Live at The Aesthetic Meet 2025

Dr. Raghu Athré

I can summarize marketing as making the environment as sticky as possible with your name. That's how I look at it. No matter where a patient goes, your name should pop up. Okay? So they searching on Google, that your name should needs to pop up. If they go on Instagram, your name needs to pop up. If you go on YouTube, your name needs to pop up. Right? So it's like it's like honey. You want to make it sticky.

Max Baybak

Okay, we're back here at the Aesthetic Meet 2025 in Austin, Texas, and I have the honor of sitting down with Dr. Athré from Houston, Texas. Dr. Athré, thank you so much for being here with us.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Thank you for having me. And since we're in Austin, I got to give them the hook 'em horns.

Max Baybak

Yeah, hook 'em horns. I love it. So, we're going to do kind of a condensed version of our normal podcast here, but kind of want to start out by just kind of telling us a little bit about your practice, how long you've been in practice, what you focus on, what you're specializing in today.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Cool. Um, so my practice is based in Houston, Texas. I'm a facial plastic surgeon. Um, I've been in practice close to 20 years. Why, when I first started, my primary interest was rhinoplasty. That was a large percentage of my practice, and it has metamorphosized into a facial aging practice where probably 80% of my practice is facial rejuvenation.

Max Baybak

That's awesome. And do you see, do you feel like, uh, there's a focus age-wise for you, or is it all across the spectrum age-wise?

Dr. Raghu Athré

I think it's a little bit of all across the spectrum. Um, I'd say if I have to narrow it down to a single box, it'll probably be from about 45 to 60 is my biggest demographic. But you will, when I say facial aging, there's still patients that are probably in their late 30s or early 40s, and their anatomy may be that they look older or have problems that you would attest to someone who is older. So, it's just it runs the gamut. I don't really focus a lot of my practice on the young, like the 25, 27 with the fillers and all. I don't do that. So, mine's a surgical practice.

Max Baybak

100% surgical.

Dr. Raghu Athré

100% surgical.

Max Baybak

Okay. And you don't even have other providers doing this. They're looking at them.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's just me.

Max Baybak

Okay. And, yeah, cuz you mentioned rejuvenation, which made me think that you're talking, not really, you're not getting that prejuvenation crowd, or you're not inviting that in, I guess.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Right. So I basically, if I have to hone in on my who comes to me, it's patients that probably have started that process of where they are looking older than they actually are, or they go, hey, on the inside I feel super young, but the outside doesn't match. And that normally happens right around that 45-ish category, 50 category. That's my main thing. And I do all like facelifts, brow lift, eyelid. That's my mainstay of my practice.

Max Baybak

Uh, well, certainly been a good, a good, uh, area of specialty these last few years.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Correct.

Max Baybak

How do you feel that's trending these days in terms of, we definitely saw, what do you want to call it? Zoom boom, or yeah, whatever you name you gave it, we saw a huge uptrend. Where does that sit for you now?

Dr. Raghu Athré

So I think that initially during the COVID time period there was a huge upswing in patients coming in. Um, and I think the Zoom and the Zoom meetings and all that really did have a big chunk of that, the push. Now as we've come to the post-COVID era, I think if you take a look at all plastic surgeons running the whole field, everybody during that immediate COVID, post-COVID era was doing fantastic. There was a lot of expendable income in the entire economy post-COVID.

We're a couple of years after that, where the economy started slowing down a little bit. People are a little bit tighter with their purchases. So, are we kind of rocking and rolling like immediate post-COVID? No. But we've stayed pretty stable. And I think part of that is the demographic that we're looking at is really, they're more long-term kind of people. So, they're not affected as much with the up and down of a market swing.

Max Baybak

Do you feel like there's uncertain, just what I observe, is it just seems like there's uncertainty economically. We haven't yet seen —

Dr. Raghu Athré

100%. 100%. So for example, if you, I mean, if I just look straight up January. Okay. So immediate post-election there's all of this kind of excitement in the air, blah blah blah, blew up. Okay. First kind of whatever 40 days, where there's just, uh, and I'm not making any political statements. It's just, you know, when there was a little bit of flux in the economy, the stock market's going up and down and up and down. People are holding on a little bit. They're not just going, "Hey, yeah, I'm ready to go book that procedure and put my down payment down."

Max Baybak

Yeah. And I would say there's, you know, obviously very different approach being taken, like, with macroeconomics right now, but it still has the same potential, uh, looming fear of other austerity measures that have been maybe used in the past, right? So tariff, maybe we're not talking about, um, interest rates, but it still makes you wonder, are we going to, what's the blowback going to be, and should I hold on to my dollars right now?

