Building The Future Show - Radio / TV / Podcast

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Kevin Horek: Welcome back to the show today. We have Dr. William Kennedy. He's a facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon and the founder and CEO of edit Dr. William, welcome to the show.

Dr. William Kennedy: Thanks for having me appreciate being here.

Kevin Horek: I'm excited to have you on the show. I actually think what you're doing at edit is really innovative and cool, but before we get into that, let's get to know you better and start off with where he grew up.

Dr. William Kennedy: Awesome. I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, Holden, Massachusetts, born and raised, lived there pretty much my whole life, except for when I did my training.

Kevin Horek: Okay, so you went to university. What did you take and why?

Dr. William Kennedy: I for, well, for undergrad, I studied something called biomedical engineering. Yeah. The reason why I chose that field is because, well, two reasons really growing up in Massachusetts, my family was very much involved in public service. My dad was a mayor. My mom was a teacher. My school was a school, a public school teacher. I was very much wanted something where I could service serve. People, give back to people. I was also very much into learning about the human body disease processes and also technology and solving problems. That was the real reason why I chose biomedical engineering as my undergraduate degree.

Kevin Horek: Okay. Fascinating. Walk us through the rest of your university because you've done a lot of it.

Dr. William Kennedy: That's just the beginning. That's where I start. So I'm from there. I really love by my biomedical engineering, it was great learning about tag. It's very tech heavy very much, but I spent a lot of my time what that degree you spend a lot of time kind of in the lab, working on code in it very little with it was short on the interaction human interaction, right. Which I also really enjoyed and had a great, got a lot of pleasure out of. I decided to pivot and go from there into medical school, which I love to do love interacting with patients, the human touch, being able to really identify disease processes, solve problems and help them out. I chose head and neck surgery as my specialty because it allowed the opportunity to do large surgeries. Also very delicate surgeries on the microscope kind offered the big gamut of surgeries involving the head and neck area.

Dr. William Kennedy: That's why I chose had an extra surgery beyond that. My next stage was I decided to pursue a facial plastic surgery, cosmetic and reconstructive surgery, because I think it offered the ability to really impact people's lives. Being able to transform someone the way they look to something that aspirational, what they could look like was really powerful, impactful. Also it gave me an opportunity to develop entrepreneurial arts or entrepreneurial skills and also develop and hone my business acupuncture, which I also had a strong desire for. It kind of combined everything, all my loves into one specialty and profession.

Kevin Horek: Interesting. Okay. Walk us through, obviously being a doctor your day to day, and then let's dive into edit and how you came up with the idea.

Dr. William Kennedy: Awesome. My day-to-day right. Well, currently right now, when I first I've been practicing now for about 12 years, 13 years for the first five or six years, seven years of my practice, I was solely just a facial plastic surgery, a surgeon. I see patients in the morning and operate three to four times a week. I'd have clinic two times a week and it was great loved doing the practice, right. Or I could continue doing that full-time forever. About five or six years into my practice, I realized that, there were just, there were too many barriers up that were preventing people from accessing what, all the different aspects of what cosmetic surgery cosmetic procedures have to offer. There's just too much fear there. People just weren't being able to be educated about what was out there. When you talk about beauty, you shouldn't be just talking about makeup, hair products, things like that.

Dr. William Kennedy: That when you talk about solutions, you should be talking about everything in basal procedures, noninvasive procedures, Botox, fillers, but people just weren't getting access to that because I don't know through my practice, I could reach people myself, but that was just very limited kind of scope and reach. I decided no only that, but people are getting wrong. If there's a lot of wrong information, bad information out there. I wanted to really utilize technology and develop my technology with my background engineering figured out a way that we can utilize technology to really educate people and let them know what's best for them, empower them to make their own decisions.

Kevin Horek: Fascinating. Okay. Walk us through how you came up with edit and what exactly is it?

Dr. William Kennedy: Edit just to kind of back up the reason why, the idea for this specific type of technology that I came up with is right now, if you come into a doctor's office, a plastic surgeon's office, we have in office equipment that we can have, you sit in a room, we take three-dimensional pictures of you. You come and you sit down at our office. I can use that three-dimensional image of you and I can call it Morphett or adjust the image to show you exactly or pretty damn close. Exactly what you'll look like after a procedure in my hand. It's very, it's not automated, but it's very user dependent so I can morph damaged you. I can show you like, Hey, this is what your nose is going to look like after a procedure.

Kevin Horek: Got you.

Dr. William Kennedy: My idea was to take this technology out of the doctor's office, develop using machine learning and augmented reality VR technology and put this technology in the hands of the consumer. They can use this in the comfort of the home without having to come into the doctor's office, they can play with it. They could see realistically what they'll look like, kinda look like after a particular procedure.

Kevin Horek: Interesting. Okay. So let's dive a little bit deeper. How does the technology actually work and how do I use it at home?

Dr. William Kennedy: What you do is so nuts, one particular part of the actual edit offerings that we have, but this one particular part, you, what you do is you download the app, you sign up for an account, and then what you do is you actually just use, you have to have an iPhone 10 or higher. It doesn't work on Android yet, but soon, but I, and I phone 10 and you scan your face. There's a button on there for allows you to scan your face. You, you have to turn your head just like as if, when you're like, when you're, when you first buy an iPhone, you have to like scan your face and do it's the same procedure you go through real scan. It takes over a thousand measurements and points on your face. From there after you do that, you can then choose. I think we have about 15 or 20 procedures on the app where you can actually choose rhinoplasty, liquid, rhinoplasty, Botox, fillers that you can choose.

