The Daria Hamrah Podcast
Do you want to change or simply improve your life? Take your business or your personal relationships to the next level? Have you ever thought why change is so difficult? Ever wondered how people become successful and we just call them "lucky". The Daria Hamrah Podcast gives you Dr. Hamrah's personal insights and pathways to his successes and what he calls "true happiness". Featuring interviews with some of the most successful entrepreneurs, authors and experts in their field, he shares their insights into what he calls the "Secret of Life".
The Daria Hamrah Podcast
Fusing Medicine, Marketing and Mentorship - with Dr. Mike Nayak
Ever imagined the fascinating journey and meticulous artistry involved in facial plastic surgery? Well, cue Dr. Mike Nayak, a master in the field who’s equally acclaimed for his enlightening social media education. Join us as we uncover the story of this Southern Illinois native who found his calling amidst scalpels and sutures, and the profound role of mentorship and intellectual humility in his career.
Prepare to be intrigued as we transition into the captivating realm of medical aesthetics branding with Dr. Nayak. Hear how his keen foresight led him to register the Avani Derm Spa domain, a move that would eventually culminate in a successful enterprise 11 years later. Learn about the power of storytelling, patient interaction, and innovative marketing techniques that propelled his brand's success. Ever thought billboards could be a game-changer? Dr. Nayak's phenomenal branding journey will make you think again.
Finally, we delve into uncharted territory as we discuss the future of medicine, aesthetics, and the potential role of AI and robotics. Will they replace the human touch or enhance it? Dr. Nayak shares valuable insights on this topic and more, including the importance of personality in branding and his take on various intriguing subjects. From the strangest food he's ever eaten to the superpower he would choose, this conversation is as enlightening as it is entertaining. So buckle up for an incredible discussion with Dr. Mike Nayak that explores the professional and personal side of the man behind the scalpel.
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Alright, everybody, welcome to the Darihammer podcast. Today I have a very special guest, for three reasons. Number one he shares the same passion as I do, which is rhinoplasty, and then another passion, which is face and neck lift. And the third passion is education. This gentleman, he's so passionate about what he does that he takes time to personally educate his audience, his patients, on social media, handling entire campaigns himself, responding to comments himself and it's very rare to find a person that is so passionate about what he or she does that they take the time, which is many hours. I can attest to that in doing all this work after coming home from work or within a busy schedule at work.
Speaker 2:Dr Mike Nyak, who is my special guest, whom I have the privilege to meet personally and actually we're on the same podium, I don't know how many years ago, four or five years ago, talking about rhinoplasty at one of these scientific meetings. One of the most talented, intelligent and, at the same time, humble people and colleagues that I've ever met. So it's a privilege for me to have him here to take time out of his busy schedule to join me here on something that I'm passionate about, which is also education, and talking about stuff that I love, so this is why it's so special. So, without any further ado, mike, welcome to my podcast. Thanks so much for coming on. I see you're a cat person and I'm personally a dog person, but you know that's what makes everybody special. We all have our own pet peeves, passions, and today we're going to talk about yours, and thank you very much for coming on, mike.
Speaker 1:You're welcome. I don't charge Rocky here. Whenever he makes a cameo, put a nickel in a bucket or something. We have cats and dogs around the house, but Rocky is the one that typically likes to join the podcast.
Speaker 2:I don't know why, yeah, I see one on your social media all the time, so that's why I know him already. So, mike, tell it before we dive into very interesting and fun topics. I just want the audience to learn a little bit about you, get to know you. Tell us a little bit about your background, where you grew up and how your journey started, and at what point did you know you're going to become a facial plastic surgeon, since it's kind of a niche specialty, if you so, will you know for the audience that doesn't know it's a facial plastic surgery really focuses on surgery of the head and neck, and then we have a general plastic surgeon that deal with the entire body. So, mike, tell us where did you grow up and what is the thing that really inspired you to become a doctor first, then a surgeon and then a plastic surgeon?
Speaker 1:Well, so I grew up in Southern Illinois, eppingham, illinois, about two hours east of here. I live in St Louis right now and, like many Indian kids in my generation, had two physician parents. They came in for residency training and sorry, cats everywhere now. They came in for residency training and you know I had two doctor parents growing up, so medicine is always in the household. It was in medical school that you know I liked all the diagnostic medicine. I really really loved internal medicine. I liked all those kind of intellectual parts of medicine. But I also liked the technical and you know I wanted to decide on an ENT residency because it was partially a medical field, partially a surgical field and, you know, hyper technical and I really enjoyed that concept.