Dr. Raghu Athré

Correct. I think every, I mean, everything is so intertwined, right? I mean, it's just like the worldwide web. I mean, this is what you guys do. Everything is just kind of linked with everything else. So in some way these things do kind of affect indiv—, like, I'm a solo individual practitioner. It still flows downstream and affects what we do and how we do it.

Max Baybak

Yeah, it does. It does. But it's interesting when you talk about that age range, where there's a little bit maybe more resilience there, or long-term view, right?

Dr. Raghu Athré

Yeah.

Max Baybak

Interesting. Well, speaking of what we do, this podcast, we try to focus around marketing. So, I always, you know, that's what I feel qualified to interview on, whereas I don't want to pretend to know your craft to the level you do, but marketing I know. And what I want to do is put this content out for our clients where we talk about what we're seeing trend-wise in terms of how we market to patients. And I'm curious for you, uh, sort of what are the top channels of patient acquisition that you focus on. Obviously, I know we work together, and so that we have something to transparency there.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Yeah, absolutely.

Max Baybak

But we have some strategy that we might be influencing, but I'm curious what's, what channels work best for you in terms of acquiring patients.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Number one, my homepage, my website. The actual, that's kind of the, uh, what I call ground central, right? Um, actually, I'm going to say something that's a little different than maybe a lot of your, uh, a lot of the people that you interview. Number two for me is YouTube.

Max Baybak

Oh, cool. Okay.

Dr. Raghu Athré

YouTube is number two. And it's a strong number two. And number three, which is a distant number three, is going to be social media stuff.

Max Baybak

We have a few, you know, cuz YouTube is not something that we specifically focus on. We've had clients ask, can you help optimize YouTube? What I find is it's a, we live in a world of being where you really need to have a niche specialty and focus, and so we focus on what we do really, really well. But we have a few clients have taken it upon themselves to — yeah, and you're one of them — to really put effort into YouTube, and they've seen it pay off.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Yes.

Max Baybak

It's the right for it. It is really the right platform for a lot of, uh, for some of our clients, I've noticed, where there's an opportunity — well, I'll let you tell me, but an opportunity to educate a little bit more in depth than other social platforms.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Right. So I think this also, you have to look, kind of work backwards a little bit. Okay. So I'm going to kind of put this, I was telling a couple of your colleagues. So the name of the game, so as a person, I like to stick my fingers in a lot of different things, and I like to at least learn about it. So first of all, when we look at marketing, okay, there's no marketing company in the world where I as a provider can come to you and say, hey, just make it happen. I just want to see patients. That doesn't exist. Okay.

Um, I think, you know, especially the team that works with me, um, they're very good about going, hey, listen, here's some tools, and I give them some insights, they give me some insights, and then there's a collaborative decision. So number one, I think I can summarize marketing as making the environment as sticky as possible with your name. That's how I look at it.

Max Baybak

That's cool.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Okay. So no matter where a patient goes, okay, your name should pop up. Okay. So they searching on Google, that your name should needs to pop up. If they go on Instagram, your name needs to pop up. If you go on YouTube, your name needs to pop up. Right? So it's like it's like honey. You want to make it sticky. Okay? And that's the, so cuz you can't control patients coming in. You can control this part. And if you make it super sticky, patients will come in. So you control the things that you can do.

So when you're looking at doing that, you got to start backwards and go, what is it that I like to do? Okay. So, I like to do facelifts. Facelifts are not, um, an impulse-driven purchase. Okay. So, patients don't wake up in the morning and go, "Dude, I think I'm going to get a freaking facelift today." That's not how they do it. Now, they might do that for filler. They might do that for Botox. They might even do that for breast augmentation. Okay? That's a very impulse-driven. Facelift is a research-driven, protocol, considered purchase.

Max Baybak

Yeah.

Dr. Raghu Athré

So now if that's who you want, then you got to go to, where would I research. Okay? So you're going to go to Google. Okay? So you need to make yourself super sticky on Google. And I think YouTube and the video platform is becoming a great way to make yourself sticky, because you're able to be yourself. You can tell people the way you think, how you process information, and they get a really good idea of who you are before they even meet you.

So, one of the things that I've seen is, like, for example, I'll give you a very stupid anecdote. So, when I'm operating, I wear cowboy boots. Okay? I'm here in Texas. I wear cowboy boots. Okay? And I think even a couple of patients that I've recorded as I'm operating made a comment about the cowboy boots. Recently, we've gotten to the point where I show up for surgery, and if, you know, I just ran six miles the prior day, I may not wear my boots. The patient, where are your boots? There.

