Welcome to the Digital Handshake. I'm your host Scott Jorgensen, and I'm so thrilled to be here with Doctor. Jason Posner.
So we have to do a real handshake first.
Put it there, my friend.
All right. Excellent. You
as well. You as well. It's fun to be here together on one of our first episodes as part of the Digital Handshake series. Like I mentioned, Jason, we're all about how do we make that digital first impression your strongest asset? And as plastic surgeons, you know, we're in this, call it, economy of retail medicine.
And, you know, we're out there every day trying to find and attract and convert new patients. And we're also trying to do our very best to take care of our existing patients. As part of that experience is, you know, how do we show up online? Right? What's our digital identity?
What's our digital footprint? And, you know, if you could, share with our audience, like, you know, you've been in practice for many, many years, and you have a very successful practice, you're probably one of the most well known plastic surgeons here in the country, you know, so what have you done over your decades of experience to really create that elevated digital It's
interesting because people know me for different things. Some people know me because of my laser experience and my teaching and R and D, and I'll go to a Cyton event, they know me at Cyton, but they don't know what I do in my practice, which is 40% breasts and 40% facelifts and lasers and eyelids and things, and 20% pretty much everything else. But you'll have these sub segments of patients coming into practice and they think, Well, I'm the facelift guy because I did their friends, and I have other ones flying from halfway across the country for revision breast. So it's very hard to put everything together, to put myself out there on the internet or Instagram or in social media to attract all these different kinds of patients. At this point, I'm kind of, I would say, lucky because most of my business is pretty much word-of-mouth now.
But I think especially for the younger plastic surgeons and my associate, your presence online in social media is super important. And even for me, I still need new patients because once I operate on you, I need to replace you with somebody else. I'm not going to keep operating, I need to re operate on you again. So we started with our website and I still think website is critical because a bunch of women are sitting around and they're talking to their friends over lunch and they're talking about facelifts. And they mentioned my name.
Well, what's the next step? They're to Google me, right? They're look at my reviews and they're going to look at my pictures online and they're trying to get to know me. And being a member of Media PSC has been super helpful because they've helped with my website, they've helped with my Instagram, there's a YouTube channel. We got patients come in and says, I watched every video you've ever done.
Oh, we don't do that They get to know me. They know the name of my birds. They know my significant other. They know what cars I like, what watches I like. So they get to know you.
It's like stalking sometimes. But I think it's super important that we put ourselves out there. And we see our colleagues that are maybe struggling a little bit, we see someone who's a newbie and they're dancing. They take their clothes off and they dance and they get tummy tuck patients or face lift patients. And I'm like, what a stupid way to choose your plastic surgeon based upon how they dance on Instagram or TikTok.
Right. Right. And it's unfortunate, but we're finding that more and more in our industry where doctors are choosing to go sort of that gimmicky route as a means for breaking through and standing out rather than using education, their expertise, their reviews, testimonials to really do the talking for them. Talking about reviews, I think you've been in practice for several years, I've to imagine you've had a slew of great reviews, but there's always that sort of review online that is one where you just want to tear your hair out.
Pisses you off. I mean, I tell you, it's like we get these reviews. I saw one the other day. Oh, he pushes lasers. Yeah, of course I push lasers because I think that's the best treatment for many patients.
And one particularly, I did this lady, I was doing something and she had a mole or something near her eyebrow and I singed her eyebrow. And she left a scathing review that I spent the whole time talking to my medical assistant and I burned her eyebrow. Well, I singed her eyebrow because that's where the mole was. And that's what I was trying to achieve, which is next to it. So it singed a little bit.
I didn't burn her eyebrows off, but I'm like, spent a lot of time with this lady and it hurt me a little bit because every patient, that's my focus. I try to do the best job possible. And these negative reviews are hurtful a little bit because we try hard. And I always say it's like I try to treat my patients like my family members. I do the best thing possible for them.
And sometimes not everything is perfect. We are working on humans and sometimes there's a hematoma or something and we fix it. But I think the solution to They say the solution to pollution is dilution. So meaning that you have to really push the positive reviews and that it looks a little fake if you have no negative reviews. Interesting. Right?
Yeah.
Like you go on Amazon and the thing that pisses me off is that you buy a product and always we look at the reviews and this one product has a one star review because they promised it in two days and it came in four days because it was snowing.
Right.
Right? And that's like, what does that have to do with a one star review? That's the shipping, that has nothing to do with how good the product is. Yeah. I give it a two star review because I didn't realize it came with no batteries. Yeah. That's not reasonable. Give it a one star review if you had it for twenty four hours and it broke, they wouldn't replace it.
Well, what I love about you, Jason, honestly, that you're just so genuine. And being that sort of genuine, authentic self is I hate to say it, but it's kind of rare, right, in our industry. And we try to create this sort of fictitious impression of, you know, who we really are or our results or what have you. But I love the fact that you just kind of owned it and you said, Yeah, I've had some bad patient experiences. It is, you know, we're human and we're going to make mistakes.
So, from that standpoint, what do you do because you're so good at it to like show up so authentically online?
Well, you know, one thing is when I'm in a consult with the patient, I tell them right off, I'm blunt. I'm sorry. I'm older. The older I get, the blunter I get. And you know what every single one says? Thank you. Thank you. I want you to be blunt. And the other thing is I don't oversell people. Like if people don't need something, I'm not going to talk about doing a brow lift when they don't need a brow lift.
But what you said is, how do I get this online? And the thing is be yourself. Don't be anyone that you're not. One of the things with complications, they always say, if you've never had a complication, you're either lying or you don't do enough surgery. Things happen and the longer you're in practice, you're going to see different things happen, learn to manage them and deal with the patients.