Speaker 1:In my second year at ENT residency you've had a quarter of ENT as facial plastic. So we got a lot of exposure into facial plastics and it's kind of like picking a major in college. You get through this process, you know you start broad and you add courses that you like and you drop courses that you don't like until you have your own focus, you know. So my focus ended up being facial plastics surgery. So that was kind of the evolution from general medicine through ENT to facial plastics surgery and then, as you know, you learn more in your first six months after you finish everything that you do in your entire medical school residency fellowship track leading up to that moment. So that's the best part about this field is you know, you and I are still going. We don't do anything the same way we did five years ago, nor will we five years from now.
Speaker 2:So it's an ongoing journey. And why is that? Because, as you know many of our colleagues, I see there's like three groups of us. There's the ones that keep doing what they've been doing for years. They don't really like changing things, which is great, it works for them, it works for a lot of their patients. Then there's other group they jump on every new, maybe gimmick that comes out and at least test it with a critical sense. And then some are more business oriented, some are more academically oriented. And then there's the one in the middle which is, I think, the very small group who does have the intellectual humility to at least have an open ear and open eye out on new things but evaluates them really with a sound scientific basis and then, if, when the time comes that something valuable comes along, really integrates it.
Speaker 2:So more of a cautious but curious way. So which group are which? Which characteristic do you possess? And I mean, I know the answer, but I want you to tell the audience the most important question within that is why what made you the surgeon you are today, that is, constantly evolves. Like you said, you're not doing the same things today that you did five years ago but at the same time is cautious enough not to, so to speak, fall for these gimmicks.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of. It's a big question. I think in your first several years, into the first several years of your practice, when you are at the beginning, whether you're in solo, private practice or in academic group practice your first few years really should be spent emulating the people that trained you. That's not a time to innovate. That's not a time to go shopping for all brand new techniques, because you don't have a foundation yet by which to assess what is crazy and what is revolutionary and what's likely to work and what's been done 10 times before and a different wrapper, and you just don't know enough about it yet. So I think your first four or five years really are meant to hone your skills as a surgeon and emulate what you have seen working. Even if it doesn't work perfectly, it works safely, and you do that at the beginning.
Speaker 1:As you have developed a foundation and understanding in the field. Then you start to understand where the options are, where the opportunities are, where the rough edges are. You start to understand what works predictably in your hands, what is typically less effective in your hands. But you also have the perspective now to actually meaningfully assess and judge new techniques as they come out or even old techniques as they come back and you're not quite so much a wide-eyed babe, you have a little bit of context, and so then it becomes safe to start adding pieces on or making changes.
Speaker 1:So I'd say early on you shouldn't be jumping on every trend. It's kind of a mid-tier point where you are stable enough and curious enough that you know what to jump on. You're able to bring on new skills just from having watched them or heard about them, and I do think there's kind of a senescent trend where everything is. You've had enough excitement, you're looking for more predictability, hit doubles all day long, and I think in that senescent period I think people typically don't bring on a lot of new things too. So every surgeon's different, but I think that's probably the arc that every surgeon follows.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with one's personality too. From what I'm here, from what you're saying is two character traits that you possess and I feel you need to possess to be able to follow through with what you just said is number one is patience and number two is humility, and this goes under the broad umbrella of self-awareness. Why do you think that there's so many colleagues that actually don't possess enough self-awareness to know what you just know? How much did your mentors influence you and teach you these very things that you just said? Because I think everything with us starts with mentorship.
Speaker 2:I mean, I can tell from my point that my mentor always told me the very things that you just stated and it always sticks in my head and every decision I make. It's like there's a devil and then there's the angel and what you just said being patient and being critical, thinking critically is the very things that you need to what you just said. So some of us may be naturally talented or have the natural IQ to be able to come to this conclusion, but others in my case, it was my mentors. What role did your mentors play for you in how they built you as an ever-evolving surgeon, academician and educator. And, by the way, who were they? Who were they?
