Episode 52: Cultivating A Positive Mindset With World Renowned Plastic Surgeon Dr. Ryan Neinstein

Jun 27

If you believe in taking personal responsibility for everything, you know that with every cell in your body we are artists and that we each get a blank canvas to build the life of our dreams. It’s truly inspiring by individuals who follow their life’s purpose and flourish in all facets of life – relationships, business, health and more. Take out a note pad and learn all about positive mindset in today’s conversation with one of the most renowned plastic surgeons in the world. Dr Ryan Neinstein is a board-certified plastic surgeon in New York City, and owner of Neinstein Plastic Surgery. He is often referred to as the surgeon’s surgeon, as many surgeons choose him as their own trusted doctor. As the author of safety guidelines and masterclass instructor he stresses the importance of hyper-specialization and patient care above all else. He is also an entrepreneur in the crypto, bio tech, spirits, and real estate world. In this episode, he shares his story of cultivating an ever-evolving positive mindset, his philosophy on how to create an exceptional team, and how he is making an incredible impact on the lives of all his patients.

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Cultivating A Positive Mindset With World Renowned Plastic Surgeon Dr. Ryan Neinstein

If you believe in taking personal responsibility for your life, you will also believe that we are the artists. We get a blank canvass to build the life of our dreams. I get truly inspired by individuals who follow their life's purpose and flourish in all aspects of the wheel of life, relationships, business, health, and more. Take out a notepad for this episode with one of the most renowned plastic surgeons in the world. We talk about a story of cultivating an ever-evolving positive mindset, his philosophy on how to create an exceptional team, and how he's making incredible waves and impacting the lives of all his patients. Welcome to the show, Dr. Ryan Neinstein.

Dr. Ryan Neinstein is a board-certified plastic surgeon in New York City and the Owner of Neinstein Plastic Surgery. He is often referred to as a surgeon's surgeon as many surgeons choose him as their own trusted doctor. As the author of safety guidelines and masterclass instructor, he stresses the importance of hyperspecialization in patient care above all else. He's an entrepreneur in crypto, biotech, spirits, and real estate. His most proud achievements are the loving family he has with his celebrity fitness instructor and wife, Lauren Neinstein.

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Welcome to the show, Dr. Ryan Neinstein.

Thank you so much for having me. We just got out of surgery here. It was an amazing day in the operating room, as is every day when we have the opportunity to operate. I have been looking forward to this. I'm glad we were able to connect. I'm grateful that you are entrusting me with some space in this beautiful universe of yours.

Thank you so much. Our readers are going to be in for an absolute treat because there are so many awesome topics I want to get into with you and coming out of the OR and jumping into a show that's the stuff of legends to give people an idea of what kind of guy he is. I was talking to a good friend of mine, Adam Glyn. This guy has a lot of different contacts. He's text buddies with Tony Robbins and knows so many different people.

He's like, "You need to connect with Dr. Ryan Neinstein. He is a very unique individual who plays things the right way in terms of his business. It's the way he treats people. He's ever-evolving and expanding and has a great mindset." If this guy is recommending it, I had to start learning about you and getting you on. So far, I have not been disappointed.

I'm not going to steal the directionality of this show but I want to bring this up. I was reading this about Awa Kenzo, a Japanese archer from the 1800s. You are going to think this is planned. Readers, you are going to think we set this up. This guy figured out a way to be one with the bow. A lot of high-performance people like this teaching for whatever they are doing now.

Even if it's not archery, it applies to anything. His enlightenment was at the age of 40. The guy who connected us is in that same age group. A lot of the authors I read, whether it was thousands of years ago, Marcus Aurelius or Tim Grover, were the same age. I can't explain it but there is some type of pathway or zenith of enlightenment that people get. They connect at that same time in their life, and I knew you were the same age as me.

That's so funny. I have been thinking about it a lot. What I have been feeling is that, first of all, I've never felt better in my body. You are still here at physical youth, and you have all the wisdom of the experiences, the learning lessons, and everything like that that comes from making all the mistakes in the world and to the conclusion of getting more connected with your mind, sharpening it, and becoming more efficient in the way you live life and becoming more time-efficient. Those are two combinations, youth, and wisdom. This is the time where it's the prime of our lives. This is the time when we can create all of the dreams and visions we have and share them with the people we love most.

