The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, Plastic Surgeon Interview

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

Dr. Adam J. Rubinstein, Plastic Surgeon Interview Dr-rubinstein.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks chris voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in be sure to go to youtube.com for just chris voss hit the bell notification button so you can see all the wonderful videos we're doing over there.

You can also go to goodreads.com, Forge Us, Chris Voss, all the amazing groups we have on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places. You can see where the Chris Voss Show is going and what's happening. Today, we have an amazing author. I'm sorry. We have an amazing doctor on the show. His name is Dr. Adam Rubenstein, and he is a board-certified and award-winning plastic surgeon. He has served as the chief of plastic surgery and chief of the Department of Surgery for Jackson North Medical Center in Miami. He specializes in whole-body surgical and non-surgical cosmetic treatments for both men and women.

And he can discuss the latest innovations and procedures that and about common plastic surgery practices to help patients navigate the world of plastic surgery effectively and safely. Adam, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me. There you go. Give us your dot coms or whatever plugs you want to do so people can look you up and find

out more about you on the... It's not hard to find me. You can find me at Instagram at Dr. Rubenstein. That's D-R-U-B-I-N-S-T-E-I-N. Snapchat, same thing, at Dr. Rubenstein. TikTok, at Dr. Rubenstein. There's also an Instagram at Plastic Surgery Truths. That's with an S at the end, plural. At Plastic Surgery Truths, which has all kinds of great information about plastic surgery, Q&A, some interesting things about other doctors and procedures and all kinds of stuff that you can learn from. And of course, my website,

which is www.dr-rubenstein.com. There you go. Welcome to the show. It's certainly an honor to have you. Tell us a little bit about you, your origin story, and what made you want to get into the field of plastic surgery. At a young age, I figured I wanted to be a doctor and just wanted to get some experience. So I went ahead and volunteered in an emergency room. This was in New York. I grew up in New York. And it was Mount Sinai's emergency room in New York. And I was volunteering there for a little while as a high school student.

And a young girl came in. I was on the surgical side. And a young girl came in and had her tip of her finger chopped off in a closing door, a poor girl, maybe eight, nine years old, and she came in with her parents, very worried and frantic, and they had a little piece of the finger in a cup with some gauze in it and some ice and whatnot, so they called the plastic surgery resident down to take a look at it, and he came down and had his loops on with his magnifying glasses and sat down very carefully, each stitch just perfect. I got to watch that whole process. And from seeing that, that's my

personality. If I'm going to do any kind of surgery, I've got that attention to detail. I want it to be perfect just like that every time. That's what hooked me and the rest is history. There you go. There you go. So tell us about your plastic surgery practice and what you specialize in and how you do it. My practice is 95% cosmetic surgery and it's face, breast, body, the whole nine. I like the variety of what I do. We do a lot of... So I'm thinking about having like some plastic surgery where I remove from here on up, like the whole head. Do you do any sort of work like that? I'm just kidding. We can discuss it. That's a one-way trip, buddy. Okay. Maybe I'll just stick with the lobotomy. Maybe we'll go with that. So one of the things we mentioned in your bio, you're an outspoken patient advocate. Tell us about what that means and what that's about for you. Unfortunately, in my business,

there are a lot of people doing the kind of surgery that I do that probably should not be doing the kind of surgery that I do. And that ranges from other doctors that don't have any plastic surgery training down to people who aren't even doctors and people who have no medical training. So it really is a wild west as an industry. And particularly in South Florida, you can make a buck, someone's going to try and do it, and it's not always in the best way. And the old Latin saying, caveat emptor, which is buyer beware. Unfortunately, the buyers don't know how to beware in this business.

