Things They Don’t Teach You in Medical School with Dr. Carrie Houssock

Announcer (00:06):
You are listening to the Aesthetically Speaking podcast presented by Nextech.

Tyler Terry (00:11):
Hey guys, welcome back to the Aesthetically Speaking podcast presented by Nextech. I'm your host, Tyler Terry, and we are coming at you live from beautiful Austin, Texas. We are at the Aesthetic MEET, which is formerly known as ASAPS, A-S-A-P-S. This is the Aesthetic Society, or sorry, the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Today I have a very special guest. Her name is Dr. Carrie Houssock. She's from Baltimore. And Dr. Houssock, I'm super excited to ask you a lot of questions today, get to know you and have some fun. Welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Houssock (00:49):
I cannot wait. Let's go.

Tyler Terry (00:51):
Let's go. Let's go. So tell me a little bit about yourself.

Dr. Houssock (00:55):
So I am a purely aesthetic plastic surgeon right outside of Baltimore. I'm born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, but I found myself down in Baltimore for training, did my training at Hopkins, and then the rest is kind of history. I fell in love and stayed there.

Tyler Terry (01:11):
So what made you choose aesthetics?

Dr. Houssock (01:13):
It, it's an evolution. I think a lot of people in medicine go through this evolution of discovering yourself in medical school and then residency. And I think for me, and probably for a lot of plastic surgeons, we find ourselves in aesthetics because of the art of it. Obviously, we all love medicine, it's why we became doctors and then surgeons, but there's something very artistic and beautiful about aesthetics and so some of us kind of take to that.

Tyler Terry (01:37):
Yeah, yeah. So something that I saw when I was learning about you doing some research is that your team is all female. Tell me a little bit about that and what made you decide to have an all female team?

Dr. Houssock (01:46):
That was just honestly by accident. When I joined the practice before it was mine, it was run by a male plastic surgeon. He had it for 30 some years and he was the one male and then his team was female. And then when he retired and I took over the practice, it kind of just evolved into an all female practice. Certainly not on purpose. Doesn't mean that we wouldn't at some point have a male in our practice, but it is currently all female.

Tyler Terry (02:12):
Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about purchasing the practice and what that was like and why you decided to purchase the practice instead of starting from scratch.

Dr. Houssock (02:22):
So I think this is one of those kind of hot topics when you're out in the world kind of trying to figure out what you're going to do after training and you have a couple choices. You can join a hospital-based practice, you can hang up your shingle and start and do your own thing, or you can hopefully find an amazing practice that already has established and join it and then do what I did, which I would argue is obviously I think it's the best way, but it, it's not very common, I would say. And so for me, I met Dr. Vogel when I was in training at Hopkins and we got to know each other. And he was at that stage in his career where he thought, well, I'm getting to the next last few years where I might want to retire. And so he thought it would be a great transition time and I came into the practice and we melded really well and ultimately knew that our ultimate goal would be to transfer ownership. And that sounds easy, but it's not. And I think we had something very special where he was able to build me up as my own practitioner while he also slowed down. And then to make that transition, you never really know. I mean a practice that has been present for 30 years with somebody else at the helm, you don't know what's going to really happen there. Are patients going to just continue to come over? And we really successively were able to do that. It's one of those things that I don't take for granted. And because of it, I could kind of ride the coat tails of a beautiful practice and then just continue to make it better.

Tyler Terry (03:50):
Yeah. What was it like coming into the office that first day when it was just you? He was no longer there. You maybe just got your coffee in the morning or whatever your daily routine is maybe worked out and you're like, I'm going to the office for the first time and it's just me. This is my practice.

Dr. Houssock (04:02):
Yeah, it's a little wild. I mean, it's an amazing feeling, but it's also obviously a little daunting. But we have an amazing team. So not just that practice is not just Dr. Houssock, right? It's JEV plastic surgery. And so we have an amazing team. One of them is standing right here next to me, and she's the director of the practice. And because I had such a great team, I never felt like I was alone. I knew that I had people who had my back, and we really have continued to be able to grow because of that teamwork that we have.