I agree with that 100%. Here's one thing I realized day in, and day out, as your island of knowledge gets bigger, your shore of ignorance gets bigger. The more you think, the more you find out you don't know. That's what keeps everything exciting.

Dr. Neinstein, what is living a limitless life mean to you?

It's listening to what others say about this. It's so easy to say, "I believe in myself. There are no boundaries." That's probably what people think. It's almost useless saying, "I have full belief in myself, and that's why I'm limitless." For me, it's something tactical. When I think of a definition of limitless for me as a surgeon, it's having a bank account in my head of successful surgeries and confidence, knowing how to navigate issues.

When they intersect, I can get to a place in the operating room where I have this suspension of conscious thoughts, and I can get into the Zen mode and get to a new level of surgery because I have so much built up in my head. It's pure joy and exploration of that operation. To me, that's what's limitless. It's getting to a place where I get to do my craft of choice and love with almost no conscious thought. That's where I feel you go to the next level.

As your island of knowledge gets bigger, your shore of ignorance gets bigger. The more you think, the more you find out you don't know. That's what keeps everything exciting.

It's subconscious confidence but also loving that flow and being in an environment where you truly love to be, not just doing it because it's the 9:00 to 5:00 thing. That's amazing.

Let's talk about surgery because it's what I do. Up to a certain point, surgery is a lot of mental clutter. You spent so many years learning how the body works and then learning technical skills individually and then bringing it all together. It has a lot of mental clutter. Once you can get that mental clutter and that willful will to get through an operation out of your head, it unburdens the nervous system and allows your brain and body to explore the limits of that operation and purely enjoy it. Unburdening the mental clutter of a task allows you to do the task better but enjoy it way more.

That's a beautiful way to put it. I have been listening to a lot to Dr. Joe Dispenza. I don't know if you are familiar with him but he has been teaching meditation for a long time. He talks about if we want to start getting better at something or attracting things into our lives, we must go to a place of nothingness. The more time we could spend in that nothingness, that's where creation comes from. If we are trying to meditate and have a million thoughts in our heads, that's all mental clutter. If we have all these tabs open on our computer, it's slowing the machine down. Essentially, when you remove all that stuff, your form comes out, and you are able to experience limitless.

Think about running down the stairs. If you tried to think of every joint, muscle, and ligament moving in sequence, you would fall flat on your face because you couldn't do it. There are so many things being processed. It's not even being processed. You can only run because you don't think about it.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your story. How did you get to this beautiful place in your life now?

I grew up in Canada. I am a grandchild of Holocaust survivors. It was always ingrained in me to work hard and have passion but also have a purpose of service. That put me in a direction toward medicine. I spent some time volunteering in the Israeli Army as a paramedic, which shored up my passion for medicine.

As I was going through the sequence of medical training, surgery became an a-ha moment. I knew exactly that it was going to be a surgeon. I didn't know what kind of surgeon. It's just that you were at an inflection point in people's lives that you got to make a real impact with your hands in a short time and move on to the next thing. It made a lot of sense to me. When I ended up coming to New York for extra training, I fell in love with the culture of New York and the spirit of America. I went through that sequence.

I worked for someone, learned, rented a dental chair with one employee still with me now, and built from the ground up with pure authenticity of what I do, what I want to do, and raw passion for the work. Now, we are almost 30 staff members in plastic surgery. We have one of, if not the biggest physical locations in the city for a plastic surgeon. We are onboarding a new female plastic surgeon. There are lots of things happening. It's exciting.

I grew up in Atlanta around a lot of doctors. My parents were both pediatricians, and my sister is an Ayurvedic doctor, which is an Eastern medicine doctor. My other sister is another pediatrician focused on developmental-behavioral disorders. I got to see the process, and it is a long grueling process to finish your undergrad, go through med school, do the residencies, the fellowships, and all that kind of stuff. Did you always have this mindset of growth? Were you just trying to get through that process because it is very taxing on the body and also on the mind?