It's not so easy to know where to look and what to ask. Keep yourself safe. So even from the beginning, I've gone out of my way and really made a lot of effort, put a lot of time and money and energy into trying to help people know what they need to know in order to make good decisions if they're thinking about having things done. And you've launched some different YouTube accounts, Instagram accounts. There's a hashtag. It's not all the same. Social media campaigns. Tell us a little bit about some of the different things you're doing online to educate people, make them aware of different... The hashtag is not all the same. That is a really fun campaign that we launched because some of the

things that you'll see in here are just ridiculous, really ridiculous, crazy stuff. Like you must've heard the story about concrete being injected into someone's butt and things like that. And there's, I read a story of a patient who was operated on and left for dead on the side of the road after having her surgery inside a pole. You can't make this stuff up. It's so outrageous. It's really nuts. And then there's things that people that should know better that seemingly don't know better doing things that they shouldn't do. So sometimes art imitates life. And I try and poke fun at some of these crazy things that you see. And we have fun with it. But I'll make a video that seems to either juxtaposes how ridiculous that is with what reality should be.

Or sometimes we just go complete satire. And it's fun. They're funny. I hope they're funny. I hope you think they're funny. And we had a good time making them. I think they're funny to watch. And it tries to, in a comedic way, get the message across.

Because most people look at it, and when you see the video, say, oh, my God, who would ever do that? But people do stuff like what I show in my videos, and it's scary. Yeah, I remember the concrete thing. That was crazy, man. Most of my body is created by concrete ice cream, ice cream concrete stuff. I have a reverse. I went to medical school in St. Louis,

and those concretes were all the rage, man, that custard, frozen custard in St. Louis. Oh, that's good stuff right there. That's definitely good stuff right there. And so you've got these social media accounts. You've got this marking. So you're trying to educate people. And then I believe there's like a home program or it's 1-855-NEW-ME-NOW.

Oh, yeah. Tell us a little bit about what that is. NEW-ME-NOW is the latest of our hashtag. It's not all the same program, our campaign. NewMeNow, you should call the number. 1-855-NEWME-NOW. Go ahead and call it and see what's the gag. It's a way to order mail-order plastic surgery.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Dial the number. Tell them what you want. You'll get a box sent to you. Open it up and bam, you've got whatever you want. Oh, wow. So is that like Botox or something?

Or am I going to have to do my own stitching? Listen, I'm telling you, check it out. You should check it out. All right. You'll see it when you look at it, what we're trying to get at. But there's places you can call and it doesn't make a difference if you're 5'1 and 300 pounds or 6'5 and 150 pounds. You're going to be offered the same price for whatever procedure you're asking for. It treats you like you're one size fits all and it's all the same.

And hey, hashtag, it's not all the same. Yeah, yeah. What are some of the misnomers and myths maybe around plastic surgery? Do you want to touch on any of those or maybe things you want to call out in the medical community beyond the concrete things? Or maybe what, do I need Botox? Do I need some of these other things? What are some of the misnomers that maybe are myths that you think of? Well, a great segue because your lead-in is exactly one of them. You don't need anything. Nobody needs any of this. I tell people, I'm not in the business of need. I'm in the business of want. And even beyond that, you may

not really be a good candidate for what you want. If you want something, if there's something you don't like, if it's something you don't feel comfortable with about yourself, that's why we do what we do. And there are safe ways to make things better. And then there are things that might be too risky to do. And there are some things you're just not going to get the result you're looking for, so it's not worth it. And that's why it's so important to go, you know, if you're thinking about having anything done, to go see someone who's well-trained, who's actually board-certified in plastic surgery, which, unfortunately, there's way more people doing these procedures than there are board-certified plastic surgeons. Get a good advice, because it's not so easy. There's a lot of places you can walk in and if the check clears,

you're going to get your procedure. Wow. Whether or not you're a good candidate, whether or not you're healthy enough to have surgery, they got that rubber stamp, bam, you're approved and let's go do surgery. And that's not the way. This is interesting because I see this all the time on Instagram. How do you manage client expectation in the world of, I guess, what's called Insta dysmorphia? Is that the right way? Yeah, it started out, it shows you the evolution of social media, actually,

because that started out as Snapchat dysmorphia. And now it's Insta dysmorphia. Next week, it'll be TikTok. Yeah, it'll be tick dysmorphia. And who knows what the next one's going to be. But that all comes from just a generation of people now seeing themselves. They take their phone and they're always doing this and this. And everything is looking through the phone and looking at themselves like we're doing right now.