Tyler Terry (04:30):
So talk to us a little bit about your approach and how it's changed in regards to practice management and how it's evolved since becoming the owner back in 2020. How have things changed over the last five years?

Dr. Houssock (04:42):
So I think one of the most important things when it comes to owning a practice as a physician is that we don't learn how to be business owners in medical school. That is not something that comes up ever. I mean, there's no business and medicine course. There really isn't. And it's kind of shocking when I say it out of all the years that we're in training, why is there none of that and there isn't?

(05:04):
So we all come out into the world with little to no business experience. And so there's been a lot of evolution in the sense that when I decided to buy the practice, it was absolutely a team effort of pooling in people smarter than me in the financial world to tell me what is the best way to do that. So even to this day, the business is not run just by me. Yes, I'm the owner of the business and the practice, I'm the surgeon as well, but I have a phenomenal financial team that helps me with that. And I think that was the smartest thing, is being humble enough to say, this isn't my thing. And then over the years I would say that's the financial side of owning a business. The other part of it is just running it to be a very positive place for both your employees and the patients coming in. And I think that's one of those situations where it was very simple for me. I created an environment that I would want to work in, and I created an environment where I would want to be a patient. And so far that's worked. It's very simple.

Tyler Terry (06:06):
What a great combination.

Dr. Houssock (06:08):
Yeah, what would I want? And if that's the case, what would make me happy to walk in every day? And that's what we do. So far so good.

Tyler Terry (06:15):
Yeah. So this is my first time meeting you and I could tell that you were big on culture. What are you doing with your staff to keep that culture rising to the top and to make sure that it is everybody's dream job, really?

Dr. Houssock (06:28):
So it's funny, when I remember, and Dr. Vogel was a great surgeon and he was also a great business owner, but we were very different. And I remember when I first started working, I would be talking with the girls offline when in between patients would be talking about kind of just basic stuff, maybe our shoes, something like that. And I remember Dr. Vogel saying, you are not their friend. You are their surgeon. And I remember thinking, Ugh, I get that, but also we all have to get together and get along. So I think every day I try to make a balance of that, of they still know that I am the surgeon, they still know that I am the employer. But at the same time, we are able to have an environment where we feel comfortable. And I think for the most part, that works. Obviously nothing is ever perfect. And the one thing I have to battle probably that maybe Dr. Vogel didn't was we can sometimes get too comfortable, but that's rare. And when that happens, we're all kind of able to pull it back in. Does that make sense?

Tyler Terry (07:29):
Yeah. And reset. I like that. I like that. That's a great explanation. If you could go back five years ago and do it differently, is there anything that you would change?

Dr. Houssock (07:38):
I hate to say no, right? There's always things that you mess up no matter what throughout any career. And I think they've all kind of brought me to this moment, and I'm so unbelievably happy with where we are in the business that it's hard for me to say that even the mistakes weren't good. How about this? How don't buy a practice eight weeks before a pandemic comes?

Tyler Terry (08:03):
Yeah. How was that?

Dr. Houssock (08:05):
So that was shocking to say the least.

Tyler Terry (08:08):
What was your mindset? You just bought the practice and COVID hits.

Dr. Houssock (08:12):
So eerily, this could be the surgeon in me, so you would think I would've lost it. Right. Here I am. I just invested a lot to buy a huge, beautiful practice. And truly eight weeks later, we were told we had to shut down and we were shut down for eight weeks. And obviously not a great time. I'm just starting it out. It's rough. Every minute counts when a business is closed. But I will tell you it was eerily calm because I literally said, well, there's literally zero I can do about this, and if we make it through this, we're going to make it through anything. Literally talk about that. And we did and we thrived. And so we've pivoted, and Danielle, the director and myself and my nurse practitioner, a lot of online stuff, just like everybody else, we started selling our skincare virtually. We were sending packages to people's houses so that they could take care of themselves while they were away from us. We were doing all kinds of specials and getting things ready. We were also painting and preparing the place. We had time, so we updated the place. So we just literally took lemons and made lemonade and we just persevered. And then just a lot of other practices, something none of us saw coming. We had a boom after. And that just kind of got us rolling again because, yeah, we were able to do it.