In retrospect, it seems crazy but at the moment at the time, I couldn't imagine doing anything else, whether it was medical school, staying up all night, studying Biology, Chemistry, Anatomy, or whatever with my friends. It never seemed like a burden. It just seemed like I was meant to do it at that time. I never looked too far ahead in the sense that I can't believe I got to do this for 4 years and then surgical training for 7 years. I stayed in the moment and loved every second of it. In surgical training, I loved residency. Was it tiring? Sure. I can't imagine anything having value, not having a certain amount of pain because if you don't feel the pain, how are you going to get that rebound feeling of euphoria?

When you sign that lease, it's your first time as an entrepreneur. What was your vision for your practice at that moment? Do you remember?

I have to give credit to my wife. I had never even been to Bergdorf Goodman, the iconic building we're in, but I knew it had the views of Central Park. I knew that helped bring my vision of what I want to do, which is an artistic sense, to life. I was incredibly fearful, scared, and afraid when I signed it. A common theme in my life is being fearful but having no doubt. It's like two parallel yet opposing emotions. This is, "I'm scared. I cannot cover this lease." and on the same train of thought, I have no doubt I will be fine.

That's a great way to look at things. It's almost a freeing sensation. Everybody feels a little bit of fear. It's not even like, "I'm going to have the monumental success or whatever." We have that but at the same time, every person has gone through a whole bunch of challenges in their life and is still here. If you think that a new decision that you make is going to lead you astray, it's only going to give you a learning lesson, whether it's the direction that moves you forward directly or it's going to take you a roundabout way to get to the same point. We are still standing here. Having that fear is not realistic when we look at the whole scope and the perspective of a larger viewpoint.

If you are not taking risks that cause fear, you are limiting yourself. It's the doubt. The reason I can have no doubt is that I did all the training. I knew how to do the work. I knew how to treat patients. I was scared of the financial commitment but I knew I would figure it out one way or the other.

The last time I checked in medical school, they don't have any business classes. How did you learn how to run and operate at scale this amazing business of yours?

I don't think anyone, even if you take a business class, is going to understand how a small to medium-size business works. The only way you can do it is to do it. There are pillars that I tell people. First of all, you have to have something to do. For us, it's the plastic surgery business. It's super hyper-specialized. We know what to do. We have a service to sell. In terms of running the business, you start basic. You get a good accountant, a good insurance guy, a good lawyer, and you need a mentor.

You can't go through life in a straight line without a ruler. You find a mentor, someone you trust, and someone who trusts you, who is going, to be honest, and raw with you. You start going from there. You read as many books, ask as many questions, make as many mistakes as you can, and try not to make the same mistakes twice. Continuously try to make new mistakes.

Asking for help is the number one thing. You can't figure out how to structure your bonus, year-end raises, 401(k), and professional growth. You just can't figure that out on your own but there are people who have done that for 30 years. They are not going to know exactly how to do it for your business. They can give you a framework, and you start from there. You pivot, roll, and figure something that works. Nothing ever fits perfectly but when you put all these pieces together, they all come together like a puzzle.

How did you go about finding your particular mentor?

A mutual friend ended up connecting on common things like family, interest in sports, and entrepreneurial spirit. You spend more time together. Shout out to David Edelman, my mentor. He comes from the real estate venture capital world, which has nothing to do with medicine but running a business is running a business. It doesn't matter what you are doing. It's people, services, marketing, infrastructure, and supply chain. We've had a great back-and-forth relationship, and I hope he's taking away as much as I am. It's a real back and forth relationship.

For anyone who's looking to find a mentor, they might be a little bit intimidated to reach out to somebody who they think is at a much higher level than them, especially if they are first starting out. What advice would you give somebody seeking a mentor on how to go about that and how to add value to their life?

You would be surprised how willing people are to share their knowledge if you are willing to share how much you care about what they are sharing and what you are doing. People always have things in their life that are pain points that you can do. You can get anyone on the phone and be like, "I'm going to come to clean your pool every day in the summer for free." Even if you have a pool company, they don't skim your pool daily.

You can't go through life in a straight line without a ruler. Go find a mentor, someone who can be trusted, who is going to be honest and raw. Read as many books, ask as many questions, make as many mistakes as you can, and try not to make the same mistakes twice.

I can skim your pool. I just need six minutes of your time every third day. You will probably be the COO of that company in 4 to 6 years. Find something that annoys people that they have to do regardless of how wealthy they are. Offer to take away that pain, no matter how mundane that task is, in exchange for some time. That will transcend. People like that. Walk their dog. Bring them a specific coffee that isn't on Postmates every morning that their assistant always gets wrong. Figure it out.