Looking at yourself on camera. We do a lot more Zoom conferences. People are FaceTiming and they're just looking at each other and especially looking at yourself on camera. And that perspective, that's one thing that leads to this Insta dysmorphia or Snapchat dysmorphia. And then there's also the images that get put out. Looking at keeping up with the Kardashians, everybody's trying to keep up with the Kardashians and everyone like them, all the new influencers that come out. There are, the Kardashians are the first family that was famous for being famous. Now you've got a whole generation of people that are famous for being famous, but

on social media, not even on traditional media. So they are projecting an image that is frequently not realistic. Most influencers are under 30. A lot of them are under 20. And they've got really youthful bodies and faces. And what you're seeing on Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok typically is not their actual face, breast, and body. I mean, it's, you got all kinds of filters going on. They've got an hour of makeup before they go on camera and it's all touched up. It's all for the glam,

for the image. And it's not real a lot of the time. So we have a generation of kids. Sorry to cut you off there. We have a generation of kids that Sorry to cut you off there. We have a generation of kids that are growing up. And my daughter, my son, I've got teenage kids that have spent their childhood looking at these people and these influencers in social media. And you aspire to be what you envy, what you appreciate. And we've got kids now trying to look like these filtered and makeuped up influencers. Is that a good thing to like one of the,

who was the one person who a spider and Spidey and his name was Spidey, I think. And then there was some gal, they were part of this, uh, uh, TV show and she changed. She had total plastic surgery on her face and she was beautiful before. And she just ruined herself after, in my opinion, she still looked pretty, but a Spidey and Heidi and Spidey. But there's lots of, there's loads of examples of that. And the thing is, that's also a sensationalist take because you'll see someone that maybe overdid it or maybe change something that was a signature part of their image. People always talk about, I forget the actress's name, but it was Dirty Dancing years ago.

And she was a big sensation at the time, but then she ended up having some surgery and changed her look. And I think mostly it was her rhinoplasty, her nose that she had done. That was, it had a little bump on it, but a lot of people thought it was cute and was part of her look a signature part of her look and she had this rhinoplasty changed the way she looked a little bit and just didn't do much work after that and people attributed it to oh you changed the way you look and now you're not so interesting anymore but there's always examples of that but for each one of those man so many people in highland more than you'll ever know have had something done.

If it's done well and tasteful and they didn't have a whole career before they had something done, you'll never know. So that's the thing. There's plenty of good work that can be done. But I guess to get back to your question about is it a good thing, no. It's not a good thing to aspire to. That's clear. You shouldn't want to just emulate whatever the hell you do in social media or anywhere,

on movies, TV, whatever. You should want to be your best you. And sometimes it's influenced and you get motivated and inspired by what I think it is a bad thing. It's interesting because some people, I've seen some people that are fairly young and they're still developing

and they're like, I want to change this. And you're like, maybe you should wait until you fully kick in there kid and the filters are pretty extraordinary I'm single so I go on some of the dating sites and there's some people that are like a stained glass window you're like what's going on there right now I'm actually a 20 year old girl I'm using the fat guy podcaster filter so the most people aren't aware of that it gets me the podcast so there you go with uh do you see more plastic surgery this is a dumb question but obviously do you see more plastic surgery clients and more uh inquiries that come from this uh insta disformia dysmorphia yeah

i don't think we're seeing more people i I think that's a spin in the media. But I do see a lot of people who they're influenced by what they see, and they'll come in. It's not like they came in because Jane on this IG account had this done, and now I want to have it done, and I want to look just like her. I think it's more informational bit, right? It could come from my IG. Someone might see something in my Instagram. We show live surgery. We just did a breast case. If you go to my Instagram, in my story, you'll see, bless you, you're going to see clips from the surgery that we put up in real time. The people that follow me, they like to see what we're doing. We show almost every case that I do. In that sense, people get educated.

