Live at The Aesthetic Meeting 2024

Max Baybak

All right, all right, we're back at it, and this time we're here in beautiful Vancouver, Canada, where we're bringing you Next Level Practices podcast episodes live from the floor of The Aesthetic Meeting 2024. This is the annual meeting of the Aesthetic Society, for the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. It's a meeting we never miss. Over these next few days I'm going to be interviewing our clients and friends from around the industry to bring you up-to-the-minute insights on what's working and what's not when it comes to patient acquisition and practice growth.

Here at Influx we're very serious about keeping up with technological trends and studying how these changes impact the way that our clients grow their businesses, but I for one am a big believer that truly setting yourself apart comes down to the nuances. So let's take some time over these next few days to interview people on the ground floor of aesthetic medicine and see what we can learn from them to help you take your practice to the next level.

Okay, I'm back, and uh, I've got a familiar face sitting across from me. You know him, and you might even — some might even call him a mover and a shaker of the beauty business. I've got my good friend Dr. Grant Stevens here with us. Hi, Granto.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Hi, how you doing, Max?

Max Baybak

I'm doing very good. And I know — I understand you have someone you're running off to.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yes.

Max Baybak

So I'm going to try to keep this brief. I thought it would be fun to kind of turn the tables. I'm usually behind the soundboard, behind the camera, as we record Technology of Beauty. For those of you who don't know, Dr. Grant Stevens and I sort of co-created The Technology of Beauty together. I mean, it's really his roster of contacts that makes the show what it is, and uh, he's a pretty — he's an okay uh podcast host. But that's been a really fun ride for coming a little over three years now.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yep.

Max Baybak

And actually, what people may not realize though is that you were the first ever guest of our own podcast — which, I didn't know that — Next Level Practices. Well, we've been a little inconsistent — we focus a lot on technology, but we've been a little inconsistent on our episodes — but the first time I ever did a podcast for our own p—, for our own podcast, which we call Next Level Practices, was when Adam and I interviewed you, um, in what later became the studio for Technology of Beauty.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Uh-huh.

Max Baybak

And I went back through your history, and I still love that interview, of sort of being um a contrarian marketer in plastic surgery, and I feel like I got some good stuff out of you. I can't wait to go back and listen to it. Yeah, and 'cause we would sit in your office and talk as we were working on your marketing, you would say, "Oh, I did this and I got slapped on the, you know," and, "I put pictures on the internet and I was told that, that, you know," and I just went — it just became very clear to me how much you had uh driven, driven the marketing that we do in this industry forward in the early days, and blazed a trail. So that was really fun, and now I get to get you back on the show.

Dr. Grant Stevens

It's my pleasure.

Max Baybak

And of course, as everyone knows, Grant is — Dr. Stevens is past president of the, of the Aesthetic Society, and we're here in Vancouver at the Aesthetic Society meeting. So I know you're a busy man here, and I understand that you may be reassuming a new role within the Aesthetic Society. Is that right?

Dr. Grant Stevens

That's correct.

Max Baybak

Will you tell us about it?

Dr. Grant Stevens

Sure. Um, I've been asked to chair the Industry Support Committee and help the Society work with various members of industry, and expand the role of the Premier Partners uh and provide other services to our uh industry supporters in exchange for their support and so forth, and then, more, uh, create and adopt a more symbiotic, cooperative uh interaction between industry and the Aesthetic Society.

Max Baybak

That's exciting. I know, from getting to produce Technology of Beauty with you, speaking to a lot of your colleagues, they've praised you for bringing together that, that cooperative uh kind of coexistence between industry and, and, and the surgical society here, and um I think it's been really interesting to hear — a lot of praise from your peers and your colleagues on that.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Well, it hasn't been specific — but it hasn't been exclusively praised. There's been criticism, and there are some that somehow feel — mistakenly feel — that industry is the big bad wolf, or that they're a problem. I absolutely disagree with them. Without industry, we don't have capital for investment; we don't have goods, services, developing new products. Uh, we are in partnership with industry one way or another, or we're stagnant, right? Uh, how else are we going to get new products, new goods, new services and so forth?

So I am very, very pro-industry. They have a role. Uh, I'm not pro, you know, unethical behavior or false marketing or all the things that I know people are worried about, but the fact is they are partners, and there are many physicians that are even involved in industry — and that's what came — that's how AIS, or Aesthetic Innovation Summit, even was started. It's industry-financed, and then entrepreneurial physicians, and physicians that are interested in new emerging technologies before they're out. But uh, I'm very pro-industry. I'm happy to be back and helping Chuck and Tracy and Jamal as the next three presidents, and doing my very best to help my beloved Society, which I think of as uh my child.

Max Baybak

And I know you're very passionate about it, in our many conversations — and you always have your uh, is it Nefertiti, sitting there when we do the, the episodes of Technology of Beauty?

Dr. Grant Stevens

Correct.