Tell us a little bit about your plastic surgery, your practice, and who you typically help in terms of plastic surgery.

Our practice is focused on body contouring. We love traditional plastic surgery body contouring with people who didn't take care of themselves years ago and were using plastic surgery to replace wellness. What we do now is helping people optimize their wellness. We are part of their plan. We are sculpting, toning, and tightening. Our sculpting program is dedicated to people who are taking care of themselves but have reached the limit of their bodies. We help them go to the next level. We get those hard-to-get areas.

You can have a very low-fat percentage but that body fat percentage is stuck in one area and super annoying to get rid of. That's where we come in. Second, my personal favorite is where I capture the hearts and minds of my patients because I have the hearts and minds of my wife, young mothers or any aged mother.

We have the so-called Mommy Makeover, where we are undoing skin that is stretched and torn and fat that is stuck on. At the same time, we are going to suit you up while we are there. A Ferrari can always go faster but we connect with these people. We make real dramatic changes in their lives. There's a real sense of self. That deal of change is significant and permeates into their whole life. If the mom is happy, the partner's happy, and the children are happy, that provides a real sense of self for us.

You are helping these moms get their sexiness back. They've gone through a lot through pregnancy and maybe multiple trials. They don't necessarily feel physically the way that they did before, and you are giving them that transformation. Tell us some of the success stories you've seen over the years.

There's a mind-body connection. It's hard for people who haven't had their bodies stretched and torn to understand what it's like to look in the mirror and not even recognize who's there, and we are reestablishing that mind-body connection. This happens day in and day out and is the fuel to the fire that keeps the furnaces on here at Neinstein Plastic Surgery. Those are the changes, and also within our staff. We have Dr. Funderburk, who is the most honest, humble, and nicest man in the world. He's one of our associate surgeons. Seeing the happiness and the sense of self he gets from his work day-to-day with patients makes a huge difference.

It's extremely fulfilling work to see somebody. Even in my spa, when I see people coming out with a smile on their face, the stuff that's happened in their life, they were able to let it go emotionally or whatever from a 60-minute zero-gravity experience. It's very similar in the way that you are helping people feel a little better about themselves. Helping moms and everything like that, they truly love and appreciate it. I'm sure you also get clients who see something on social media and might have some unreasonable expectations in terms of how to change their bodies because there's so much Photoshopping and everything. How do you deal with clients that come in with those goals?

This is a big misconception. I don't see many people coming in, showing me a picture of someone else, and saying, "I want to look like that." I keep hammering at home, whether through social media or things like this. We are optimizing your body. We are not trying to make you look like someone else. We don't make that. We don't bring that concept into our orbit.

People may have unrealistic expectations. A lot of unrealistic expectations are not what the surgery can do. It's what they are going to do with the surgery. It's the thing they think the surgery would accomplish in their life, whether it will make their marriage better. A lot of the time, those are unrealistic expectations. We are blessed that the type of people that come here have a real sense of where they are and what they are looking for. They are pretty realistic.

When I was researching about you, one thing that stood out to me was your management style and your vision on how you go about your business and valuing every single one of your team members. I got to interact with Mitch, who is one of your top guys there. He set this whole thing up for us and also Nurse Chloe, who came into my spa and had a great experience over there. Everybody is so excited to be a part of the ethos of your business. Can you tell us a little bit about how you went about and created this flat hierarchy structure in your business rather than the top-down structure?

It starts with the core concepts like, “If it's not good for the hive, it's not good for the bee.” You can't have people with their own agenda on the team. It's got to be for the goal, and the goals have to be simple. 1) Patient experience, 2) Team member's happiness. We set the Northern Star pretty simple, "Let's make the patients feel comfortable, feel loved, and make each other feel loved." Those are our core cultures.

How do I build my team members? I look for very high qualified specialists. These are people who have put in the work and have shown the maturity that they've put in the years of study. Number one, they come in sophisticated, highly qualified specialists. The second thing I look for in people is they have to have an eagerness to learn and improve. This is not the end of the line. It's not even the beginning of the end. The beginning of the beginning. You have to have an eagerness to learn and improve.