They see what the real deal is. So if you're thinking, like maybe you're thinking, not you, I don't recommend breast surgery for you. If a person were watching- I use Lyft. Oh, we could talk about that. If you were, if some woman was thinking

about having a breast lift and implants, well, we did that today. And if they happen to follow me and then see the case and click and watch the case as it goes, that's a very real education in what this is. It's not glitz and glam. My breasts are sagging and now bam, they're up high and tight and I'm 25 again. This is the real deal. This is what you go through. So in that sense, what you that can be motivational.

But I'm not seeing this massive surge saying, I saw my favorite influencer get this done, and now I got to get it done. That happens, but it's not this big surge. So you're breaking my heart. So I could probably never beat Kim Kardashian with enough surgery on this face. I think I've got a good structure here. Yeah, I think you're going to have to start with a lot of electrolysis. And probably a lot of money too. So has the pandemic changed the world view on plastic surgery?

Has anything happened with the COVID thing going on? I don't know. Excuse me. I don't know if COVID has changed the world's view on plastic surgery. I think the world's view has evolved into what I think now is a very accepting attitude towards plastic surgery. It's become more accessible. It's not just for the rich and famous and the secret out there that no one knows anyone's having. It's up front and available to everyone now. And a lot more people are thinking about it and are able to go and get something done

that maybe 20 years ago they wouldn't have thought was realistic. I think COVID has empowered, oddly enough, a lot of people to go get something done because things are now just opening up to the point where I'm hearing more and more people going back to the office, actually getting back out there into real life. And so for the last, God, it's a year and a half, almost two years, it's a year and a half now that people were holed up. And you can't go into the office. You can't really do much of anything. You're not traveling. You're not going to restaurants.

And through that entire time, you have all that dough that you would have otherwise had spent on something else, whatever you've been considering, people that have thought about doing a facelift or getting a breast augmentation or a tummy tuck or whatever the procedure was, now they've got the money because they're not spending it on other things. They've got the time. They can recover at home. They don't have to run to an office. They don't have to worry about getting up and being mobile. So I think it really has empowered a lot of people. And I'll tell you, in my practice and any colleague that I've talked to, it has been gangbusters since reopening after the COVID shutdown. There you go. There you go. How do you guide patients on what procedures make sense for them?

And I imagine you're honest with them sometimes and say, this doesn't make any sense for you. And no. Yeah, 100%. I probably tell almost as many people no as I do yes. And sometimes it's in smaller ways and sometimes it's just a dead no, I can't help you. But like we started out talking about, you got to be a plan and go execute the plan that will help them safely get where they want to be. And there's a lot of moving parts there. Maybe they're not healthy enough for surgery. Maybe they don't have a realistic idea of what can be accomplished and they're just not in a good mental space to have an operation. Maybe it's reactionary, someone getting a divorce. Oh my God, I've been married to this woman for 20 years. I'm

going to be out there now. I got a date. Now I've got to suddenly do something to spruce things up. Pression of divorce, probably not a good time to be thinking about having surgery. You really ought to get to a better emotional place to make better decisions. And then there's lots of people that they are in a good spot. And we just got to find the right path and the right procedures so that they know what they're going to be getting into and they can tolerate it. And we walk down that path together until we get to the end and they go about their merry way, hopefully happy and refreshed.