Speaker 1:That's a good question. So mentorship is huge. When you present at a national meeting, usually have your title slide, and then the next slide that you put up is typically your disclosure slide, what financial interest complications you might have in your presentation. I usually have zero of those or maybe one, but then I actually literally put up a slide about my mentors and I'll say, yeah, this is who I learned all these things from. If I don't have a financial disclosure slide, it is then the very first slide after my title slide. Otherwise it's the second slide after my title slide, because I think it's important to realize that none of us come up with all this on the room, and so I'll use the bottom line of presentation to say very few of the things I'm going to tell you started with. I'm fortunate that I'm able to integrate things well and assimilate things well and maybe optimize things, but I can't say I've come up with any huge C changes on my own. So, mentorship wise, I mentioned my physician parents. My dad is 77 now and he continues to work full time. He's a phenomenal. He's a urologist. Oh, he's very young still. Yeah right, he's almost figured it out.
Speaker 1:From a fellowship standpoint, I did fellowship with the Glass Gold, mark Alvin and Robert Glass Gold. I was a small family practice. Mark did all the aging face surgery and he was in our Facial Plastic Academy on the very front edge of deep plane facelift. He also was an early adopter of fat transfer. He did a little bit of liposuction, so he's an early adopter of two-mesant anesthetic dosing. So I feel like those were very fortunate things for me, because in the early 2000s deep plane facelift was nascent, two-mesant anesthetic was not everywhere and Coleman or a Marr-style fat grafting were just beginning, and so I feel like I got three real lucky breaks through. Mark Alvin was a career rhinoplasty surgeon and he did endonaisal rhinoplasty for the first 20 years of his career and then switched in the 80s to open structure, which was almost like eating his hat, but he was humble enough and curious enough to know a better thing. When he saw it he changed his mid-career. I've got a ton of rhinoplasty from Alvin.
Speaker 1:And then Robert was the younger one. At that time he was only one or two years into his actual practice post-fellowship and so he was Mr Injectable. When I first walked in there was still all the collagen and radiance which is what RADS used to be when it was just a X-ray stop tissue marker, those collagen and radiance. And then, while I was there, restylane the first HA in the US came out and so Robert made a very vibrant practice of injectables. So I felt like I was on the top of a butter.
Speaker 1:I had a rhinoplasty expert, kind of cutting-edge aging face liposuction fat transfer guy, and someone who's a doc that was doing he was doing tear crops. Robert was doing tear crops in 2003. No one had heard of that, so I would absolutely consider them mentors. But even now I'm 51, I still have mentors. So I would say Andrea Arswald in Brazil I'd consider a huge mentor.
Speaker 1:Tim Martin even though I'm ENT Facial Plastic Strain. About 10 years ago Tim Martin, who was a plastic surgeon, general plastic surgeon, really gave me a better understanding of the neck than I had, even though I was a head and neck trained guy. John Holds, oculoplastic Surgeoning Town, absolutely opened my eyes, so to speak, to eyes. And then Boris Checker. You know, really, boris Checker is a phenomenal rhinoplasty surgeon. He's done well. I think he's the best living rhinoplasty surgeon right now. He put me on the radar preservation. I did the opposite thing from Album. I did 20 years of open structure and now I'm doing entirely in the nasal preservation. So I'd say those are the people at the moment that I would identify as the people that are my current greatest mentors.
Speaker 2:And how much of your mentors or how much of it is it you and how much of it is it your mentors that inspire you to? You're learning every day. I mean, you are evolving your techniques every day. You don't shy away or are humble enough to go and train with people like Checker in doing endonazole preservation, rhinoplasty, et cetera. What is it? Is it like just your curiosity and is it passion? How much of it is your instilled by your mentors and how much of it is it just your personal trade? Great, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the curiosity is more innate. I think there are people that have access to lots of different. We've all seen residents in our program who are in the exact same program with you, with the same opportunities as you, and when the day's over they go home. There's others that when the day's over they're kind of lingering discussing reading. That part is innate and it's not. It's not good or bad, it just is. Some people are. This is my hobby too, so I just find it fascinating. I was built to be in this spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I 100% agree with you. Every time I interview someone like yourself, anyone that's successful or hyper successful in what they do, and I compare us a lot to athletes. If you look at all these athletes like I don't know Kobe Bryant, steph Curry, michael Jordan, I mean all of those people they're always the first ones that come to practice and the last ones to leave. It's not because they want to outdo everyone else, it's because they love what they do. They're competing with themselves and there's so much parallelism in any profession and, to be honest, for someone that feels the same way as you do, you definitely are an inspiration. And to continue, that it's always good to know when you're not alone and when you have someone that shares the same passion, makes you follow through and just gives you more energy because, let's face it, what you do is not easy. So many people always see the glitz and gland. They don't know the hours and the miles you put in.
