let’s talk about marketing in your practice. I would assume how much of your practice is still insurance-based versus cash.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

It’s like a hobby for me. It’s really, it’s this digital. So, I would say I see, you know, I say on a regular day I see 30 pounds. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. And that all the way we’ve organized our schedule is in the mornings I normally operate from 10:00 AM until just after lunch, which is like one o’clock to two o’clock from two o’clock on, I do consultations and I’ll do some guy in, he I’ll do like maybe 10 guy knees and the rest is going to be their consultations or Botox and fillers.

And then that’s, that’s Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Friday is follow our days today is follow our day. My father is doing a case right now. And so, when I’m not, when I’m not in the operating room on these, on these big days, I’m either doing concept. Or I’m doing, I’m working on the practice.

I’m not actually doctoring. I’m working on marketing, I’m working on lead, lead retrievals. And we actually, we run two companies. I run a teaching company as well. So, I’m running that company as well. So, we’re actually right now we’re setting up a, a, an annual meeting. So, I’m just getting, I’m just calling the, all the companies I’m trying to get these guys roped in.

I’m calling in some big names to attract more companies. So, you know, I have basically two jobs. And so, we do all of that in 24 hours a day, five days a week. And then sometimes we have to squish it in on the weekend, a little bit,

Catherine Maley, MBA

the marketing, because you’re doing something to be that busy. I would assume the reason I asked about the OB GYN side is are any of those patients coming over to the fun side of medicine?

And so, I would.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Yeah, all the time we have, we have old school marketing, we have posters on the wall. I mean, you can’t walk past our building and not know that we do full blast everything. And once you’re in there, you’re surrounded by people with all kinds of, you know, little waists, big buds, all kinds of, you know, there’s all kinds of stuff going on that you just realize instantly that these people are in the aesthetic field and the.

So, it’s always top of mind for a lot of our clients that come in and just for the guy and he so much so that we, we never mentioned it, that they bring it up because we really feel it, you know, we shouldn’t be pushing anybody, you know, they come in for a reason. And it’s not the reason we’re not pushing him.

Just like we don’t preach somebody with, you know, coming in for a lipo. They’ll get an annual checkup. Well, you know, it’s not what they’re there for.

Catherine Maley, MBA

Okay. And so, would you say most of your marketing is internal at this point? Or are you still doing a lot of external? I know you just invested in a new website where, where what’s working for you,

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Instagram is working perfectly.

So, we we’ve gotten tons of leads for, from Instagram, but when I, when I bring a patient in. Even if they know us from Instagram, I’ll say, how did you hear about us? And it’s 99% of the time. They know somebody that we worked on or they you know, their, their hairdresser had some work done, or she was at the hair salon and she saw this lady to look great.

And., She asked her, you know, what, what, you know, what’s your secret. And they were referred, but they check online to make sure that you’re real because if you’re not online, you’re not real. You’re just a, you know, you’re just a rumor. So, Instagram has worked perfectly. Facebook works pretty well, but it tends to be an older clientele.

So, I would say that my, my younger one. Our Instagram all the way. And when you get to like the middle age ones, the ones that have kids they do a little more Facebook and a little less Instagram. So those are more Facebook. There’s a bunch that are on neither. We don’t do any print marketing. We don’t do any television.

We don’t do any radio because we feel that for our market, everybody’s on their cell phones. So, what we’re doing, basically, a social media channel. And during the pandemic, I started to feed a YouTube and I think we’re going to go back to YouTube, but just as a repository of everything that we put out there, because it’s a, it’s a huge search engine and it’s so easy to do, and you can just keyword the titles and it just shows right up.

So, it really has a lot of potential there. And it’s just a no brainer.

Catherine Maley, MBA

Well, especially with the content you’re showing some of the gynae kind of stuff, the cosmetic gynecology it on your website, it’ll say you have to go to YouTube to watch it due to the age restrictions. And I would, I highly recommend you keep building up your YouTube channel.