Is Snapchat dysphormia? Dysmorphia. Dysmorphia? I went to public school. My apologies. Is it still a big thing where people are following the old Snapchat over there as well? Are you seeing that? Do you guys broadcast stuff over there as well? We do. Yeah. We post in Snapchat and Instagram in the story. We've got a lot of YouTube videos out there. The hashtag is not all the same stuff you can see in YouTube as well. We leverage all social media channels just to try and educate, have fun, educate, help people get answers. I mentioned the hashtag Plastic Surgery Truth. I'm sorry, the at Plastic Surgery Truth IG that I've got that is apart from the at Dr. Rubenstein account. Plastic Surgery Truths is entirely educational. It's 100% questions that people send me. We'll make a video to answer the questions.

I've done what I call Instagram consultations, which are consultations based on Instagram. Someone will send pictures. We'll talk about what we see in the pictures, what I'd recommend as a procedure, why. And I've also done some controversial things that a lot of people aren't willing to do, but I am, which is essentially standing up and saying the emperor's not wearing clothes when the emperor's not wearing clothes. And by that, we have a series called Exposed in our Plastic Surgery Truths. The Exposed series is because people send me questions, they sometimes will ask about other doctors. they'll I'll get questions about various doctors and people, like I mentioned before, don't really know what to look for. So in order to give some advice, I just tell them what's out there in the public record.

And someone will say, what about Dr. Jones? What about Dr. Smith? And look them up for them, because for me, it takes two minutes to get the whole skinny on somebody. And for them, they might not even know where to look if they had infinite amount of time. So I'll try and help out. And I'll look up Dr. Jones and Dr. Smith. And I'll get back. We'll see what the real story is.

So I'll tell someone, hey, Dr. Jones is not a board-certified plastic surgeon. He's an emergency doctor. It looks like he took a weekend course in liposuction and he's been sued and has a settlement for $2 million. And he had his license revoked in the state of Oregon and he moved to Washington, stuff like that. It's easy enough for me to find that stuff and I'll tell them. And then if it's good, I tell them, hey, Dr. Smith, she is a board certified plastic surgeon and she is very highly respected. And I think you'll be in good hands. That little bit of guidance is key. And when I see something, I will get asked about some doctors that are the stories that I've heard and I've looked up and found that some people are just outrageous, really crazy. And I'll make an exposed segment about them. And that could be a few video clips talking about that particular doctor's background, how he or she is not trained in plastic surgery, what they are trained in, are they board certified in anything or nothing at all, the public stories that I've heard, any deaths, any... There's one doctor that was really

just unbelievable stories, discharging patients at two and three in the morning into the midtown Manhattan nighttime and people coming to the office, getting medicated and sitting there waiting for their procedure only to be operated on the next day while sitting and waiting the entire time and crazy stories that we would hear from patients so much so that I've now done two inside edition segments. Oh, wow. Collaborating with them on some of these fairly egregious. Do you have any thoughts on some of these TV shows that they do where you see the different, I've watched a couple of them. I can't watch the surgery scenes because I pass out. I'm a big boob that way. And do you

have any thoughts on those or? Yeah, I think they're great. It just depends on what you're watching for and what they're trying to portray. Probably the one that recently that's the most popular and has really gained a lot of traction is Botched. And they do it in an ethical way. And those two guys, they're board certified surgeons. They're well respected. They're good guys. They know what they're doing. They're very experienced. And they also treat people with humanity and dignity. Even in the face of crazy, outrageous things and demands and people that want to do nutty stuff, it's TV, right? It's got to be entertaining. But they do it with dignity and they respect the patients. So I think they're doing it right. It's not outrageous or sometimes outrageous,

but they're not exploiting anyone. It's not making or sometimes outrageous, but they're not exploiting anyone. It's not making fun of anyone in particular. They're really trying to do it in an interesting way, in an entertaining way, seeing some sometimes really crazy stuff, but taking good care of people and making good decisions. They'll frequently say, look, we can't help you. And I think that's the right way to do it. And it's interesting to see some of the botched cases. You're just like, whoa. And then you see some people, they're just like, honey, you're a 10. You're fine.