Speaker 2:And, yes, you do it for passion. You do it for yourself. It's a selfish reason, but it's still a lot of hard work. It's more work than anybody would be willing to do, just because the passion doesn't drive them as much. So which one do you love more rhinoplasty or facelift? People ask me that question. I can't answer it. Do you have an answer?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it varies. I will tell you, about a year and a half ago I almost gave up rhinoplasty. I almost gave up rhinoplasty because I was kind of bored of it and I feel like there's a competent rhinoplasty surgeon in every field of vision. No matter where you're standing, no matter where you turn your head, there's a competent rhinoplasty surgeon. Especially if you're in a bigger city or Europe or South America, there are more rhinoplasty surgeons than there are Catholic priests. There's just everywhere. So about a year and a half ago it came very close to giving up rhinoplasty. It's because I had demand for whatever there is and I feel like there's plenty of rhinoplasty surgeons and I'm just going to focus on aging faith.
Speaker 1:What stopped me from doing that was the whole preservation thing. So right around then is when I got a new challenge, more serious, about endonageal preservation. All of a sudden I was sick of this toy and they unleashed the next generation. The box showed up at my door and I opened it up and it's a brand new toy. It's better than it ever was, and it got my full attention again and so for a minute I almost gave up rhinoplasty and now I absolutely love it again, absolutely love it. I get excited talking about it, and it allows me to keep what I really like doing, which is making balanced full face transformations. You can't do that if you don't do those. So it was for two of us. I'm glad I didn't give it up because, like I said, now it's one of my very favorite things to do again and it allows me to do what I really want to do, which is do the entire stone arch and also the keystone in the middle, and then that's the key. So that's the answer.
Speaker 2:I almost gave up rhinoplasty. Wow, I didn't know that. That's pretty interesting, which makes sense At some point. Things get so, become so routine that once it's not a challenge anymore. And it's interesting that you say that about rhinoplasty.
Speaker 2:Personally, I feel every rhinoplasty case is a challenge with itself, not technically, so you're mentioning the technical aspect of it. For me, the challenging aspect is more the patient management. So when I do rhinoplasty, 90% of my effort goes into the preoperative phase and truly trying to understand what is it that the patient is envisioning. People say, oh, I want a natural nose, I want this nose. They might mean one thing, you might interpret another thing, and that's to me, the big challenge for me, going to the operating room I need to have a clear bullseye and I need to clearly understand what the patients mean when they say something. So I can because I know technically I can deliver it. Like I said, technically at some point it's not a challenge anymore, it's just a process. But the biggest challenge I feel in rhinoplasty more so in anything else, like the aging phase, for example is knowing what the patient wants, is making that designer nose that the patient wants, as opposed to having a signature nose that you put on every single phase. So that's the part.
Speaker 2:The interpersonal aspect is what challenges, what still gives me a lot of joy, especially after the fact, when the nose is done and the patient looks at it and absolutely loves it and says this is exactly what I wanted. And so that joy that I get personally, that dopamine release that I get, that's the part that I enjoy with rhinoplasty and for me I don't think it's ever going to get boring. But I hear you from technical aspects. Obviously at some point it's not a challenge anymore, which is a very steep learning curve. I don't know how it was for you.
Speaker 2:For me it was a very steep learning curve. But to the aging phase, now you're an absolute expert in a deep playing face and neck lift and to the point that you're actually now a brand, and in medical school, obviously, we weren't taught anything about branding, marketing or business for that matter. Now I don't think that you have a business degree of some sort no, right, so there's very few of us that have it, but you have established yourself as a very successful brand that is known internationally. Was that a coincidence? Is that something that you had planned, anticipated? If so, what strategies did you implement and if not, at what point did you realize that it's actually happening or it's happened before you even realized it?
Speaker 1:That's a good question. A couple of things you mentioned earlier on. I can't remember what it was about, how I came to be in this field with facial plasms and how the evolution was. One of the things I didn't mention was I think this is a field where personality matters and where ability to speak to people matters. You were just talking about your patient manager, priya Pankaj. With Rhino Plasty I did a lot of performing in college and that kind of stuff. Being comfortable talking to people and interacting with people and telling the story and guiding the story and guiding the dialogue and guiding the person's mental journey is part of what we do. I think that's another innate skill that if you're going to be super successful in this field.