We scare people away. There are a lot of people who come to interview who are looking to clock in and clock out. That doesn't work around here. That's fine. There are lots of places where you can clock in and clock out. When it comes back to that agenda, you have to generously share knowledge. One of our nurses spends a day at your spa. She comes in and shares everything with everyone. She wants knowledge to be shared. If someone has a personal agenda to keep things to themselves, it's a culture killer.

This one is important. Everyone has to be comfortable with feedback. We have a pretty good policy for raw honesty around here. We try not to just pat each other on the back. I don't want to say criticizing each other but giving real feedback in a positive way. When you have that respect, you don't recognize the things you are doing that have a fault. You have to have someone that you respect call you out. Those are the key things.

If someone was going to ask me, “What are the four key things to build your business?” Get highly qualified people. They have to have the eagerness to learn and improve. They must be willing to generously share any new knowledge and be comfortable with feedback. If you don't have all those four in each and every team member, you are going to have problems.

When I was talking to Chloe, she was saying that you asked the team, "Is there anything that you want to do, learn to improve the value of the business, or everything like that?" She mentioned that she wanted to get into a nutrition school and that you are like, "Let's do it." Tell us a little bit about your philosophy of reinvesting in your team.

I don't just guess what I think people want. We do employee engagement surveys, which are very important. It's not a 300-question survey that nobody wants to answer. Those are quarterly surveys and validated questionnaires. You can get them from Harvard Business School, and you need to figure out what's going on. You need to figure out what's your stickiness to the business, meaning how much they love working there and what's the stickiness of each other, meaning how much they love each other but you got to understand where their head's at with comp. You got to understand where their motivation is.

What we took away from our last employee engagement was we were good on stickiness to each other, stickiness to the organization, and happy with comp as much as anyone could ever be but in terms of motivation, people wanted more tangible skills, the physical, "I want to do more to help the business and each other," and to help themselves. I'm okay with investing in someone who may go on to do something else. I hope someone in here is the CEO of a business ten years down the road.

When they are doing a podcast from Mars in twenty years, they are going to say, "I had a boss twenty years ago who stimulated needs to be a better version of myself." I'm not scared of investing and then leaving. We've put together three pathways. We are going to send people to the Disney Institute for Executive Leadership, the Wharton School of Leadership and Nursing, and then the third pathway is an HR or Human Capital Strategy Course. It's at Harvard.

We then have the popery. One of our nurses wants to do an anatomy lab. One of our nurses wants to do a nutrition lab. They are all focused on doing something that improves themselves but also contributes significantly to the ultimate goal. Once 1 or 2 does it, nobody wants to be left behind. It's a big investment but it puts a spring in their step.

You have loyalty, and whether they move on or not, they are always going to speak so highly of you. We are a small business. We are a couple of years in. We are not doing huge sums of revenue but it's building up. The first thing I say to them is, "Anytime you feel like it's time for you to move on it and grow to a better version of yourself, I will be the first person in your corner congratulating you. I want to be able to support you in anything you do going forward in life."

If you can build stuff and move stuff, you can build stuff and move stuff in any industry.

That motivates people to want to help you because when you help them in their life or whatever, even when they are working for you if they need some assistance or a ride somewhere. I'm trying to do whatever I can for my employees because I appreciate the value that they provide for me, my small business, and the mission that we have and continuing on that stuff. Taking care of your employees should be required or mandatory but not a lot of people do it. I've seen a lot of medical practices, and it seems like a very stressful situation in many places.

I would like to talk about healthcare in general. I always joke that healthcare is like gas stations. Nothing has changed since 1920 in terms of customer service. Healthcare is something that should happen for patients instead of happening to patients. Everyone has gone to the doctor's office. You show up, signing sheets and forms that were xerox in 1984. No one really knows where it's going. If one sign where they are talking about HIPAA compliance, and on the second, they have a list of everyone, they want you to sign in so you can see everyone's name, it's mind-bending.

You wait in a room, someone comes, they are chipper for the first three minutes, and then they are trying to get through to the next person. You then leave, you don't know what just happened, and then you get a bill three months later. There's no transparency and accountability. On both sides, I understand that. This is the biggest issue in healthcare. Patients want more and more time, access, and info. At the same time, in most healthcare settings, physicians are being reimbursed less and less.