I mean, they have gotten so involved in the YouTube channel, it's like they cyber know me, and patients will literally say, "I've seen all your videos. I think I know you before I've even come in. I'm ready to do surgery." So, you have these opportunities to really educate and kind of do a consultation almost remotely, for lack of better words. So, you get to dictate that and really talk to them.

Max Baybak

That's so cool. The cowboy boots. That's definitely a brand right there. You're building a brand. Yeah, that's really cool. I'd be curious, one time we could dive into it one day, and I'm curious if you have a feel for this, when you look at the analytics on the YouTube side, of how much of your YouTube is driving top-of-funnel new searches, person that's not familiar with you, that is discovering you through YouTube. I'm sure there's that, and I'm sure there's a lot of discovering you somewhere else and then coming to, make, because you talked about that considered purchase, right? So spending a long time there, perhaps getting to know you and really feeling like, okay, I'm ready to make the decision to go with this surgeon, right?

Dr. Raghu Athré

So, you know, as when we got hooked up with you guys, you guys did a great job of putting us through GoHighLevel, right? So, we're on the GoHighLevel platform, and it's tracking all this information. However, since this web is like, you know, like kind of like, I mean, think about it like a little bumblebee going all over the place. It's really hard, especially now when most people block cookies and this and that, to really know exactly where a patient is coming from.

So, one thing that we've done in the office, despite all the data that's been collecting on the back end, is we ask patients straight up. So, when I'm at in a consult, where did you hear about me? And I don't even ask where you heard about me. A lot of our patients are direct referrals. So, I said, who can I thank for sending you to me?

Max Baybak

Oh, I like that.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Okay. So, then they'll go, oh, no, no, no, no. I came in, you know, the internet. So, I was like, oh, is there a specific place? I mean, just very nonchalant. Oh, I saw your videos on YouTube. So, right, YouTube. Okay. And we keep like a little tally. So because the way I look at it is, like, when I do a consult, if you came in for a consult for something, you know, I say, so you have a magic wand, what would you do, okay, and you're going to say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Odds are the first thing out of your mouth is the thing that bothers you the most, right? So similarly, if I ask a patient, hey, where'd you hear about me, the first thing out of their mouth is the place that they spent the most, that promoted them to actually make the appointment. So if they say YouTube, you go, ding ding. Okay, YouTube gets a point. And this is becoming more and more and more and more.

Max Baybak

That's cool. We think about attribution in marketing a lot. So, how, which channel do we attribute the lead to, or the conversion to, or the patient? And it's sort of like a interesting model, because there's last touch model, which means they might have hit a bunch of different places, but that's the last place they were. And you're just, that's a really smart way to shortcut to just what is the best, the channel that deserves the most weight, right, in that computation, for, you know, that's interesting.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Yeah. So in my prior life I was an engineer, so I try to get all sorts of crazy metrics, cuz, you know, and we tried all sorts of formulas, and, you know, a spreadsheet, and then like a table, and it's too much. Okay. So it's just so much easier. Where'd you hear about me? You know, and then so whatever they say, you know, give that channel, uh, one point.

Max Baybak

I like the logic, because as a marketer I always go, well, that might not have been where they first heard about you, but you're bringing up a really good point of, look, they're going to say the thing that is the, that weighs most in their mind, that's most weighted as to, and clearly that's the thing that drove the decision, right? Clearly. So that's really, that's a nice way to think about it. I like that a lot.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Yeah. And I'm, as we're doing this, I'm learning new words that I can use to make this sound more scientific, like attribution, which I don't think about it that way, but yeah, makes sense.

Max Baybak

There's so many different attribution models, and the different platforms that we use change them, or you can say, I want to track it this way versus that way, and different agencies might have different focuses. So, there is a lot of room for art here. And there's a lot of science as well.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Yep.

Max Baybak

So, I see you have, um, a company name also on your, on your, it says first time exhibitor on your badge. So, you're also here kind of on two, correct?

Dr. Raghu Athré

So I'm also the chief technology officer for Elixir MD. They are a company, or we are a company, that specializes in devices for post-operative recovery and healing. Um, their creme lock creme machine is something called Elixir MD that uses photobiomodulation to speed up healing after surgery.

Max Baybak

Awesome. And so what booth, that's, you guys have a booth here people can go by. I was going to ask for the booth number, but likely people will hear this after the show.