Speaker 1:I'm more introverted in my private life. We'll go to school, function and I can't wait to get out of there. Well, because all day you're on, all day. At some point you just want to go home and sit with your cat. I'll tell you. I remember in December of 1998 or January of 1999, I was sitting at Mass General Hospital. I was the intern on the urology service and I registered the domain name AvniDayspawcom. I registered that domain name. Avni is my wife's first name. I registered AvniDayspawcom in 1999. That was five years before I would then finish surgical training.
Speaker 2:Can you take it, because I knew at some point. How did you know then?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I knew at some point that I would want a med spa that I could split off as a separate entity.
Speaker 2:This is very interesting to me because med spas weren't a big thing back then as an intern. Did you know a med spa? How did you even?
Speaker 1:I just thought, coming, I knew non-surgical aesthetics was going to continue to grow. I also knew that if it was niac-niac everything you talked about me being a brand it's great that when I retire the brand becomes valueless. That was five years before I finished training. I registered that domain name. At that point it was AvniDayspaw. We've since suddenly rebranded it AvniDermspaw, but the concept is the same. That I did in 1999. Finished fellowship in 2004. By 2010, I had moved into our main building now and actually opened up AvniDermspaw. That was 11 years after the domain name was registered. That piece of the business now has 17 providers, about 40 total employees on that side of the business. It functions totally independently and is a totally different business unit. That was one of the things that's upcoming as far as branding my surgical piece.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you two interesting things. My mentor, alvin Glassgold, the rhinoplasty guy. I was allowed to sit in on all of their meetings, their advertising meetings or whatever. At that time they were doing newspaper ads. He I remember him saying at a meeting no one reads the words on these newspaper ads. He was talking to the designer and upset with her a little bit because it was lots of text and he's like, make the pictures bigger. All they want to see is a before and after picture. They're not reading anything that you put on there, just I want to before picture, after picture.
Speaker 2:That's early social media man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that was print advertising in 2003 is what we're relating to here. So that really stuck with me and so pre-social. The only advertising I did is I did billboards in St Louis and I did the Alvin model. They had a big before picture next to a big after picture and three words either nose by Niac or neck by Niac, and that's all. The billboards had two picks, three words, and there is a thing called a long tail keyword with Google, which is when you sit down in front of your Google search box and you start typing, Google will try to guess what you're. It's going to complete what you are searching for ahead of you based upon the behavior of others, and so what it's what it's suggesting to your what's called long tail keywords. These are not things you can buy. It's not. It's not buying a keyword or buying a search term. It's Google trying to auto complete your typing as you go. That's called a long tail keyword.
Speaker 1:And so I started putting those bill, those billboards, up around 2006, 2007, something like that. I really just had those words on the nose by Niac or neck by Niac, with pictures. They weren't on my social, cause it didn't have social. They weren't on my print ads, cause I didn't have print ads, they were solely on those billboards and that's. People went home and typed those phrases into Google to figure out how to get a hold of me.
Speaker 1:That it changed Google's long tail keyword behavior. So you could try it now you sit down in front of your browser, you type nose by or neck by and if not, the very first will be one of the first few things that will complete for you will be Niac. So that was kind of branding at that stage to get everyone in my town, If I think if they're thinking about no surgery or neck surgery, it should be in the front of their mind. And then when social came out, it was just a whole different, a whole different. So it was social came out. My big push was those two phrases nose by Niac and neck by Niac. They carried them over from my billboard days and I started really pushing deep, neck lift really hard. I think I'm one of the first people that really pushed. I technically have a trademark on the name deep neck.
Speaker 1:Do you know what?
Speaker 2:year that was. What year was it the? What year? What the trademark?
Speaker 1:I think the trademark was about five years ago. I don't enforce it cause I think it would be. It would be divisive and it would be bad. But if you look up for the US patent trademark, deep neck lift is technically my trademark, but about two or three years before that is when I really started pushing that.
Speaker 2:So it's deep neck lift, not deep neck lift, not deep plain neck lift right, Just deep neck lift.
Speaker 1:It's good to know. I'll make sure.
