I recently sat down with Catherine Maley on her “Beauty and the Biz” videocast, and we got into a question I hear a lot. Why do patients travel from across the country, and sometimes across the world, to Louisville, Kentucky for a facelift?
The short answer is focus.
Early in my career, I could’ve tried to be everything to everyone. Plenty of practices do. But I made a different choice, and today about 98% of my practice is facial procedures. That wasn’t an accident. I believe the aesthetic market is noisier than it’s ever been, and when a practice promotes breasts one day, facelifts the next, then med spa specials on top of that, the patient ends up confused. Confused patients don’t trust you.
My advice in the interview was simple. Figure out who you are. Be that person. Then get exceptionally good at it.
Catherine and I also talked about how a reputation actually gets built. Mine didn’t come from dancing on Instagram. It came from surgical outcomes, from word of mouth, from other surgeons referring their patients to me. It came from publishing, from teaching, and from real patients sharing their stories. And honestly, it came from having a clear answer to the one question every patient is silently asking: why should I choose you?
That question matters more now than ever. Patients are dealing with misinformation, AI-generated content, and marketing noise from every direction. They often don’t know who to trust. I’ll be honest, the only real cure for that is credibility you can verify. Results you can see. A track record you can check.
You can watch the full conversation on Catherine’s site here: Why Patients Fly to Kentucky for His Facelifts. We covered how I attract the right patients, how I filter out the wrong ones, and what specialization has done for my practice over the years.
It was a fun conversation. I think you’ll enjoy it.
