The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Dr. John Mesa Plastic Surgeon Interview

Episode Date: July 23, 2021

Dr. John Mesa Plastic Surgeon Interview Drmesa.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 this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming to your podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for being here go. Go to YouTube.com, 4Chess Chris Voss, to see all the things we're doing over there. Also, go to Goodreads.com, 4Chess Chris Voss.

All of our groups on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. Geez, there's like a new one every week. We try and keep up as best we can. Go over there, follow the Chris Voss Show, and of course, my stuff, Chris Voss, as well. Today, we have an amazing guest on the show. He's going to be bringing a whole mess of insight into the world of plastic surgery. He's a plastic surgeon who prioritizes patient relationships. His name is Dr. John Mesa.

He's been a plastic surgeon specializing in cosmetic surgery for the past 11 years. He's a native of Columbia, and he was first interested in studying architecture because he was very intrigued in symmetry shapes, but then eventually realized that being a plastic surgeon is like being an architect, which it kind of is when you've seen some people that have had it. So he pursued his ambitions passionately. Welcome to the show, Dr. Beza. How are you? Thank you so much, Chris. I'm doing really, really well. This is an honor and a privilege to be here in your show. And it's a privilege to have you on our show as well. Give us your dot coms where people

can find you on the interwebs and get to know you better. Yeah, it's very simple. It's my last name, drmesa.com. Oh, man. Wow, that's awesome. Either dr or doctor spelled out m-E-S-A dot com. Oh, you got both. Wow. Maybe I should be a doctor. That's great. You got that really quick URL. So tell us more about who you are and what you guys do. Okay. I am a board certified plastic surgeon. I am, as you say, I'm originally from Colombia, but I did my surgical training here in the United States.

And now I practice cosmetic plastic surgery. I have three offices, two main offices. The one is in Manhattan, New York. The second one is in Livingston, New Jersey. And I have a third satellite office in Miami. And I specialize in cosmetic plastic surgery. And my passion is to do any cosmetic plastic surgery of the face and the neck. Wow.

So my first question to you is, how much is it going to cost to make this face look like Kim Kardashian right here, this face right here? No, a couple of pennies and that's it. You don't need too much. Sure, yeah, $9.95 or something. Yeah, sure. Anyway, what sort of training went into your plastic surgery?

Where did you go to school, your residency? And we got a little tease from the bio on how you ended up choosing plastic surgery, but tell us more. Okay, my training is a little bit extensive. So I did medical school back in Columbia, South America, or there a medical school is combined with college. So it's a seven-year program. Then I came to the United States

and I did a research fellowship at Harvard. That fellowship was for five years. Then I started to do my general surgery training also at Harvard at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. Then I switched to do plastic surgery training at University of Penn State. Then I did a fellowship in craniofacial surgery at the University of Michigan, where I published a book about operative techniques for surgeons.

And then I did a third fellowship in cosmetic plastic surgery. This one is specializing in face and neck, and that was done at University of Alabama. When you add all that together, it's almost 18 years of training. 18 years of training, man. That's a lot of training. And what kind of clientele does your company have? They serve anybody that is interested in natural-looking cosmetic plastic surgery, especially with the face and the neck.

What about those people that are like, you see them on that show Botched or you see him they want they really want to go out there there's the lion lady and then i think there's a couple people that want to look like barbie what about those folks uh no i don't accept those folks because for me the idea the the reason for doing cosmetic surgery is to have a better version of yourself when you do just those extreme changes, I don't think those are really aesthetically pleasing and I don't like to do those ones. So that's why I, even if they can pay me millions, I won't do them. So you're not going to do my Kim Kardashian surgery then probably, huh? So this is interesting to me. Evidently you do most of your procedures under local anesthesia versus general. Ouch.

Tell us more about that and why you think it's a great thing for your patients. Yeah. The reason why I like to do my procedures under local anesthesia is because I don't have the ouch. People go to sleep and traditionally people get surgery under general anesthesia because it's a painful procedure and they feel the ouch. But with the technique that I developed when I was doing my fellowship training in University of Alabama, I came up with a technique that makes the local anesthesia procedures painless. People don't feel any pain from the beginning to the end and the advantage of that is one,

you avoid all the risks of going to sleep or general anesthesia or IV sedation and secondly the recovery is faster you don't have to stay in the hospital or go to rehab you just stand up dress and then you go back home nothing happens wow that's awesome man that's awesome hey do you want to tell us the secret sauce or is that a proprietary secret sauce I mean the secret sauce is like you need to like to talk to the patients. Because most surgeons don't like to talk to the patients. They like to put the sleep and then work fast, fast, fast. I like to talk to the patients.