There are two opposing views. Patients want more, and doctors are receiving less. Most physicians are renumerated or compensated based on the number of patients they treat rather than the quality of the patients they treat or the quality of treatment they provide. These are almost existential questions because insurance companies don't understand how well you treat a patient. They just want to know what the code was for the thing you did in that room. The more rooms and codes you have, the better for the doctors.

The quality of care is getting worse and worse.

I don't know about the quality of care. You can look at the quality of care in various forms. In quality of life, you can look at life expectancy or get more mercurial and start looking at what is the quality of life of certain ethnicities. You can go real deep. By the way, you could probably find whatever answer you want.

There's data for everything.

We try to make healthcare in our office where the customer comes at it from a hospitality customer service aspect. That's the mentality we frame here.

What is your ultimate vision for the business? Is there a point where in your current location, you reach max capacity and can't see any more patients? Where do you go from there? What do you want to build with this business?

Most entrepreneurs will always have some grand answer to this. They want to take over the space. They want to reinvent the wheel. They want to change healthcare. Honestly, I want to have a legacy of providing the best possible patient experience. In terms of how big we grow, I don't really know. We have a third surgeon coming on. We have a beautiful space, and we are going to focus on patient care. I'm not looking for a nationwide or international expansion. The things I want to do more of are to write more textbooks, do more teaching, get more into the roots of plastic surgery, and almost less into the business expansion-wise. While maybe limiting in economic focus, it's maximal in purpose.

It's a beautiful answer. It's all about the quality of life and doing things that you love to do rather than doing things just because that's what the traditional route is. Thank you for that honest answer.

I have been to business conferences, and everyone is talking about the magic, grand plan, how fast they can scale, and how much they can chop costs. It doesn't spark me. I don't think I would feel better about myself if I had 50 offices with 100 doctors that I don't know their names and providing care to patients that I don't know the quality of.

Outside of your practice, I learned that you have many different interests. Cryptocurrency came up in the research that I did. Tell us a little bit about how you got involved in crypto and got attracted to it.

I was lucky enough through some of the venture investing I do to get more into the machinery versus the end product. I have always been interested in new technology, as we all are. Cryptocurrency is a function of new technology. There are going to be competitors to fiat currency for whatever your sociological definition of why crypto is so important.

It's the machinery within crypto that has broader implications. When you take blockchain technology, you can break that down into 50 different businesses that make that blockchain work. A lot of those specific businesses are going to help other things, not just whatever the coin of the day is. To me, my crypto investments have all been into the machinery and the back end, not the end coin. I like the mines but I don't like the coins.

Not so long ago, we witnessed a huge drop in the price of Bitcoin.

I don't even know what it is, and I don't even care because I'm more interested in how you build and move it. If you can build and move stuff, you can build and move stuff in any industry.

As we are looking at a little bit of a drawdown in the markets and the economic recession, are there any different things that you are looking at, not financial advice or anything like that but any sectors that you're watching closely?

Whenever there's a downturn in the economy, you always want to score a little bit away. I personally believe that a downturn in the economy is the biggest opportunity for great business operators. No matter what business you are in when the economy is flush, poorly run businesses will thrive because there's so much demand. Even in my business, people are busy. People who don't do things were just busy. As people become more strategic and tactical with their finances, they are going to be more strategic and tactical in their choices, in anything, including plastic surgery.

We are looking to grow during this period as we see an economic downturn because we are not going to invest in other things. We are going to invest in ourselves because I know the infrastructure is sound. If the patient is looking for safe, predictable surgery, this is the spot to go. They are not going to be lured into a down economy by glitz and glam.

It's who wrote the textbooks on techniques, who wrote the textbooks on safety, and who does the most amount of the cases. Why do they do a lot of cases? It's because they have a big team. There's a lot of people looking after you here, and that's not going anywhere. To me, when the economy goes south, you bet on yourself. When the economy is up, you bet on other people.

The common thread on my show with all my guests is that everyone is not only living such a passionate, primary career, something that they love to do with their purpose but also maintaining a beautiful family life, harmony, mental, physical, and spiritual practices. Tell us a little bit about some of the routines you do? You have so many things going on. How do you set yourself? How do you find out about your life?

When the economy goes south, bet on yourself. When the economy is up, bet on other people.

