23 "Turns Out, People Are People" and "Eventually They'll Find Somebody That Says Yes"

Guest 1: [00:00:00] They're always staggered about how open people are. I've been on interviews with teenagers talking about drug use and they just don't even blink. Yeah, I took LSD last Wednesday and blah blah blah. And I mean, I guess that's fine, but they don't know who I am. Why don't they just say yes to doing an interview and they get paid a tenner?

Right. And that's the thing for me. You can say transformation. My China. And I always go into conversations. I have a whole spiel how everything is confidential in that, in the people in be just like, yeah, go for it. You get stuff that's kind of shocking and it's less shocking in, oh my God, I never would have thought that kind of way. Actually, lots of the time things are very intuitive, which is comforting.

And some things that I find nice is when we do stuff across different countries, there often is loads of consistency and I think it often is presented or like people might hypothesize that someone in the UK is going to be like so wildly different in their outlook or like their needs or whatever, than someone in Brazil or Saudi Arabia, and then you get to it and oh, turns out people are people and they react to things very similarly, like not everything. Sometimes you see big differences, but there are always commonalities across different audiences and different countries that I, I always for I always find that more surprising than any other. Kind of like wild outliers that you find. I mean, I didn't even know this was a job. Well, I went to uni, so it's not like I had this dream of this being a. But what then when I'm in it? And of course, it makes sense. I like that I find people really interesting. I want to know what they think. I want to understand why decisions get made and I want to influence them. And this is how I can do it. As a kid, I was like interested in journalism and stuff like that, like politics and stuff like that. I was kind of into those things.

I was into people and society and things and understanding why people are the way they are. And then I studied politics at uni, fell into this job really, it was 2008. It was quite hard to get a job. I tried for quite a long time. I was applying, did like loads of random stuff and I applied to an agency that does research and here I am. I go around asking people questions, kind of focus groups, running surveys and looking at the data and then telling whoever's commissioned the research what the answer is. The people that end up paying us to do research. Sometimes they've tried to write themselves first and it's like, oh, did you find your question didn't work? Yeah, it's because it's actually a skill to ask someone a question that gets you what you want. And it's a skill to ask a question in a way that everyone can understand it. If you're doing a survey and you want to survey the general population, making sure that you ask about something in a way that they can give you an answer that's meaningful, it's actually quite hard if you put men and women in groups and you ask them to talk about financial services.

So it's like you just hold them separately. And if you and if you have a group of young people and it's it can be even be as like subtle as a 15 year old is so different from an 18 year old. And so if you if you try and put those in the same session, the 18 year olds will talk and the 15 year olds will say nothing. If you want to have a frank conversation with someone about something, then you probably don't want their mum in the room. I think it's like interesting on so many different levels, like how do you put them together, what are you going to ask about? And then you get to the insights bit. So there's lots of different ways that even if what you're researching might not be your absolute passion, there are ways in finding it interesting. Things have changed. The old days pre-COVID you would go, you know, consecutive nights in different cities. I once went round like Scandinavia and Northern Europe testing cheese adverts. That was a weird time.

I've been to Brazil to do stuff on education. That's interesting because I also just think there's a context thing. If you want to understand the landscape, then you go, you do the research and then you talk to other people, but like go to a bar afterwards and talk to people about stuff. It gives you such good context for what you've learned from the official research session.

If you told me we should just don't get with with online, you don't remember the focus group participants from an online group like you do an offline group, like people can really stick with you. And then that's nice because especially if you've got the kind of end sponsor your client they're watching and they other people that need to design the service, whatever they're doing, whatever their objective is, you can see when someone's made an impact on them. Sometimes it's annoying because that person has said something different to like absolutely everybody else, and they just latch on to what they've said and then like, don't. But you know, remember when Mary said this? It's like, yeah, but this one person we spoke to 100, but it can be a bit of a pain to go traveling and that can be depressing times. You can go to like grim places and it's raining and it's dark and it's 930 and you've been in research sessions for five hours, but there's always something that comes out of it that, yeah, there's a connection thing I like. You can go away feeling that you understand somebody totally different from you, just a little bit better. Now, you'd never presume that you know all the answers, but hearing someone talk about something in there, like talking about their own experiences, it's always a privilege, I think. [00:05:37][337.9]