Speaker 2:I don't think I've ever used it, because usually I use.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't care, I don't again, I don't enforce it. I'm just telling you. You're just asking about the marketing, the business thing, the branding, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Great question brings me to another point. Now, you're so good on social media and, as someone that gets paid to educate others on how to build a social media brand, like our colleagues, I'm fascinated by that topic and I was actually a late boomer when it came to social media. I actually not only didn't see it coming, but I didn't even see it when it was there. And, just so you know, I really stumbled upon it in late 2018, which is pretty late. Until then, I actually I just had a Facebook account and I had an Instagram account that I never even opened. So when my phone updated, the app wasn't even uploaded and I just didn't understand the power of it. What year did you get on social media and what was your social media journey? Did you have someone that advised you, suggested it, or is it someone with your, as I can tell from what you just said, with billboards and stuff, you just have this mind, this brain, of the power of branding and marketing. So how did you stumble on it and what year was that?
Speaker 1:by the way, I think it was probably 16 or 17, 16 maybe, when we started our social media pages and I had what made you decide to go on it? I go into national meetings and hearing it in the business tracks, hearing people talk about that. That was going to be where patients found us and mentioned all of you know. At the beginning was like yes, or. And then you started hearing that more and more and like okay, maybe that's real, you know, probably 16, maybe even 15.
Speaker 1:I would say 16 if I had to go. I had five social media managers and sequences, actually four people. One of them took two different tries at it over the span of 2016 through about 2020. So I had five different people, four different people, and that's the through five iteration, and it just never took off. What were they doing for you? Well, so you know, they would film content, they would put before and afters together, they would write content, they would film procedures, they would edit the videos. All the things that I'm doing for myself right now.
Speaker 2:And, in your opinion, why did that not work? Because this is very fascinating for me. What you're saying is absolutely right. It's just that so many people don't understand the importance of what you're about to say and what you just said, so I want the audience really to listen carefully, because this is this, is it what we're about to talk? This is really the secret. So and it's very interesting To my knowledge, I think there are very few of our colleagues actually manage everything themselves like you do, and so you went through that evolution. I never had someone manage it for me and then realized they it's just not going to work. But so you had. So I want you to share with us why you feel it didn't work and what point did you make decision to just do it yourself?
Speaker 1:So there's a. There's a secondary reason and a primary reason. The secondary reason that it didn't work is that, no matter how good the idea I had was, it was hard for me to describe it to them in a way that I thought the execution was what I wanted it to be. So that would be kind of the technical reason it didn't work. I might come up with an idea or a concept and by the time I described it to them and we did revision and revision, and revision, and then it came back to me. It was not quite what I wanted, but we'd spent a lot of time on it and we'd put out a product that wasn't exactly to. You were talking about brand. There's kind of just your own mental brand. It wasn't exactly my voice, you know, and so Not authentic, it was all right it's.
Speaker 2:The word here is authenticity. I think the difference between a generically produced or post-produced content is it kind of lacks authenticity because we communicate a certain way with our patients or community and that communication is because of who we are and it's hard for someone else to do that and, like you said, you can tell someone how you want it. It's never going to come out the same way you wanted to come out. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's going to be number two. So number one was more kind of the production itself. It was clear that every meal was cooked by a different chef and they never really were cohesive and the quality wasn't what I wanted it to be. The second again is then the personal connection. So the message is in number one. It wasn't delivered quite as well.
Speaker 1:But then number two, when it's the provider themselves, when it's the chef himself facing the camera, talking about the food, explaining how it makes it, it's much different than when one of the head waiters runs around talking about the chef and the food and the chef is a side player. And so, that said, the secondary and the secondary was that we can never get the production exactly the way I wish it would be. But the primary is if I'm the one that the person is interacting with, it is tremendously more sticky than if they're interacting with someone on my behalf and I'm a third party in the room. So it has to be a two-party interaction. That's the key. It's the individual on the screen and the individual on the camera. Two parties, not three.
Speaker 2:So how much do you think this influence your brand and the growth thereof?
Speaker 1:How much the making of a two-party interaction?
Speaker 2:No, the change you made once you decided to basically manage your own social media and directly communicate to your audience, like you are the one that communicates. That was nine days, yeah, so how much do you? Yeah, it was nine days. How much did it influence your brand and then affect your business? I mean, I'm talking about pure ROI From time.
Speaker 1:Because it takes your time right.