But for online reviews, the people appreciate it when you take care of them and you care about them and you see them post op and that you want them to have a better life. I had a guy in the practice the other day, he came in and we were talking about tightening up a little area and he was telling me about his luggage that was lost and he was telling me about his thumb and he had some pain. I referred him to a friend who was a hand surgeon and I got him in forty eight hours, which might have taken a month with some other doctors. But I think you have to go treat your patients like your family members, but what you're saying is you need to get this out there. You need to be able to get your personality online.
And you're not going to see me dancing, you're not going see me taking my clothes off and doing the jig to get patients in, but that's not my style. That might be someone else's style. So if you say the best thing about me is my credibility, that plastic surgery media PSC will work with me to get this out there.
Yeah. And you had mentioned that you've been in the industry for some time, and you've treated, obviously, a slew of patients. But you know, the other thing I would say about you is you always have your sort of ear to the ground, right? Your finger on the pulse. You're always showing up at the trade shows and the conferences and the meetings and you're speaking and you're very active and giving back, right?
You know, with that is you've also been a very good investor in our industry. Some bad ones. Some bad ones. But you've placed some very smart bets over your career. And so, I think if I was a younger plastic surgeon hearing what you had to say, you know, hopefully I would pay attention, right?
Because you're a pretty sage individual. Now, with that is, if I somehow magically could find another 4,000 or $5,000 a month in your marketing budget, right? And recognizing how important it is to have a strong digital presence, where would you place that bet?
Great question. So first of all, I think you need to spend your money marketing. It's important because sometimes the economy changes and when things change, let's say you're a facelift surgeon, all you do is expensive facelifts and the market crashes, like 02/2008. You're not getting expensive facelifts. What kept us alive after 2008 was teachers who had steady jobs, who came in for lesser priced things.
So again, you need to be out there and you need to kind of hedge your bets a little bit with what you're doing. You can't just do expensive facelifts because it might crash. But you should be spending your money marketing. And then in terms of marketing, what's important? The first thing for me is make sure your website is good because that's going to last for a number of years.
And then you need to change that website. So if we add a new technology, I need to be working with a company like Media PSC that can update my website to add the new site on TriBridge, for example, and not wait two years to add that. Because the minute something's out there, people are Googling it and I want to be high up there. So first thing is website. The next thing is I'm a little older too.
I still like Instagram. Okay? Many of the younger doctors might like TikTok. If you're trying to get noses in, maybe TikTok is better. But I still think website, TikTok, Instagram, and then for these longer segments, Media PSC and YouTube, a lot of patients like to watch these longer segments when they like to do a little more research.
So that's what I think. We're actually playing around now, which is not related to Media PSC, is a little bit of print. Interesting. So we're actually gonna do a magazine for our office and do some direct mail, but we might do go back to a little, not a lot of money. I think the bulk of your money should be spent on digital marketing and maybe 5% of ad revenues. Maybe do some print, like in some magazines that are not super expensive.
Talking about where to place your money and place your bets, is there any mistake or pitfall that you've made in your career or you're kind of like, I learned my lesson on that one? You know, didn't come to mind?
I think you should sleep on your investments before you just put money in. And the things that I do now from an investment standpoint is if I made money with someone before, I'm way more likely to invest with them. So we were talking about this last night, I invested with Vertly, which is media screens for your office. So that's another part of our marketing budget that we're spending, which is very inexpensive, stupid inexpensive. But these are ads that are curated by you, they provide the ads, but you get to choose which ads are going up in your exam rooms.
Oh, interesting.
So you put these screens in, and we can run PSC, we can do everything media PSC and put that up, or I want to run an ad from Allergan or Botox, or let's say I use the Revance Taxify product and not Allergan, I'll put Taxify in there. So that's what we're doing now. So I invested some money in that company, but I made money with HintMD in the past.
Interesting.
So if I made money with you, I'm more likely to invest. But I tend to invest in the stuff I know, which is plastic surgery related and device related. Like I'm not investing in real estate. And again, I have time to do this because I don't play golf and I don't have a boat.
Well, to wrap up here on the digital handshake, I want to ask you one final question, and it's I think it's a fun question, and that is if you have an opportunity to have a dinner party.
Right.
And you can invite three plastic surgeons to this dinner party. Now, could be living or dead.
Oh, wow.
And they could be somebody that you know or somebody that you've never met.
Okay.
Who are you inviting to the dinner party?
So I'm going to throw you a real wild pitch for this. So I worked with a plastic surgeon from Beverly Hills for a long time. His name was Kurt Wagner. He was crazy. He was probably the most egocentric individual I ever met in my whole life.
He got banned from the ASPS for being on the Merv Griffin show or something, self aggrandize with. I would invite him because I want to see what's on He died, I want to know what's on the other side. And I think he brings a lot of entertainment. And then I would probably like to talk to someone who invented some of the breast implants because I like to hear about the old stories. So maybe the one of the guys who invented the older implants.
And then I'd like to hear about some of the early facelift things. So one of the early facelift guys who has passed. I like the old guys who passed because I know all the new guys. I go to the meetings, I talk to all my friends. So I like historical things of how we got to this point, like how did we learn what not to do.
Right. Well, sounds like a fun party. I want to thank our audience today for being with us on the digital handshake and want to thank our guests. We'll put it there.
Now we do a real handshake.
Right. Doctor. Jason Posner for being with us from Boca Raton, Florida. And again, thank you to Media PSC, our sponsor, for helping us put forward this tremendous podcast for each of you.