You know, YouTube is the second largest search engine. And to your point about how are people finding out about you digitally? I swear. It happens all the time. A friend mentioned you to a friend, they go to your Instagram account, they go to your social to see who are you, Ben. They go to your website.

It, it happens that way a lot more often now than the other way around, because SEO, it’s very difficult to give you the first page ranked on the search engines. It’s very difficult if you’re in a competitive area. So, a lot of the surgeons get lost in. Website when they should be looking at the other things that point to their website just an easier way to do it anyway.

I know you have a lot about our town. You’re speaking Spanish. How much of your, how much all of that has to be helping? I love the out-of-town thing because. Well, number one, it’s hard to get the SEO for that nowadays, because they want you to be so geo-specific, but it raises your credibility so much when you have patients flying in from all over.

And it’s quite apparent on your website that that’s happening. And then for the Spanish, you also, you don’t make a huge, big deal out of it, but you definitely say Spanish. Is there some reason your website’s not bilingual? You know how nowadays you can. Transcribe it

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

and make it, no, we just, you know, we just haven’t gotten around to it.

But now that you put it out there, you give me one more thing to do this weekend.

I’ll just make it out every, every page, every, yeah. I can just redo every other page and just make it in Spanish because all you do on Google, you just put copy page. You put in Google translate and it’s.

Catherine Maley, MBA

Yeah, I think it’s gotten really simple to do that. Same thing with podcasting. All of this has gotten so simple to do.

I say to my staff all the time, do not ask me anything until you have Googled it or gone to YouTube first, because that’s where everything is. You need to know are those two places. So, let’s talk about where things are heading, where do you feel. Things are going in our industry, you know, aesthetic surgery.

And how are you preparing for it? And that’s where I want you to talk about, your other business sites.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Sure. Well, I think, I think that the past 16 months or so has pushed all the clientele to be comfortable with. And they have realized that they can get 99% of what they wanted to achieve in a consultation without ever stepping foot in the office.

So, I think that the, the next level of skills that, that need to be developed for a successful practice are the virtual engagement. And you can look at it as the world’s most efficient way to screen through patients without having the burden, your staff. And your work hours, because when, when I, when I drive to work, I’m either listening to music or listening to a podcast, maybe even one of your podcasts.

And so that’s, that’s basically it’s free time because I have to do it. I can’t be at the office working, but if I can use some of that time to engage with Lee, I can screen through them very effectively. And I can tell the patient, you know, who might want to be coming in from another town. I can help you, or I can’t help you, or we need to do something different than what you came in with.

And so, when they do come to the office, I’m getting the best patients. I’ve already primed them and they’re already in process. So, we already have this momentum going in. And so, my, the quality of the.

And rate is much higher with virtual screening built in and the patients know how to do it now, which was the crucial step. I had to learn it too, but we did it and we all learned it, you know, zooming with our families all weekend long. When we were all locked down and everybody’s comfortable with it and we don’t even use zoom when they do the virtual, most of the time, it’s just a phone call and they’re texting me pictures and I’m just telling them what I think.

And at the end of that, I dictate a note with my phone and I just email it off to my secretary and we worked from there and we processed them in. If it’s going to.

Catherine Maley, MBA

I really think that is so true. I, I love virtual. I, if, if I don’t have to leave the house or, or where I’m at, I, I would rather sit still, it’s so much more efficient, so much more convenient.

I know a lot of the rejuvenation, they still want to be like hands-on because it’s a little more delicate with that, but body stuff, no reason now to not be doing a lot more virtual, so good for you. So, you know as the world keeps changing and it looks like we’re going towards socialized medicine, is that going to help or hurt your business?

Or actually, which of your businesses? Because let’s just talk about the business you’re working on now, because I think you’re filling a need in the industry.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Yeah. I think no matter what. Okay. When somebody is somewhere first, they’re going to protect their territory. But what’s happened over the last few years is that there has been increased ability to learn things from other specialties.