Tyler Terry (09:27):
Well deserved too.

Dr. Houssock (09:29):
Scary. Scary.

Tyler Terry (09:30):
Oh geez. So let's talk a little bit about your favorite procedures. What are your favorite procedures or services? Could be a bunch, could be one.

Dr. Houssock (09:40):
God. So I am a purely aesthetic plastic surgeon, but I am by trade originally a general surgeon. So before I went into practice, I kind of operated on the whole body. And so I love that. And so I'm supposed to say my favorite is the one I'm doing right now. My favorite surgery is the one that I'm performing right this second. And in some ways I think that I love that right now I do head to toe, so I do aesthetic hair restoration. I do breast and body, I do surgical face. I'm not a super specialist. I do love all of it. And I would quite honestly say my training was so long that I can be good at all of that. I think these days a lot of people are super, super specializing, but I have so much training that I really truly competently feel like we do a great job on all of it. I really love breast and body. I love the patient population. They resonate with me and I really enjoy those cases. So if you made me choose, I would probably say breast and body are my favorite, but you're not allowed to record that.

Tyler Terry (10:43):
Yeah, I'll take that out. Let's talk about patient financing. What percentage of your patients do you think use patient financing?

Dr. Houssock (10:51):
This would be a Danielle question, but we do offer multiple forms of financing, and I would say maybe 25 to 30% of them use financing. I mean, depending on what it is. And we don't really offer a whole, we've been talking about this lately too. Do you offer cash discounts, all of that? It's something that we've never done, but I guess it's a good topic. But I would say probably about a third of our patients do use financing and the options are really great. They really are.

Tyler Terry (11:26):
So when looking at that, do you offer it for all the different services that are a little more high ticket?

Dr. Houssock (11:32):
Really for anything. They can use it for their Botox if they want to.

Tyler Terry (11:36):
That's great.

Dr. Houssock (11:36):
So we do offer financing for anything that we provide. Yep.

Tyler Terry (11:39):
Okay. Do you feel like it helps them make that decision and move forward quicker? Just feeling more confident like, oh, okay, I actually can get it done.

Dr. Houssock (11:45):
I think so mean it depends on your patient population. I do think that it allows what we do to be more accessible to more people, which of course is wonderful. Not everybody just has cash laying around. Most people do not. And not even that, maybe they don't want to invest it all at once. And so having the ability to be able to finance it and in many times with no interest is very attractive to patients. They can pay it off over time. Yeah.

Tyler Terry (12:10):
So I'm excited to ask you this question. What's your approach with patient education?

Dr. Houssock (12:15):
We do a ton of it, probably to the point where, I don't know if it's such a thing, but they probably get sick of us. So day of consultation, we spend a lot of time. Danielle and I are in the room together always. I never go in a room without a patient, by myself with a patient. So it's me and Danielle in the room just to start, get a feel for the patient. They get to know us. And then once I do the surgical side of it, I explain extensively what they can expect, what I think they need. I do leave the room at that point, the patient's getting dressed, and then Danielle kind of sits down for another 20, 30 minutes and goes over that business side of it. Okay, now that we've done the surgical side, here's what you can expect. This is the financial side of it. This is what happens if you decide to book, what you need and what we'll provide for you and what you need to do to get a preoperative assessment.

(13:01):
So she spends another amount of time. Then once they book, they have basic access to Danielle for an extended period of time right up through the surgery. My nurses call every patient at four weeks before surgery, two weeks before surgery, and the night before surgery. I call patients the night of surgery. So I'm not kidding.

Tyler Terry (13:21):
Very extensive.