Speaker 2:So you invest the time, so you put in the time you put in the reps. I mean, it's not easy. So for those of you who are listening, it's not easy to do it all yourself because you have to allocate a time. The good news is you can do it ad hoc, you can do it spontaneously. I have a conversation with a patient and it's a very commonly occurring topic. I'm like you know what? I'm just going to make a post about it, and you get better at it, you get faster, you can do something within five to 10 minutes. You don't have to do this whole production, work on it for a whole week and then it's At the end of the day, it ends up being half-assed anyways. So how did it affect your brand once you took over yourself? And if you were to do it again, what advice would you give others that are in the same struggling with it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'd say that the time investment that you're referring to or alluding to or directly speaking about is the ROS immeasurable. So, one people think of social media a lot as a patient recruitment tool, and that it is, but that's just one of the things that it does. Two, it helps people. Most of the people that watch my content are never, ever, going to come see me in real life, so you're kind of doing a public service in a lot of ways. Three, even when they, let's say, they've been watching my content for a while, I try to put on genuinely valuable content. We do some fun stuff too. You want to show some personality too, but most of my content is not just goofy. I don't see a whole lot of value in that. So most of my content is centered around topics that I think are actually valuable for the patients to know, ideally when they're having surgery with me or just in general. What that does, then, is the patient, by the time they contact me, already understands things in a way that I think is accurate. They're being pre-coached by me before they come in and talk to me, and so I probably put an hour and a half a day of work on social media. That saves my screeners and consult coordinators probably 20 or 30 hours a day when they're talking to the leads coming in because they already know everything.
Speaker 1:When the person that makes it to the consult stage, they're waiting for me to stop talking most of the time because they've heard everything that I've said. And then we also have a lot of things that are revolving around complications and revolving around aftercare and that kind of stuff. So it even helps my post-op team because someone's got some lower eyelid malposition or impending lower eyelid malposition or they need to tape and splint their nose after the rhinoplasty, that kind of stuff. I've got videos and all that, and so the post-op group team will demonstrate and teach them and then they'll send them a link to the video. They can watch as many times as they want and review it at home. And so content is for content's sake, it's for recruitment's sake, it's for pre-educating the consult's sake, it's for continuing to guide the post-operative patient's sake. So that hour and a half probably plays out as saving between my pre-operative people, myself in the consultation and in the post-operative team. It probably saves 20 or 30 hours of effort per day, 100% effort per day.
Speaker 2:It's like you put in the work beforehand, but then in the long run it saves not only you time but also the team. But, most importantly, when the patient arrives at your office, by the time that they arrive, they're already so informed. I see the same thing. I just what was it? Monday or Tuesday early this week I had a patient come in. You know. You say hi, I'm such and such. I know who you are. I'm so excited that I finally got here. By the way, you don't have to tell me anything about the procedure. I'm watching all your videos. I just need you to tell me if I'm a candidate. I was like, okay, that's it. That was fast and that's exactly to the point what you're saying it.
Speaker 2:But it starts with the content. You have this amazing natural ability and I love when you use analogies. You know the analogies in a descriptive way, that you communicate some very complex issues and make it just simple to understand. That's talent. You can't learn it. You can learn it by listening to Mike Nyak and then kind of take pointers out. But you know, I think it starts with the ability to communicate, to break down a complex issue into very simple words that any layman would understand, and I think our staff also benefits immensely from that, because you're essentially educating your staff as well. You know, and we always don't we don't always know how much our staff understands and how much they don't, but it's a library, it's a digital library for the staff as well as patients, for anyone, and for doctors all over the world. So really big kudos to all the work you put in.
Speaker 2:I learned so much. Your channel is one of my favorites because I learned actually a lot about how to communicate and also a lot of interesting facts that I didn't know, and so it's fantastic. That's why I love social media and I think it's a great way to communicate. And with that, where do you see the future? Now, with AI technology like chat, gpt, etc. Have you played around with it? How? If so, how have you integrated it, that type of technology, into your everyday life practice and what do you think of it? Where's the future?
Speaker 1:That's a good question. I haven't yet played around with it in a great deal beyond what all of us have. You know, going into Dolly or mid-journey and describing something and seeing what pops out, or you know sitting down and chatting GPT and having a conversation with it I don't yet know. I do know that in the rest of medicine I feel like in, I think, diagnostic medicine's got a 10-year horizon. You know, I think within 10 years, 90% of things that you go to see a doctor for now are going to be, you know, labbed and scanned and it's going to come out through an algorithm and then the diagnosis and treatment plan is going to come out of a different window and someone's going to sign it because they've got to sue someone in case it goes bad.