Naty: [00:05:43] Hey, folks, it's Naty. We'll be back with more right after this break. What the hell is my job? [00:05:53][10.3]

Guest 2: [00:05:54] Facial plastic surgery really was an amazing blend of both the art and science of medicine, and it was just really rewarding to see the changes that you make and how those are individualized. And you can still be creative because no two faces are the same. [00:06:10][16.4]

It wasn't like I knew from when I was a little kid that I wanted to be a facial plastic surgeon when I grew up. It was kind of a step wise decision. I was good at math and science, when I was younger. And so I was looking into what I can do with those skills. And then I really wanted to make an impact for people on a regular basis. I found that medicine was really an amazing way to do that.

I was always good at working with my hands, and I was interested in surgical specialties. And then when I was looking at the different surgical specialties, I found that different people have different goals, different anatomy and different personalities, that you have to incorporate all of that. Facial plastic surgery was a great blend of, art and science where you can really be creative and still use both sides of the brain in order to treat people, because no two faces are the same. Everybody's, very, very individual in terms of their anatomy as well as their goals, their personality. And you have to combine all of that with the knowledge of science, medicine and everything like that to really be successful in this field. There's also, you know, a certain personality of people that go into, surgery that really draws them in, and it's usually the people that can keep their cool under pressure.

The first, surgery that I did, kind of beginning to end on my own without somebody looking over my shoulder, was, removing a tumor of the prodded plant, which is, salivary gland that lives in the cheek. And for that surgery, you have to dissect out all of the branches of the facial nerve, which control the facial movements on one half of your face. And it was actually a really proud feeling, of course, to do that first surgery from beginning to end without, you know, somebody supervising me the entire time. And patient had a really great outcome. And so that was honestly a really proud moment for me. And, you know, some people, they ask me and those kind of situations, are you nervous doing that kind of thing? And I would say if you're surgeons feeling nervous, they probably aren't ready enough at that point to be doing things on their own. My residency training was five years and old head and neck surgery, and then another full year dedicated to just facial plastic cosmetic surgery, even though that was part of that kind of surgery training, I some specialized within that afterwards.

You can't hide those scars on somebody's face with an article of clothing. So you have to be really meticulous and really be a perfectionist to make sure that all those incisions are healed up really well. So I use no magnifying loops when I'm training, and I use really fine sutures that are sometimes thinner than a human hair to really make things, as natural looking as possible. And so, I think making sure that patients have realistic expectations, of their results is one of the most important things before they go under the guise. And honestly, some of the most difficult conversations end up coming up when I have to tell patients that they don't have realistic expectations. And I don't think that they're a good candidate for surgery, and it's hard for them to hear no. And those things, kind of worry me because I can counsel them as to the reasons why I think that is that they might end up going down the street. Eventually they'll find somebody that says, yes.

And I think that's the problem that you get when these celebrities, or even just, you know, normal people walking down the street end up with quote unquote botched plastic surgery results because they're trying to get something done that honestly doesn't look natural. And if you go around and ask enough people, you'll find somebody who will do that work for you. And I think portion of my consultation with patients who are dipping their toes in the water for thinking about plastic surgery or, Botox injections or anything like that is that, you know, 90% of people who, have plastic surgery actually have great results, and you can't tell that they had any work done. And the goal is that they look great, but you can't tell that they ever had plastic surgery. I have a lot of my patients. They come back after they've healed up and they go and see some friends or family that they haven't seen in a while, and they tell me, oh, I get compliments that people ask like, you know, did you lose weight? Did you get a haircut? You know, what's your skincare regimen? But they they can tell they look better, but they can't pinpoint what the difference is. And that's music to my ears. That's the goal, is to have people have a natural beauty that, aligns with who they are. I'm not trying to change their individuality, just kind of give them a rejuvenated version of themselves. [00:11:04][289.9]

Naty: [00:11:06] Hope you liked the episode. Please help us out by rating us, sharing with your friends, or buying us a coffee at buy me a coffee.com slash. What the hell is my job? It costs us money and time to be here for you at the start of every single week, so please consider supporting us. See you next time. [00:11:06][0.0]

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