Dr. Raghu Athré

So I think it's like 1293.

Max Baybak

Okay, cool. Well, check out Elixir MD. Couple more questions for you, and we'll let you, um — sure — kind of move on with your day here. I don't want to take you too, keep you too long, but, um, I'm curious from your perspective, and I want to hear this from all the doctors that I sit with. What are sort of the major trends you see emerging in 2025, or over the last 12 months, whether good or bad?

Dr. Raghu Athré

So I'm going to speak from, and I know you're probably getting different people's opinions, this is from my personal opinion, and I live kind of in a cave, right? So my, what my universe is, is the people that I see, my patients. I think that there is more of a walk away from some of the non-surgical stuff. Patients are starting to kind of go, you know, I've tried Morpheus, it didn't work. Um, I've tried, um, you know, threads, they didn't work. And the word is getting out there that some of these non-invasive things are just not designed for long-term rejuvenation.

And they're moving towards, hey, what is it that I need to do that's going to work long term? And I know it might be an investment, but if I'm going to invest in myself, I need to do something that works in the long term. That mindset is definitely a change from previous, where I think prior we were really, um, fighting against this non-invasive crowd. Um, they had huge marketing dollars. They were really putting a lot of information out there, and I think the trend is kind of moving towards more surgical, uh, procedures.

Max Baybak

So, okay. So, it sounds like consumers are starting to become realistic about the expectation —

Dr. Raghu Athré

Correct.

Max Baybak

— of non-surgical, and maybe still has its place, but also they're becoming a little more sophisticated and understanding where they just do just need to go right to surgery.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Yep.

Max Baybak

Yeah, I think that's true, because, and I guess it's a natural evolution, that we saw, we've seen a huge boom in non-surgical, first-time patients, first time consumers dabbling into this, and maybe coming in with, uh, either being possibly misled, or just over, their expectations too high, or not enough understanding of it. Right?

Dr. Raghu Athré

I think it's not even just a misled. Um, I think, for example, all of us, we're all human, right? So if we have a need or a want, like, let's say you want a car, and you know that your dream car is cost this and has this amount of horsepower, and then you come over here and someone has a bunch of noise that says, I can give you all the speed, and it's a fraction of the price. You're magically drawn to it. Okay. That idea of potentially getting what I want for something less, whether it's less downtime, whether it's less money, whether it's whatever, that you're kind of pulled in that direction.

So there's this natural human thing to be able to, if I can, I get what I want for less output. And sometimes, I mean, the odds of, you know, are that are pretty low. Like, it's kind of one of those things, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. And I think, you know, with enough time, now this pendulum is kind of switching towards this other side, and patients are going, okay, that's there, okay, and maybe, you know, if I'm 31 and just got a little bit, that may work, but for where I am, this is not, I've tried it a couple times. It's not working. There's data out there. There's lots of education where you can research it. So, they're really becoming information voyeurs and pulling that and going, "Okay, this is what I really need to do."

Max Baybak

It's, I guess it's a good, and again, natural progression to see a more sophisticated consumer, and sort of coming back to surgery, not that they went away, but maybe, right, settling into the realization that that's where they're going to get their expectations met properly, right?

Dr. Raghu Athré

And I think that, you know, like, for example, like even when we talk with my monthly meetings with my team, the messaging, like, we never go, hey, this is bad. We just go, it's our job to educate, and then the progression or whatever natural evolution occurs, occurs.

Max Baybak

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, final question here for you is, what's one piece of advice you would give kind of just to the industry at large, or perhaps to a surgeon who wants to follow in your footsteps?

Dr. Raghu Athré

Awesome. Um, first of all, um, if it's a, to a surgeon that wants to follow doing what I do, number, I'm going to give you two things. One, there is no marketing company in the world, I don't care how good they are, by their, whatever, that you can just walk in and say, "Yo, dude, here, take care of it, and I just want to go operate." That doesn't exist. So, what you really need to do is, you need, you don't need to be a master of everything. You do need to know a little about a lot. If it's your business, you need to know what the basics of SEO is. You need to know the basics of, you know, blogging or whatever, all these things, because you've got this team that's trying to promote you, and they can't help you unless you at least have a little bit of, at least vocabulary, that you can share.

So, when, you know, Fiona sends me three blog articles in a month, you know, and I'm like, God, I need to read another one. But now I know where the, what the focus is. She's pushing this SEO envelope as first priority. She's trying to make that internet sticky, and she's putting this information out there. Okay. So now, since I have the understanding of where I'm going, the pain of doing it is not as much. So that's one thing, is spend some time. You spent so much time becoming a good surgeon. Spend a little bit of time in trying to learn about all these different things. It helps you become a much better communicator with people who are trying to help you.