And when I'm talking to them, I'm kind of distracting them when I'm doing the numbing. And once the numbing medication is injected, the air is really numb and they don't feel anything else. And that's when I do the procedure. Okay. So they're still getting a little bit of numbing. So they, the area is really numb, and they don't feel anything else, and that's when I do the procedure. Okay, so they're still getting a little bit of numbing. So they're not fully, yeah. Okay. No, they are completely awake, but the area, for example, if I'm going to do a neck, all the neck is completely slipping,

but only the skin and the neck. Oh, wow. Nice. Now, you have a specialty, and I'm not sure how to pronounce this correctly, B-U-C-A-L-F-A-T. What's the proper pronunciation of that? Some people say, I say Bucalpha Removal. Some people call it Bucalpha Removal.

What is that? Bucalpha Removal is what I consider the most best-kept secret in Hollywood. Because, you see, when you see people, celebrities, actors, and actresses, they look very chiseled. Nobody's chubby. Everybody looks like a supermodel. And most of the time, it's because they have undergone this procedure. That is removal of a specific pocket of fat in the lower anterior cheeks. That is called the buccal fat pad.

And then when you remove that, you make anybody that has a chubby face to have a big chiseled face like the celebrities so that's my number one surgery nowadays i'm not sure if you're familiar with her but ozzy osbourne's daughter i forget her name uh-huh yes but she had a fatty face like mine so i feel i don't feel too bad about it i i think she's an awesome gal i'm not being mean but there's yeah she if you look at her she kind of got her dad's genes, unfortunately. Sharon's a beautiful woman. Recently, she showed up with really chiseled facial looks. This is after her losing a bunch of weight and stuff.

Is that possibly the procedure that she used? I know her plastic surgery, but on my experience, I would say that, yes, she did have buca fat removal because even though you lose weight, you kind of go from a chubby kind of round shaped face to a very chiseled look. That is always buca fat removal. So I'm losing a lot of weight right now. I think I'm up to about 60 pounds and I've got to lose a lot more, but I'm doing pretty good in intermittent fasting. But am I still going to have, I'm probably still going to have a fat face then, huh? Probably going to have to have some of that removal done? Yeah, most of the time, yes.

Because what happens with those pockets of fats is that when they grow, they are very difficult to shrink them. So people, I would say maybe 5% or 10% of the population can shrink them with diet and exercise. But the majority, 95% of the people, they will need surgery if they want to look like that. Note to self, call Dr. Mesa when you lose all your weight, you fat face, Chris Voss. Anyway, just had to make a note there. But I probably will. I've seen that where you'll see somebody and they got a little chubby-ish face, they lose a bunch of weight, and then all of a sudden they're chiseled and you're just like, hey,

what's going on there? But you're cutting on the face. You're doing something with the face. So who knows? I'm just going to pay someone to slap me real hard and they'll slap all the fat out. That might work. Better. It's a good idea.

Yeah. It's interesting. So you specialize in that and mostly the face and neck you say for that fat that you work on a lot. Correct. There you go. So next time someone calls on a lot. Correct. There you go. So next time someone calls me a fat face, I don't know. There's some sort of joke there, but I can't find it. So what should people know when they're choosing a plastic surgeon?

What should they look for? What they should be aware of? There are a lot of crazy stories out of Florida of concretes being put in butts. And everybody knows concrete gets put in the belly, not in the butt. But all sorts of weird plastic surgery things. So it's important to pick a good surgeon. being put in butts and everybody knows concrete gets put in the belly not in the butt but and all sorts of weird plastic surgery things so it's important to pick a good surgeon how do people which people know to pick the right one okay the most important is that you need to make sure that the plastic surgeon is board certified by the american board of plastic surgeons because that's

like the baseline warranty that tells any patient that the plastic surgeon has undergone the minimal training to get to do the best result that you can have. Because as you said, there is a lot of plastic surgeons want to be that they think that they are plastic surgeons. But when you go to check, they don't have board certification and sometimes they don't have even the plastics are very important and the second thing is that you need to find a surgeon that specializes in the procedures that you are looking for because you know like it's like the book the layers like with the ten thousand dollars ten thousand hours of training of experience the more you do a procedure the better the outcome the less the risk so for example if you want to get the chin liposuction you should go to somebody that does a lot of chin liposuction

not to the ones that does one or two in a while and also very important what i tell the patients and is that you need to have good rapport with the doctor why because even the best plastic surgeons in the world they may have some complications not always everything goes well why because this is a medicine and plastic surgery it's not an exact science it's an art and sometimes even though you do everything patients conditions or anything it can something can go wrong and if you don't have good rapport with the patient, then if something happens, then what is the natural occurrence? You're going to try to go to somebody else's.

