The lesson: take time for yourself! Dr. Paul Nassif and Dr. Bill Portuese deliver 50 years of combined advice on this episode of the Hey Seery podcast.
When I started RealSelf, one of my biggest challenges was that I had zero industry knowledge, no experience with aesthetics (other than braces and having a broken nose straightened), and knew no doctors.
I was very fortunate to have some of my first introductions be to two facial plastic surgeons with now thriving, global practices: Dr. Bill Portuese and Dr. Paul Nassif. I say “fortunate” because both Bill and Paul believed in me and my vision for RealSelf. (Another surgeon I must mention is Grant Stevens in Los Angeles—he was the first to respond to an email sent to him back when my wife volunteered to build content for the site at its inception.)
As the pandemic has forced these very busy surgeons to slow down, I was able to get them together for a Hey Seery show that was a lot of fun, insightful, and safer than previous encounters: last time we all met, Paul shot me in the head with a cork.
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Here are some of the highlights from this episode:
- Beyond the negative, direct impact of the pandemic on practice revenue, Paul has discovered an unexpected and wonderful upside of slowing down. “I will say that if anything, I’ve learned now, retrospectively: work hard—you have to—but then take that little time with your wife, your kids [and] your family, because you never know what can happen.”
- You are as good as your team is Bill’s key learning over his 30-year career. And that’s especially relevant now: “They are watching what you do during bad times, not just what you do during good times….You always have to take care of your employees because they’re the ones that have taken care of me.”
- Both surgeons describe the importance of “springboard platforms,” or catalysts to brand awareness, that enabled their practices to flourish in both good times and bad. For Bill, it was his focus on digital marketing during the great recession, including becoming a content kingpin on RealSelf (he has answered 30,000 questions to date). For Paul, it was his interest in TV, or in his words, “If you want to call it PR media, I love doing it. I’ve been doing it since the beginning of my career.”
Episode snippets:
Listen to the full episode here and subscribe below for weekly Hey Seery podcast episodes.