Dr. Houssock (13:21):
Probably sick of us by the time. If nothing else, they're like, they become part of the family because we really do feel that so much of that education will translate to a better outcome and lower complication rates if they're really aware of what's going to happen.

Tyler Terry (13:37):
Yeah. So what medium of content are you feeding to the patient? Is are they watching anything before you come in? Are they watching things before they come into the practice? Are you spending a lot of time talking with them and maybe drawing on their photos? What are you doing there?

Dr. Houssock (13:50):
A combination. So a lot of talking, a lot of physical assessment. They do get access to my podcast. So we do a podcast where we do oftentimes talk about a special specific procedure at each episode. And so Danielle might send the breast augmentation patient our podcast.

Tyler Terry (14:08):
Wow.

Dr. Houssock (14:09):
So they get to know, this is before they even meet us, so they get to meet us, number one. Number two, they've learned a little bit and they come in and they're not just kind of blasted with information. Some of it they've already heard before in a different medium. So we do that. I have a social media that we always encourage people to follow because again, they get to know me. One of the scariest thing about getting surgery, it doesn't matter what kind of surgery we're talking about, is getting to know the surgeon. It can be scary and daunting. Who are they? What are they going to do? I'm going to be asleep, so there's something nice about getting to know me, but before they even step in the door. And then as far as photos, we do, we use an iPad. We basically create PowerPoint kind of presentations. We use those to educate our patients as well. And so they can see before and afters, they see kind of photos about post-surgical things. So I would say we do a little bit of everything. That's what I would say.

Tyler Terry (15:02):
I can't tell you how cool it is that you're using your podcast to educate patients. It's the first time I've heard a surgeon tell me that that's what they're doing, and that's the medium that they're sending to patients. And we know that the majority of patients listen to some form of podcast.

Dr. Houssock (15:16):
Totally.

Tyler Terry (15:17):
And if they don't have time to watch a video, sometimes even if you sent me a video, I almost feel like, oh, there must be something that I need to watch. Even if you sent me your podcast on a video, be like, ah, you need to watch it. Sometimes you'll listen to it on YouTube, right?

Dr. Houssock (15:29):
Totally.

Tyler Terry (15:29):
But if you said a podcast, it's easier for them to say, oh, I could fit this in when I'm driving my kids to school.

Dr. Houssock (15:33):
A hundred percent. Everybody's got that little bit of time. You could listen to it while you're on a run, any way you want to do it, and then they kind of get to know us.

Tyler Terry (15:40):
I love that. I think that's a future of patient education.

Dr. Houssock (15:43):
Yeahs a huge part of it. At least it's a new part of it for us.

Tyler Terry (15:46):
A new part. It's a new medium. It's a new lane. First time I've ever heard of any surgeon doing that, and I think it's super next level. I know I would appreciate it personally to say, wow, I can listen to this and I'll get to know her

Dr. Houssock (15:57):
Yeah.

Tyler Terry (15:57):
Follow you on Instagram, see what you like to do as well. But I love that. Very, very cool. Let's talk about photography a little bit. How important are photos to your practice?

Dr. Houssock (16:05):
I mean, I'm a plastic surgeon, so it's everything. And in my, I'm still the generation where we were being taught that you needed to have a professional camera with all the lenses and all of that and walk around with this huge camera. But I will tell you, I never became that person because I'm also the generation of the iPhone.

(16:23):
God forbid any actual professional photographers are listening right now because they're probably going to roll over. But genuinely, the photos are so good now with an iPhone that I don't feel the need to utilize a legit camera anymore. And so I can't even tell you. So patients pre-op pull up, I throw on, I have my iPhone in my hand, I log into Nextech, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom on my photos automatically uploaded, good to go. I don't even have to think about it. And then obviously moving forward, as I see the patients every time we see them, boom, boom, boom, right into their right in, right in. And it's so easy to do and we have our way of making them the perfect angle and all of that stuff. We actually put stickers up. They're ridiculous stickers that say things like, if life gives you lemons, we can give you melons.