Speaker 1:But most of diagnostic medicine, I think in the 10-year horizon is going to be AI. Truthfully, I also think in the 50-year horizon most of interventional therapeutic medicine is going to be AI, slash, robotic. You know colonoscopy is going to be something that you know they lay you down for and they put the robot on there and the robot does everything from snaking the track to identifying the lesion, to taking a little biopsy, to literally end-to-end but not bump. I think that's going to be in the 50-year horizon and, ironically, I think, where we live in our field with aesthetics and beauty and all the interpersonal things we've just discussed, I think we're going to be the last field in medicine to be meaningfully threatened by AI. That's just. That's my belief.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you think we get to live to see it like a robotic AI.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I think I think. Well, I mean just think of, I mean, even before AI has really been a phrase. You know, liquid prep, pap smears and radiograms. They've been, they've been machine read for 10 years now. You know that's, that's and with some human oversight. But I do think we will live to see in the diagnostic realm. You know, the vast majority, the vast majority of it, I think, is going to be AI Therapeutic. I'm not sure you and I will live long enough to see all the therapeutic stuff feel, but it's going to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's fascinating. I think we live in it.
Speaker 1:But again I think yeah.
Speaker 1:I think what we do, though, because it does involve so much teasing out what exactly the person wants, and there's so much personality in it, there's so much style in it and there's back to you know, say, rhinoplasty there's so many things that it humbles you in the middle of surgery that it's hard to have something programmed for every one of those moments. I think I think our field is interesting. Maybe from a marketing standpoint AI is going to make a big difference in it, but from an execution standpoint, I think I think we are among the most safe in in so far as surgeons go.
Speaker 2:So, Mike, very fascinating. We're coming to the end of our podcast. Now I have some questions. Those are just fast Q and A questions, some fun ones. So first one if you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be? Let's do Da Vinci, Okay.
Speaker 1:Leonardo Da Vinci, I get that.
Speaker 2:What's the movie you can watch over and over without getting tired of it Superbad, superbad. Okay. If you were a superhero, what would your superpower be other than a deep neck? Reversing time, oh, wow, okay. If you could teleport to any city in the world right now, where would you go?
Speaker 1:Samar and Antarctica.
Speaker 2:Okay, wow, you like the cold. If you had to survive a zombie apocalypse, which three items would you take with you?
Speaker 1:I don't know something to start fire. I suppose something to carry water, and a good book?
Speaker 2:Okay, good. What's the strangest food you've ever tried and liked?
Speaker 1:The fermented shark in Iceland. Oh my God, it sounds awful, very ammoniated, fermented shark oh my God, that sounds awful.
Speaker 2:It's fermented shark, not for everybody. Yeah, I wouldn't even have heard of it. If you could have a theme song play every time you entered the room, what would it be? So maybe we'll do it at the next meeting for you, these are tough.
Speaker 1:These are tough.
Speaker 2:Let's call it Mine would be Rocky Rocky.
Speaker 1:All right, let's do something by Guns N' Roses. Let's do Scar tissue. Okay, that's good.
Speaker 2:I like that. I'll get in the room.
Speaker 1:I'll get in the room, my chili peppers, my chili peppers. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, let's do that. That would be ironic. That's a bad one to walk in the operating with, but whatever.
Speaker 2:Okay, last one. If aliens landed on Earth tomorrow and you were the first human they met, what's the one thing you would tell them about humanity?
Speaker 1:Don't trust the first thing you hear out of everyone's mouth and nothing on social media.
Speaker 2:That's a good one. And last one I always ask my guest as a last question. Is there any questions I should have asked you and that I didn't?
Speaker 1:No, I think it was a comprehensive interview and I'm sorry that these last few questions were. I always have a hard time with the super little questions what's your favorite? What's the best? What's the single?
Speaker 2:My brain doesn't work as well that way, so I apologize. I find that always to be a problem with very cerebral people. When you're very cerebral, you like to think before you give an answer, and that's the reason. Thank you again and have an amazing Sunday and talk to you soon, buddy.
Speaker 1:Great Thanks for having me on. Make sure to look me up when you're here, thank you. Thank you, mike.
Speaker 2:All right episode's over. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with the one and only Dr Mike Nyak from San Luis, Missouri, and please don't forget to leave me a review on Apple Podcasts or any outlet that you listened to this podcast Until next time, bye-bye.