Max Baybak

Inherent in that praise is, you know, like for ex—, for example, Ronaldo — Dr. Saltz — always will make a comment when, when he comes on the show — he's been on I think a few times now at some of the conferences — and he's always praising you for it. And I think inherent in that is he understands that you help to do it right, because there is that criticism of — and, and there are perils that can come about from the combination of industry. But like you said, surgeons need industry, but industry needs the medical guidance.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Absolutely.

Max Baybak

Or else where, where do they go, right? Where, where can things go wrong without that medical guidance?

Dr. Grant Stevens

But that brings up something else though: if we're not willing to work with industry, others are. Perfect. And so we can guide them on, in the ethical pursuit of new goods, new services and so forth. Uh, so I think it's important that we work with industry, because someone else will certainly work with industry if we're not willing to. Uh, and again, it also allows us to have new products.

Max Baybak

Absolutely.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And keep moving with the times.

Max Baybak

Right. So on that point, you brought up AIS, the Aesthetic Innovation Summit. So for those of you who don't know about it, uh, myself and, and some of my team came up a few days early, last Wednesday — uh, today's now Saturday, it's all a blur here in beautiful Vancouver — but we came up for the Aesthetic Innovation Summit, which Grant was the co-chair of. He has been for five times now; he's really the driving force behind it. Um, and even though it's put on by our friend Craig at Healthology — Mor and them at Healthology — but Grant really drives a lot of the programming, and I've got to be a part of it because of Grant.

And we, and we um interview — we interviewed a number of attendees. We have some mini episodes of The Technology of Beauty coming out where you'll get to kind of hear, from the ground floor, what people's impressions and takeaways are from that, from that show. It's such a different show, and I don't think people understand that. Will you tell people a little bit about it — why it's so different than any other show in aesthetics?

Dr. Grant Stevens

Sure. Well, first, it's a one-day show. It's not endorsed by any society per se, but it always happens on the Wednesday before the start of the Aesthetic Society show. As Max mentioned, this is our fifth year. We're going to be doing it next year — next year in Austin, Texas, on March 19th. Again, it's the Wednesday before the show. Uh, it's owned privately by Healthology, not by me. Uh, however, I was the co-founder and I am the chair, and we have two other co-chairs, and together we put together uh relevant uh material and meetings. We bring in industry, we bring in some clinicians, we do bring in the financial markets. Um, and we are free to do whatever we want, in that it's non-CME — our hands are not tied.

This year we had uh a section on exosomes. We had a section on disruptive marketing. We have a section this year on beauty below the belt, or combined surgery to improve the uh area, the aesthetics below the tummy. Um, we had uh a keynote speaker talking about what's going on in the marketplace. Uh, but most importantly, the, the one that is so appreciated — we may even have to do two of them next year — is Shark Tank. And the Shark Tank presentations are smoking hot. Everyone wants to get on it, and we have sharks that listen, and then we pick the best in show. And it was highly competitive this year, uh, and a lot of fun, and people learn about new —

Max Baybak

Yeah, everyone loves it. I read the reviews the other day: Shark Tank kicks ass.

Dr. Grant Stevens

It's — it does great.

Max Baybak

So, similar format to the actual show Shark Tank, where you have seasoned uh — what, in that case it's investors; it could be investors here — it's just people who really understand the aesthetic industry from the industry side, and they are presenters with new innovations, and then they get comments and judged, and essentially a final judgment from the judges, the Shark Tank judges. Is that right?

Dr. Grant Stevens

And we have VC people, we have private equity, we have bankers, we have uh, uh, uh family money, or the F.O.s, family offices. Um, we have a number of financial institutions, if you will, that uh are both in the audience as well as they're sharks. So uh, two of our sharks were big VCs, and they were aggressive. It was fun. I was asked to give one of the talks last minute, because one of the CEOs couldn't show, if you recall, and I had a ball, you know, asking the sharks for $5 million for 20% of this program, of this company.

Max Baybak

So, very similar to what I love about Technology of Beauty — it, and the education that I've got getting to sit in the studio for every one of those episodes — I get a very similar feeling when I'm at AIS. And it's unique, be— and so if you like Technology of Beauty, I think you will really love AIS, where you get to hear — it's a, it's a unique convergence of industry, clinicians, and finance, that's kind of how I would put it, and you don't really get that in many other places. And you get to learn about things that are, you know, fairly upstream, before they're really coming to market. And if you want to be ahead of those things, if you want to invest in some of those things maybe, or just think about how you might incorporate them into your practice and start thinking about it early, um, I just think for those early-adopter-type doctors —

Dr. Grant Stevens

Mm-hmm.

Max Baybak

It's, it's a great show to come to.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I would agree.

Max Baybak

So where is it again next year?

Dr. Grant Stevens

In Austin — Austin, Texas, March 19th, Wednesday, just before the Aesthetic Society show, this show.

Max Baybak

Amazing.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Now I need to excuse myself.

Max Baybak

You told me you had 10 minutes, and I was going to say you have 40 seconds left, but I'm going to let you go now. Thank you so much, Granto, really appreciate it.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Okay, take care.

Max Baybak

We —