And even if you go to another doctor, he or she is not going to know exactly what is going on with you. So I have had complications and I take care of my patients and they will work together to make sure that everything results at the end of the day. And that's, I think that's very important because finding that when you try a plastic surgeon, you need to try like a marriage. It's something that

is like a long-term, not like a quick date. And if you don't like it, bye after the procedure, you need to stick with that in the good times and in the bad times. This is interesting. Matthew was just chiming in on a comment here. He says, so an important part of your practice is true consultation with the clients. Thank you, Matthew, for that input. He was also helping me out with the Kelly Osborne name that we were trying to reference earlier. So thanks for helping out there, Matthew. We appreciate you watching and being a part of the show.

Let's see, what are your most popular procedures that you're doing now? And what has COVID impacted you and your business? My top five procedures are, the number one is the book alpha removal, the Chubby Cheek Reduction Surgery. The second one is a chin liposuction. The third one is a tightening of the face and neck with minimally invasive device.

And the fourth and the fifth are the facelifts and necklifts on the local anesthesia. Is there a certain age where you won't do them anymore? I'm asking for a friend. No, I do it in all the ages. In my nurse, they have to come with the parents and give permission. And I do surgery on people in the 70s, 80s. No matter if you are in good health and you can get the surgery done

and you are a candidate and you will benefit from that, I can do it. There you go. My friend is 53. Note to self, call Dr. Mesa when you get done losing weight. Sorry, I just had to make a note there. This is pretty interesting. COVID, I guess just everybody's still going around, still going on with COVID. And on your clients, are your clients a variety of ages, male or female largely that you're seeing these days? Or how does that work?

I mean, usually in plastic surgery, the majority, I would say 90% of the clients are female, but I also specialize in male plastic surgery. So I would say my ratio has shifted. It's about 70% women, 30%, 40% men. Wow. So I've seen a big population of men. And regarding the previous question that I didn't answer about how COVID affected plastic surgery, I would say that in my experience, when we were in the lockdown, there was zero cosmetic plastic surgery

because any elective surgery was asked to be stopped but then afterwards is has been a boom because of the fact that now during covid people has to work from home they don't have to be present in the office so you can most of the time patients come, they take one day off, they get the surgery done, they go back home because it's local anesthesia. They don't need to be in the hospital. They go back home and the next day they start working from home, recording.

And if they have to do a webcam, like web call, like today, they don't turn on the camera and that's it. So that's the way to do it. I turn on the camera and scare everybody. That's what I do. So that's why right now people have more advantage and more time off to undergo electric cosmetic plastic surgery.

There you go. And Matthew, he's Mr. Questions today. What is the most popular procedure for men and also for women? Thank you, Matthew. In my practice, for men, it's the buccal fat removal, the chubby chin reduction. And in women, it's the combination of chin liposuction and buccal fat removal. I might know some people that have some of that going on that are probably going to use that procedure these days. What new plastic surgery procedures are the newest and latest things?

What's the hottest thing on the market? The hottest thing right now is the minimally invasive procedures to tighten the skin. There is a device called FaceTite, a necktie that uses a very small incision and a catheter is kind of placed underneath the skin. And then it releases radiofrequency that is a laser energy, but it's not a laser. It heats up the skin and the deep tissues, and it produces skin shrinkage. So basically, you're getting a mini facelift or a mini neck lift, usually on the local anesthesia with no big scar.

And the recovery is faster, so the people is loving it because they can be a better version of themselves without undergoing major cosmetic surgery. That's pretty freaking awesome. I mean, wow, the stuff they can do nowadays. It's like crazy, which explains all those Hollywood people. Like I said, like Kelly Osbourne that you see, you're just like all of a sudden, like I just saw her, like her face was just cut. And I was just like, what? What happened? Yeah, i need to be up to that sort of stuff what procedures won't you perform what procedures i won't perform like the ones that you mentioned before anything that is grotesque that is out of the that is not like a routine things that are

exaggerated for example if somebody comes for a breast augmentation and they want triple D, a thousand CC implants, I won't do that or anything that the patient don't need. Sometimes patients come to me and say, oh, I want to do fillers or I want to do lip fillers, for example, and the lips are really big. I would say I won't do it because I want you to look natural. If you want to look overdone, I don't want my last name attached to those lips yeah and as a guy who's single and on instagram a lot you could hire me if you want me to talk to those people and say hey look that catfish the the big floppy flippity lips that oh some of those girls it's a turnoff i'm like you ruined something that was really nice. And now it's just like,