Max Baybak

I agree with your sentiment wholeheartedly, and we appreciate it. We always, like, try to look for clients where we can be really good partners to them. There is perhaps a way to try to do marketing where the doctor, or whoever the business owner is, totally hands off, but I would say that the business owner is doing themselves a disservice.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Yep.

Max Baybak

I think about it this way. There's DIY, and anything, do it yourself, or done with you, or done for you. And in marketing, that, yeah, so in marketing, there are, when you start out, you might have to be scrappy and kind of do it DIY, depending on what kind of industry you're in and what kind of resources you have. Then you need to be very realistic next up with what, if what you're doing is a done-for-you service or a done-with-you. And there are some aspects that we do, but we can kind of do for you, but we do want some guidance, and some of those things need a little less check-in, but they all need a little bit of guidance from you. Otherwise, what you get is something that's very watered down.

So, a marketing company that's trying to, this actually makes what we do challenging, because I would love to, as an entrepreneur, I'd love to say I can give everyone the same results by rinsing and repeating and not having to think about what everyone wants.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Yeah.

Max Baybak

But I won't get good results. I won't retain clients, and it won't work. Right. So, what happens when someone is trying to do it completely hands-off, or a company's offering something that's kind of cookie cutter, is you end up not having much of your brand on it. It's not very sticky, right?

Dr. Raghu Athré

It's not very sticky. It's not, it doesn't sound, it doesn't sound like you. No. Okay. It's a, the blog articles that I review, and if I look at it and I go, "No, I'd say it this way." And this is the, it sounds like I'm saying it, and that's what it needs to do. It's a reflection of me.

Max Baybak

Yeah. So, you know, we can, there are things we can do. We've learned the best practices of this industry over more than a decade, well enough that even for someone who's less involved, we can elevate what you've got. But the people who are going to outperform, and the people who are doing well, you know, I had someone sit here and say that things have taken a little bit of a step back in the, and it wasn't actually a doctor, it was someone on the device side, who said that they've seen sort of a slump in this year, and we have some many surgeons who are booked out as ever, because they keep their pedal, their foot on the gas when it comes to marketing. But the ones that are really, uh, playing at the next level are very active.

Dr. Raghu Athré

I, the other analogy, um, is the personal trainer. You know, I can only do, I can't do anything for you as a personal trainer. You got to show up to the gym. Without you showing up, I mean, it, this is, so I'm a huge sports fan. I love sports. Okay. I think football is a great descriptor of everything life, right? So, if you want to perform like Patrick Mahomes, Patrick Mahomes doesn't just show up on Sunday and throw a couple of balls. The whole team works with Mahomes.

And if Mahomes is having a bad day, I mean, he's just not, his passes are, you know, two millimeters off, you know, his team is definitely sitting there and going, "Dude, all right, you're not doing this so hot today. We're going to run the ball." Okay. So, all right, guys. Everybody huddle up. We're running today. You know, I mean, there's a strategy. The goal is to win. Yeah. But there's so many different little pieces, and if everybody's kind of working like an orchestra, you get to win the game.

Max Baybak

Yeah. And then you kind of have to be the coach of all these different pieces, right? And make sure that it's all clicking together. That's awesome. Well, I appreciate that. And that's a great mentality to have, and we want to work as hard as we can for our client success, but when they come to the table, when we do it together, I cannot tell you, those clients just, they outperform always, the ones who really have that. And we understand it's tough too.

Dr. Raghu Athré

And, and you know what? It makes it enjoyable. That's what it is, right? So, I don't think there's a single surgeon on the planet that goes, "Dude, I'm gonna go home today and I'm going to do some marketing, man. Oh my god, I'm really looking forward to that."

Max Baybak

Right. Right.

Dr. Raghu Athré

But hey, you got to do what you got to do.

Max Baybak

Yeah. Well, we appreciate it, and, um, appreciate you sitting down here with me for a few minutes, and, uh, here's to C.J. Stroud having a good third year.

Dr. Raghu Athré

I know. I'm looking forward to it. Uh, and Manning, you know, we're in Austin, home of the Longhorns, so I'm going Manning here. Arch is going to go for it.

Max Baybak

Okay, I love it. Thank you so much, Dr. Athré. Appreciate your time.

Dr. Raghu Athré

Appreciate it.