You're like, you don't need to touch this or touch that. But I think it's good that there's all this education and knowledge. And you're sharing this on your social channels. You're educating people. You're taking away that veil of disinformation, maybe, or bad doctors that are out there. So that's pretty good as well what's next for you and your practice there's a lot of exciting stuff coming up you mentioned tv i'm about to be filming i can't talk about it but we're about to be filming a really great show again that is trying to help people and do the right thing so we're next month i think we

start filming and hopefully you guys will see that soon. It's a great project that is aiming to help a lot of people who are found themselves in some not so great circumstances. Oh boy. And is that going to be on your YouTube channel? Where's that going to play? Well, that's a network show. And again,

I can't talk too much about it, but it's going to be coming out something to watch for. And it's, I think it's going to, it's going to help a lot of people. I think it's going to be interesting to see and hopefully people like it. There you go. There you go. I think this is good because people can really take a look at what's going on with plastic surgery, what some of the truths are, what some of the falsehoods are, the good, the bad, the ugly, and they can make decisions for themselves.

Anything more we want to touch on about you and your practice? No, I'm really happy to have the opportunity to talk with you. And if anyone has questions, you can always reach out to me through any of those social channels. The show that's coming up, I think, will be something that'll be worth watching and, I think, hopefully heartwarming and put a highlight on part of the industry that doesn't get talked about a lot. There is actually another project that I've been working on for a long time that we're in negotiations with the network. That's more of a behind the scenes. I mean, you tell me, do you think it would be interesting to see some of the behind the scenes stuff that happens in the industry besides seeing the normal stories about patients going through a procedure, seeing their before and after? But for example,

you ever wonder where breast implants come from? Oh, that's always interesting. I've heard so much about what's inside of them. And I've seen people on social media saying this, that, and the other, but that would be interesting to find out what the truth is. Yeah. So we filmed, I've already done some filming. We've got a bunch of segments. We're putting things together on all sorts of stuff. The idea for the show is going to be showing the patient stories as they go through, and then all the greatest, the technology, the products. We're going to take you where it's made and show you behind the scenes exactly where everything comes from. Nice, nice. It's good. Education, information, all this stuff is amazing. So give us your plugs where people can find you on the interwebs and find out more about you and follow

you. Of course, yeah. You can check out all this stuff at any of my social channels. The main one for the practice is at Dr. Rubenstein. That's D-R-U-B-I-N-S-T-E-I-N. Of course, we mentioned at Plastic Surgery Truth, also on Instagram. Snapchat is at Dr. Rubenstein. TikTok, at Dr. Rubenstein. And Facebook, it's Miami Plastic Surgeon. But you can also find me just by my name, Adam J. Rubenstein, MD. And on YouTube, you can just search me on YouTube. You'll find me.

And we've got lots of good content, all the things we're talking about. If you have questions, send them to me. Happy to answer them. We might actually give you a shout out if we make a video answering your question. Always give people a shout out if you want one and you'll get some good information. There you go. You can get your questions answered and off you go. It's been wonderful to have you on the show, Doc. We certainly appreciate you coming on and sharing all this wonderful information for our audience. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me and I hope you guys enjoy the upcoming shows that we've got in production.

Sounds awesome. I just like the fact that people can be more aware of what's going on and they can save a couple bucks so they can get the information they want and decide if they want to move forward. That's what it's about. The whole point is helping people. We talked about this from the very beginning. Just make a good decision. You can go to whoever. You can have whatever you want done. Make sure that's based on good information, that you're getting good advice, and then make your best decision. And, hey, go for it and enjoy. There you guys go. So to my audience, be sure to check them out. Go to YouTube.com, 4Chess Chris Voss. You can also see us over there. You can also see us on Goodreads.com, 4Chess Chris Voss, all our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places.

Even on the TikTok, you can find us wherever those kids are watching those videos and doing the things but thanks for tuning in be nice good to each other and we'll see you guys next time