Tyler Terry (17:12):
Oh, I like it. I like it. That's fun.

Dr. Houssock (17:13):
Yeah. So they're all around the room to make them perfect. And so I get my views.

Tyler Terry (17:18):
It's important to get those angles. A lot of times people only take one photo. And it's like, no, you need left. Left three quarters front, right quarters, right. And different cadences depending on the procedure.

Dr. Houssock (17:29):
Totally.

Tyler Terry (17:29):
Sometimes for I'm sure liposuction, you might want to get the back.

Dr. Houssock (17:33):
You got it, right. Same thing with hair, right? So it's like the same idea. I need to see 45 degrees looking down. I need to look left, look right. And so we get all those perfectly and yeah. I mean there's no plastic surgeon that ain't taking photos, that's for sure.

Tyler Terry (17:45):
Yes.

Dr. Houssock (17:46):
There's never enough photos.

Tyler Terry (17:47):
Never. Yes. Looking at the future of aesthetics, what are you most excited about? I mean, we're here at one of the best, I think it's the best plastic surgery conference in the world, in my opinion. What are you most excited about over the next five to 10 years?

Dr. Houssock (18:01):
So I think a lot of it, some of the biologics are really cool, and I think there's going to be a lot coming from that. Again, let's go back to hair. I think we are on the forefront of some really cool stuff happening in hair. People talk and joke about hair cloning, but listen, we are really close to it. So I think a lot of it's the biological science of our field is just skyrocketing. The non-surgical side, though I'm a surgeon and listen, love operating, and it better never go away. I don't want AI taking over any of it, but at the same time, there's some really cool non-surgical things that we're doing now, and I think it's so great to incorporate that into your surgical practice. And we do that. We have a huge spa portion of our surgical practice, and it works hand in hand. And I say this all the time. I think these days our nonsurgical, especially when it comes to facial rejuvenation, we're getting so good that I hate to tell all those who love their facelifts. I think our facelift numbers are going to be dropping in the next decade because I think we're so good about the anti-aging side of aesthetics and we're just getting better every day. And some of the upkeep stuff that we do now, I think it's going to keep people out of the, or much to my chagrin, obviously. But at the same time, how cool for patients,

Tyler Terry (19:19):
That's your goal. You don't want them to have to

Dr. Houssock (19:21):
Listen at some point we may all need an operation that if you're interested in something, aesthetics, but if we can hold off and we can get you some amazing results and you can do a really great job of upkeep for longer, why not?

Tyler Terry (19:33):
Yeah.

Dr. Houssock (19:34):
I think that excites me about medicine more than anything, and especially in the aesthetic world for sure.

Tyler Terry (19:40):
I hate to say you're young. You're young, you're up and coming, you're already proven. So I'm excited to ask you this question about AI. It's different if you're maybe in the last 10 years of your career where it's like you've got 30 years ahead of you. So you have a lot of exciting things to come. What are you thinking about AI? You've been through COVID, AI has hit us over the last almost three years now. What are your thoughts?

Dr. Houssock (20:04):
I think I'm most excited maybe about the surgical planning of it all. So I can see AI really working hand in hand with surgeons with surgical planning. We have some of that already where we have programs that can kind of show you what you might look like, that kind of thing. But I think it's more than that. I think it might be as simple as AI can take a photo and really determine at what level you need certain things. Do you need a laser? Do you need, is it time for blepharoplasty? Not that we can't see that and kind of get an overall feel as the surgeon, but surgical planning would be awesome. We use surgical planning like that already in a lot of reconstructive avenues, so why not use it in aesthetics? That would be really cool. I don't know. AI is good for everything in the long run. We're all nervous about it. It just sounds so scary. But it's great for organization, it's great for, I think about patient information for just the safety of patient information. Also, if we want to look at our patient population, let's say we want to study our patient population, AI will be really good at just throwing that data together and getting us some information about our patients and outcomes. So I think there's a lot of ways that we're going to use it, and if you are in denial about it, you're probably going to be in trouble.