I don't know, that's a horrible way to try and visualize it. But yeah, I really wish women would just be a little more careful. I don't know, man. I'm trying to figure out who actually likes that sort of stuff. Anything else about your practice and how to be success and advice for people that need plastic surgery? Advice that people, first of all, they should be ashamed of

undergoing plastic surgery. I tell a lot of people things that cosmetic plastic surgery is vanity, that you shouldn't do it, that it's like a moral issue. And I explain to my patients or potential patients that cosmetic plastic surgery is like getting a haircut. Why do you get a haircut? It's because you want to look good and you want to be presentable and you want to look good to others so cosmetic plastic surgery is exactly the same there is something that you don't like about yourself especially in the face and the neck and you want to be improved then do a haircut then you get get it fixed and then that is going to help tremendously the

self-esteem because a lot of people is shy and they don't feel confident because they don't look the same, especially when you're aging. Because when you age, usually the face ages really fast compared with your mental age. So you need to do like a sink in those areas. And that's the most important thing. And also to understand that now it is possible to undergo most of the cosmetic procedures on the face and the neck, on the local anesthesia, with no pain, with no ouch. Ouch. No ouch. That's the most important part. I like the no ouch part. Matthew has another great question for you. He's the king of great questions. Are any of your procedures covered in insurance plans? I'm sure he's asking for a friend.

No, unfortunately not because cosmetic plastic surgery is not medically necessary. And the definition of medically necessary is that if you don't do the procedure, somebody can have a life-threatening condition or can die and nobody's going to die because you don't look better. So all the procedures that i do are strictly cosmetic and therefore they are not covered by insurance there you go i i think i would argue that me being turned into kim kardashian is a life-threatening procedure better like kim kardashian is life-threatening one of the two sorry i've lost the kim kardashian crowd i'm sure right now so anything more we haven't covered about you and your practice and what you do uh yes that i for example like people ask me like oh what do you do your surgeries

and i would say if it is general anesthesia which i'm now i'm doing less and less because i specialize more in the local i always do it in a certified operating room in a hospital or a surgery center to make sure that everything is done with the bells and whistles and then when I do it on the local anesthesia in either one of my offices because I do surgery in all those three offices I do it with the highest standards if I'm going to put you to sleep but you are not sleeping so because sometimes a patient has shown me oh look I saw the surgeon and he's doing the procedure for, the tightening or something with a pair of gloves. No, I dress up, and I do everything like major surgery to make sure that you have the best outcome and with the minimal risk of infection or any complications.

That's awesome. That's what everyone should do. If you've got something you're doing and somebody's going to somebody in a back alley, it's probably not going to work out well. That's all I'm saying. For men, men are usually afraid to undergo cosmetic plastic surgery because they are afraid that they are going to look like a woman. And that's true because most of the plastic surgeons do cosmetic surgery or cosmetic procedures, injections in women. Most of the eye is trained to treat women.

And I have been there. When I finished surgery, I was doing everybody. I do Botox myself. But at the beginning, I was doing it with another colleague, and I started to look like a woman with those arched eyebrows. Yeah, that was horrible. So when I was in the gym, I was lifting weights. I was like, oh, my God,. So when I was in the gym, I was lifting weights.

I was like, oh, my God, I look kind of like Carotop, like with those huge arch eyebrows. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I didn't like that. So that kind of triggered my passion to really create plastic surgery procedures for men, and right now that's why people come to me, because they look very masculine and they look not feminine with anything that I do. So that's why my ratio of men versus women is changing significantly towards the men. There you go.

Would it be easier to make me look like Gisele Bundchen or would it be easier for me to look like Kim Kardashian, which is probably… I think because of your skin color, you are closer to Kim Kardashian. Okay. All right. And I have a have a big butt just works right there so it's been wonderful to have you on john give us your plugs for people and find you on the interwebs and get to know more about you and your practice okay so very easy again my website is dr mesa.com in instagram i have multiple accounts but the most common one is dr spelled out that mesa m-e-s-a alone that one is about a lifestyle but no surgeries and the one that has all the surgeries is that doctor that mesa with the number two at the end that's specialized on women and there is another

one that is at doctor that number four, and then men. And that is all specialized about cosmetic plastic surgery. Oh, wow. So I could go on there and find out how to make me look like Kim Kardashian. On your Instagrams, do you share, like, videos of procedures where people can see things actually going on? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And especially in the stories, I show everything that I do here. Wow.

And that's why most of the patients, they say, oh, when they come and they book surgery with me, they say, I already saw what you do. I know your before and afters. I feel very confident. I just want to meet you and book my surgery. Everything is shown on Instagram and YouTube. There you go. I think Matthew here has got the URL drmesa.com.

That's pretty freaking awesome. Thanks, Matthew, for your help today. That's been great. So it's been wonderful, Avion. Thank Thanks, Matthew, for your help today. That's been great. So it's been wonderful, Avion. Thank you, John, for spending time with us and enlightening us. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you so much, Chris. It has been, again, an honor and a privilege to be on the show.

And to you as well, my friend. To my audience, be sure to check him out. Go to youtube.com, Fortuness Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Voss, and all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram,

all those different places. You can see the Chris Voss Show. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye. Thank you so much.