Increased opportunities to see quality work done by all specialists. So, hiding what you do behind closed doors is sort of fading away. If I want to see the world’s best nose job, I can see it. If I want to see the world’s best, this, this, this, and that. I can see it. And for a surgeon. Using the fingers. It isn’t a difficult thing.

It’s like driving a car once you know how to drive. You just want to see what the new area looks like and explore it. And you may look at it and say, I don’t feel comfortable exploring that area, but if you do, you have the ability now you just go. Cadaver courses, or you connect with people who are willing to let you come in and watch anywhere in the world where before that was impossible.

So right now, is probably the best time to be a post-graduate educating yourself in the history of the world. You just have so much access to so many resources that no one has ever had in the history of the world. And that, that applies to everything that, that involves advanced learning. The other thing about it is that socialized medicine, the more it kicks in the less appealing it is to intelligent people because they realize they’re just working harder and harder and harder and getting less and less and less, and they’re more vulnerable than they ever were before.

Because most of these people are employees of large medical corporations. So, they have to follow rules that are made by non-physicians based solely on the economics of the system that they’re in. And that’s not something that people that gravitate to medicine swallow easily. They don’t want. Yeah, I’ve never met a doctor that loves that to take orders, just to follow recipes.

And that that’s, that’s a sad, it’s a sad situation for the people that got into the biz under a different paradigm that it just changed on them. So, this sort of allergic to that kind of environment, they don’t like it. And when they look for opportunities, Their best opportunities. Aren’t real estate.

Aren’t getting a J D aren’t getting an MBA. You know, aren’t retiring, they’re transferring your skill sets within medicine. The something that the, that does feed that need to be independent work directly on people. And it’s just person to person rather than person with insurance company insurance company, with doctor and they’re disconnected.

Catherine Maley, MBA

Well, I think you’re doing such interesting work. I think you’ve done a great job. Niching it, the riches are in the niches and you’re doing a really good job of that. Any last comments as we wrap this.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Yeah, well, Catherine, I can’t emphasize enough that part of the skillset of the modern aesthetic practitioner is a sales savvy marketing savvy and negotiating savvy as well as good customer service, because all, all of that plays into the to the biz.

Everybody shops. With the five-star rating and you sort of reverse engineer that by looking at the low ratings. And they’ll tell you, the facials will tell you everything not to do just by reading people’s bad reviews. You know, some of them are crazy, but some of them are very educational. So, when I see a competitor.

Or when I look at my own reviews, I look at the bad reviews as the ones where, where the gold is, you know? So, if you can sift through that stuff and find the needs that people are asking for, that’s where they are, the happy ones you’re doing fine. But if you want to expand your reach and get a little bit better, get a little bit more, just explore better reviews all over the world.

And you’ll, you’ll find out instantly what people like and what they done.

Catherine Maley, MBA

A hundred percent. So, Dr. Pelosi, how can others find out more about you if they wanted to learn.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Well, I made it easy. Go to DrMarcoPelosi.com and that’s a pretty good landing page for, for anybody that wants to reach me for any reason.

Catherine Maley, MBA

Yeah, sure. Is thank you so much for being on Beauty and the Biz. I appreciate it. And I can’t wait to see you at the next conference. I hope we go live again someday and I’ll see you out there.

Dr. Marco Pelosi III

Fantastic. Thanks for having me on Catherine. Good luck to you and have a great week.

Catherine Maley, MBA

Thank you so much. Okay.

Everyone that wraps it up for this session. If you would please subscribe to Beauty and the Biz, so you don’t miss any other episodes. And if you’ve got any questions or feedback for me or Dr. Pelosi, you can certainly leave them on my website at www.CatherineMaley.com, or you can always DM me on Instagram @CatherineMaleyMBA. Thanks so much and we’ll talk again soon.

 

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