Tyler Terry (21:14):
Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about, you bought the practice and you started off with paper and then you transitioned to using a great software platform. How was that like?

Dr. Houssock (21:26):
Yeah, so I had used paper once before in a hospital system when I was in training. A very small community hospital was still on paper, so I wasn't new to paper, but I would tell you, coming from Hopkins, it was quite a shock to go from Epic and this crazy program and then we're back on paper. When you're in a small practice, I would say it's not as crazy maybe, but it certainly isn't effective. Not to mention in some ways, especially in if you're doing Medicare or Medicaid, it's actually really hard to do if you're insurance based. But because we're aesthetic, Dr. Vogel was able to get away with that for a long period of time. That being said, we all knew that that was very short-lived. And so we started searching for an EMR and we started searching in 2020 and knowing we were going to pick one, and we interviewed and tried 'em all and we ended up with Nextech. And ultimately, now I can't imagine life without it, obviously. It just makes things more streamlined. It makes my access so much easier. No longer personally use a computer. I only use an iPad that, that's all I need. My staff, they will use the computer-based forms, but we are all connected in a way that's so organized now that I can't imagine how we did it before. I really can't. Crazy.

Tyler Terry (22:50):
Very crazy. And pretty cool though to see that you shifted the practice from paper. I don't want to say archaic, but it's archaic, right?

Dr. Houssock (22:58):
Yeah.

Tyler Terry (22:59):
To something that's very, very modern, and that was an easy shift to optimize operations and streamline all the different things.

Dr. Houssock (23:05):
For sure.

Tyler Terry (23:06):
I want to talk a little bit about marketing. Now this could be in practice marketing, marketing prior to the patient coming in or post consult, what has been your approach to marketing?

Dr. Houssock (23:17):
So when I first joined, Dr. Vogel had me, he literally said, you're going to take your days off and you're going to start literally driving from dermatologists to dermatologists in the area, introducing yourself, handing out your cards. We're going to put you in the Baltimore magazine with an ad. We are going to have the newspaper have an advertisement. You're also going to go on the daily news and you're going to do Sunday news. And these are the things I was marketing when I first started, and this is 2017, I'll tell you, 100% of those things are no longer the way I market. So I think he was trying to market me the way he had known to do that for the last few decades. And they worked, and that was all they had. I started my Instagram page while I was still in training, and I'm one of the older people in Instagram, meaning that I started it around 2014, 15. And so I kind of grew up while it was being developed a little bit.

Tyler Terry (24:17):
Yeah, it comes easy to you.

Dr. Houssock (24:18):
Yeah, I would say. And these younger kids, they don't know anything different. I watched it develop, but that started from the very beginning. And again, a lot of things happened by accident. Discovered that as I built my Instagram, that really became a way for me to market. It allowed me to be myself, introduce myself to people. And slowly over time, that became honestly the number one way that we market. So social media is number one for sure. We use our podcast to augment that.

(24:51):
We of course have a website with a great group who runs our website and they utilize all of those things together too. But the age of being in a local magazine is kind of over. And the other thing that huge advantage was is that when you look at social media, your reach is worldwide. And I was able to truly get patients from all over the world coming and flying to me to have surgery. Whereas if I was just going to be marketing to the local Baltimore magazine or the local dermatologist, that wasn't going to happen. So it really expands your reach.

Tyler Terry (25:25):
Yeah. That's pretty cool that you went from a successful practice of 30 years who was successful in their marketing approach and was probably innovative in their time, right?

Dr. Houssock (25:33):
Sure, of course.

Tyler Terry (25:34):
The intentions were great to get you on the radio and the Daily news and all these different things, the magazine, amazing, Newsweek. But then you quickly realized, actually, I can have a broader reach and if people like me for this service, this procedure, they're willing to travel.