There are a couple of things. It's important that people know work-life balance means something different to everyone. I will admit that one of my biggest faults, and I don't even know if it's a fault, is I don't really care about work-life balance, to be honest. I love my family. I sacrifice so much other things. I don't care about the sacrifices. I don't need to go to dinner. I don't need to go to events. I don't need friends as much. It's family and work. There are the two things I'm essentially in love with. Work-life balance is different at different stages of your life. I'm in it. I love it. I'm happy to work 16 hours a day, 6 days a week.

I don't complain. I love the way I frame my life is all about reducing mental clutter so I can focus. To me, that's routine. Like professional athletes who do the same thing, routine unburdens my mind. I get up about 4:15 or 4:30 every morning. The first thing I want to do after giving my dogs a treat is read. I like to read something pretty stimulating like philosophy, whether it's a book on Hemingway or Napoleon. I need to read something for about 20 to 30 minutes, and then I like to clear my inbox. I go through mission-critical emails.

At 5:30, I'm in the gym with my trainer, Frank. At this point, I've mentally got my mind right. I've unburdened myself from my inbox of what I need to do. I'm physically ready. I'm ready to jump over a wall and run through it if I have to at that point. I then hit the day all the way through. It's important to me to eat healthily, go to sleep early, and spend time with my loved ones. I get rid of the noise. A lot of things people do for fun that they call balance, I don't. I don't care.

As you said, everybody defines it in a different way. We prioritize the things that matter most to us. It's good to do it from a place of empowerment. It's making the choices yourself rather than letting other people.

My wife will tell me it sacrifices friends and that, "You missed this." I don't care. I know where I'm going. I know what I need to do to get there. I'm more than happy to do it. I don't feel like I'm missing out. I feel like they are missing out.

They don't get to spend time with you.

I'm okay with being in my office after 16 hours and calling 10 patients I need to call. I don't put that off and miss dinner with friends. It's not even a choice for me.

You mentioned your lovely wife. I saw in the research that I did that you met her at a yoga retreat. Can you tell us about that?

I went on a yoga retreat to meet a girl. I've never done yoga since, so I'm good to go. It's fantastic. I met someone who's just pure soulmate and absolutely in love. She's the most fun, sweetest person who tears you up when you need to be. Everyone's marriage has ups and downs. It's not preventing ups and downs. It's how you interact with each other.

We have such high-level abilities to communicate when we are upset with each other, which allows us to not make little things big things. We are a total partnership. We have roles and responsibilities that allow us to do the things we want to do and the things we need to do for our family. We are working on it. We talk about it. It's a constant moving target. For both, it's not 50/50. It's 100/100.

You are coming to the table as a complete person on your own, happy and healthy in mind, body, and spirit. Each person is bringing that to the table in a high level of communication. That's also with your friends, relationships, employees, everyone but especially your primary, intimate partner. That is the most important thing you can be doing, bringing your best self to the table. Dr. Neinstein, I want to appreciate and thank you so much for coming on. I have one last question for you. Why do you think you came here to Earth as Dr. Ryan Neinstein? What did you want to experience?

The thing I want to experience most is being a father and a husband, 100%. I am a better surgeon. I am a better boss. I'm an entrepreneur. Everything I am is better because of being a father and a husband.

Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it coming right out of surgery onto the show. This is going to be amazing. I'm sure the readers are going to love it and start following you on Instagram. Where can we learn more about you?

It's @DrNeinstein and NeinsteinPlasticSurgery.com, and we will go from there.

They have a beautiful view of Central Park in their office. It's a world-renowned facility that so many people go to and have some high-level people. He's such a wonderful person. Check them out and start learning more about this amazing human being.

Thank you. This is great.

Thank you.

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About Dr. Ryan Neinstein

Dr Ryan Neinstein is a board-certified plastic surgeon in New York City, and owner of Neinstein Plastic Surgery. He is often referred to as the surgeon’s surgeon as many surgeons choose him as their own trusted doctor. As the author of safety guidelines and masterclass instructor he stresses the importance of hyper-specialization and patient care above all else. He is also an entrepreneur in the crypto, bio tech, spirits, and real estate world. His most proud achievements are the loving family he has with celebrity fitness instructor wife Lauren Neinstein.

plastic surgery, positive mindset, teamwork, healthcare, customer service, work life balance

Anand Sukhadia