Dr. Houssock (25:52):
They're willing to travel. We learned that. I mean, people will travel now. I mean they will travel. Travel is doable.

Tyler Terry (25:58):
You don't have to pick your, it sounds like you don't even have to pick where you're settling for your practice based on that's, you can choose, live wherever you want.

Dr. Houssock (26:05):
That's a great point. Actually, that's very true. You think about some of the best surgeons in the world. Some of them are in very unusual places. They're they don't, they're not always in LA and Beverly Hills, they could be somewhere in the middle of nowhere and people will fly or drive to you. So that's definitely true. But I just remembered something as you were chatting about the evolution. Dr. Vogel actually was one of the first people in our area to do a billboard. He told me this story that he was trying to market plastic surgery, which of course to all of us today is like, of course you were. But back then it was kind of very taboo to go marketing medicine. And they actually, at one point he needed to not do it. You can't do it. And this was at the time the area where we were living and it made no sense to them. Well, obviously fast forward everyone markets now, so it's

Tyler Terry (26:55):
He was pushing the envelope.

Dr. Houssock (26:56):
Right? But we're talking not that long of period. This profession has just changed so much in the last 35 years. It's pretty miraculous. But yeah, nowadays, can you imagine not marketing. And some people say, I don't need to market. Well, that's fair. Whatever that means. Everyone's really marketing, whether it's your patients and just referrals, that's marketing. That counts.

Tyler Terry (27:17):
Totally

Dr. Houssock (27:18):
For a lot of people, that's all, it's nice, I've been out long enough now that so much of your marketing is quote free because it really just has to do with what your patients experience and they tell more people, right?

Tyler Terry (27:28):
A hundred percent. Alright, I want to end with talking about your podcast. What made you decide to start your own podcast? You mentioned some pretty innovative ways that you're using it to share episodes with your patients, but again, that's very unique. I would definitely say that less than 10% of plastic surgeons have their own podcasts, probably less than 5%. So what made you want to branch out and do that?

Dr. Houssock (27:48):
I think it was fairly organic for me because I already was using social media to kind of directly talk about issues with patients. Anyway, through my, usually it's like a run-on, usually it's something that gets in my head. I get a passion and I'm boom on my story. And I usually just go through it. I'm like, let's talk about boom. And I just started doing that. And then they would go into my highlights and I would have these educational little snippets. They were never really planned. They were really, truly off the cuff, whatever I was feeling in the moment. Very organic. And so when I met Eva, she had just had her at the time, what was it called? Meet the Doctor. And she's like, Hey, just come over everybody, you can just try it. And she just did a podcast like this. And just to introduce the doctor, I was like, gosh, this feels very much kind of what I've been doing and really cool. And gosh, I would love to do this with, I would really like to do it a little bit more legit. Right?

(28:44):
And so we started it. And the way my podcast works is maybe a little different than others, not sure, but mine is, I run the podcast, but my co-host is usually one of my staff members. So we all hang out anyway. And so we're usually chatting about a topic, and then those topics really become really great educational snippets for patients to learn about the topic and then also learn about us. We have had patients on our podcast, we'll probably expand a little bit, but I really love, they don't really love, my staff had to get used to this, but I really love having my staff members doing it because depending on what we talk about, they also have a passion for it. So we can really go back and forth.

Tyler Terry (29:24):
And you can kind of sense the culture as a patient if you're listening like, Ooh, now I know a little bit about them. Right?

Dr. Houssock (29:29):
Yeah. Not just me, my staff, I consider, I always say that you guys are a little famous too. People know you already, you're not new to them. You're not just some secretary in the front, you're Amanda the receptionist, or Danielle's the director of the practice. People know her really well.

Tyler Terry (29:43):
I love that.

Dr. Houssock (29:44):
So it's not just the surgeon, and really it's not, when you think about what it's like to be a patient in our practice from start to finish, you have a team of people who are taking care of you, but by the end, you really get to know all of us. It's not just me.

Tyler Terry (29:57):
Yeah. I'm a baseball guy, so I thought of this baseball analogy. I'm like, you're the pitcher on the field, and then the rest of your staff, they're your infielders. Your outfielders.

Dr. Houssock (30:06):
Yes. Couldn't do without em.

Tyler Terry (30:07):
You could throw a perfect game or get those 27 outs without the rest of your team

Dr. Houssock (30:11):
No way. No way. Not at all. And I know people always say, oh, I have such an amazing team. Like, no, for real. I don't know how I get so lucky this, I swear to God, Tyler, this is true. Every night I call my patients after their surgery and the first thing they say before I even get to talk is how amazing my staff was that day. Swear to God. And I don't beat my staff into a pulp to get them to do that. They naturally lovingly take care of our patients. And I always say to my patients how lucky we both are, because genuinely, I don't know how I got so lucky that my staff really love their job. You talked about, we started the podcast, you talked about culture. I am so protective of my culture right now where it's so, I love how we work so much that people ask, will we expand someday? And honestly, I get a little bit protective of that because we've got such a great thing going that sometimes growing isn't the answer. Sometimes you have a great thing and that's enough.

Tyler Terry (31:10):
And you just ride it and appreciate it. Savor it.

Dr. Houssock (31:13):
Totally.

Tyler Terry (31:13):
I love that.

Dr. Houssock (31:14):
Totally.

Tyler Terry (31:14):
Just talking to you, and you can listen to any of these episodes. I don't say this, I would love for you to be my surgeon just because I could tell that you care so much about your patients, not to say everybody else, I know everyone cares about their patients, and sometimes you just have to kind of vibe with your surgeon, right?

Dr. Houssock (31:30):
Totally.

Tyler Terry (31:30):
It's just that's why you have your social, that's why you have your podcast. That's why you have those things.

Dr. Houssock (31:34):
Yes.

Tyler Terry (31:35):
And patients, they connect with different surgeons in different ways.

Dr. Houssock (31:38):
They have to vet it right.

Tyler Terry (31:39):
But I'm telling you, I love your approach. I love your approach

Dr. Houssock (31:41):
You're welcome anytime.

Tyler Terry (31:42):
to education. Yeah. Hey, I'm willing to fly out too. Maybe for that next innovative hair surgery if I need it. I, I'm coming out for sure. Well, it's been such a pleasure having you on the show. I appreciate your time. Look forward to building an amazing friendship with you over the years to come. Thank you for being a valued client of ours at Nextech. But I do want to end the show just giving you kind of the last voice of the show to share any final thoughts?

Dr. Houssock (32:06):
Yeah, I think generally speaking, the business of aesthetic medicine is an evolution, and it's been nice to be able to find companies like Nextech that kind of evolve with us. I think being at this meeting is the most important thing we can do in our year for our patients, because you have to continuously evolve. And so we love being here. We love being at the meeting and making our rounds and making sure that we're really on the forefront because our patients deserve that. I don't want them to ever think that what they're getting done in our practice is antiquated. I want to be on the forefront and make sure that we're always given the best care we can.

Tyler Terry (32:44):
Yeah. I love that. Dr. Houssock, it's been such a pleasure having you on the show. And for those of you listening, be sure to check out the show notes for a link to follow Dr. Houssock's podcast. Also, to follow her on social media, all the different channels that she has, and Dr. Houssock, until next time, I really appreciate your time.

Dr. Houssock (33:05):
Thank you so much, Tyler. Thank you. You too.

Tyler Terry (33:08):
Thank you.

Dr. Houssock (33:08):
All right, take care.

Announcer (33:11):
Thanks for listening to Aesthetically Speaking, the podcast where beauty meets business, presented by Nextech. Follow and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. Links to the resources mentioned on this podcast or available in your show notes. For more information about Nextech, visit nextech.com or to learn more about TouchMD, go to touchmd.com. Aesthetically Speaking is a production of The Axis, theaxis.io.