Dr. William Kennedy: You can actually see in general, based on your facial characteristics and your facial measurements, what you'll look like after a procedure, which is kind of critical. In general, the one critical if I keep going one critical aspect of this is that, not every plastic surgeon and not every cosmetic dermatologist will do things the same way, right? In general, we'll do things certain within certain parameters based on your facial measurements. Every plastic surgeon is an artist and has their own idea of what they think will look best on you. We will show you in general, what you can expect after a procedure, but also we also give the user and the doctor, the ability to adjust that outcome within the range of possibility. Say for, just to say, if you had a rhinoplasty done and you'll see, we'll show you what you look like with your, after you'd have a nose job done, but you say you like, oh, I like to have my tip a little smaller.

Dr. William Kennedy: I want to have my tip a little more rotated. It'll allow you to just what you can achieve within the realm of possibility. In this age of Instagram, Tik TOK videos, where you have all these morphing abilities, face tune face, plus a lot of these times that they're not based on reality, there's based on there's no borders or boundaries that prevents you from doing things that are kind of wacky. Art keeps you within the realm of reality of what you can expect after a procedure.

Kevin Horek: Got you. Okay. Like you talked about a couple of things, but I want to dive into some of the other procedures that maybe aren't as drastic, because I think like, as somebody that's kind of suffered with acne might childhood and whole life, like to me, I think what you're doing can solve some of those more like, or invasive technology or changes. I also think you guys really solve some more minor stuff. I think a lot more people are getting simple Botox or other things done, or is that, am I correct in that.

Dr. William Kennedy: A hundred percent? There's, and people, and we often recommend that you start off, if you don't want to, they're gateway procedures, right? You start off with very simple noninvasive things and then you work your way up. If you want to, you don't have to do more invasive procedures if you want to. Right. The non-invasive stuff are a cheaper they're shorter acting so right. They use the not long lasting. There's something like Botox selling. It takes, a week or so before you see the effects, but it only lasts like three to four months, which is good because you're basically just trying on procedure. What do I, what do I, I don't like it. It's gone after three months. It gives you the ability to try it. If you like, you could try it again, but if you really love it and you don't want it to go away, there are other more permanent procedures.

Dr. William Kennedy: Our app kind of has the whole spectrum of procedures. We try to have what you look like after you have some noninvasive, minimally invasive procedures, like a laser, like Botox, fillers, like that all the way up to the more invasive procedures. It's really important to have some of the simpler, less invasive procedures on the app.

Kevin Horek: Got you. Okay. Let's say I want something done, whatever it is. It doesn't really matter. I use the app, then what happens.

Dr. William Kennedy: The.

Kevin Horek: Next day? I want to get something done. I guess I should clarify that.

Dr. William Kennedy: Right? So a couple of things. Say, so say you choose, so you had a lot of acne or you had a lot of red spots on your face. You're able to go on the app and you actually see, you can choose different. Number one, it'll measure, scan your face. Number one, you can choose a different procedure for it yourself. It'll tell you whether or not you're a candidate or not, and say, Hey, you're not a candidate for that. You already look good. You don't have enough red spots. If you are a candidate for it'll allow you to actually morph. Or should you look like after the procedure, when you get your result after that, number one, you can save it there for later because you may come back a week later and say, Hey, I liked the way I looked back today. I want to do it less and less extreme or more extreme.

Dr. William Kennedy: It allows you to save it and kind of come back to it's a lot of time. There's a process of patients that our people have to go through and kind of worked away into it. The next thing you can do is you can actually research more about what the procedure entails. It'll link you to pages on the site. It allows you to learn about the pros and cons, learn about how you get ready for the procedure, what the recovery is like. It'll also tell you other alternatives that you may not have thought about alternatives to the procedure you just did. If you had an IPL laser sale, you may want to consider a photofacial laser or something. That's more invasive like a Fraxel laser. It'll give you options to the next step. After that, when you feel comfortable with it, point you to people. We have doctors on our site that we vetted that'll point you to people do have a proven track record of good results for doing that procedure, right?

Dr. William Kennedy: You can actually book a book consultations. So you can take the next step. If you want to learn more about the doctor and to learn more about the procedure. You can all do that through our platform.

Kevin Horek: Got you. Okay. Instead of basically me trying to find the best doctor in my city, I basically do it by state or where, like I, obviously some people are more inclined to travel or not. Right, right,

Dr. William Kennedy: Right. There, we have a whole bunch of different criteria on there that you can choose. Some people like the variables that you can choose. One is cost. One is the location. You can go on the Dr site and you can see, you can filter by a number of before and afters that they've had on there. You can filter it. You can look based on education, the type of doctor, there are four or five. There are basically four major types of doctors that can perform a cosmetic procedures. Noninvasive. One of the dermatologist, one is a facial plastic surgeon. One is a general plastic surgeon. And then one is an oculoplastic surgeon. Those are the four major types that people probably don't have much of a clue about at all. We educate the people about what the different types are and which ones, what are their strengths of each.

Dr. William Kennedy: We've kind of point them to which ones will perform, have a track record of giving the best results for that procedure. It's a little common. I know the whole process is very complicated. We really try to do a lot of the legwork as if you were going to come to me and say, Hey will Dr. K I, I, were good friends at you did it. I really wanted to have this laser done in my face. I live in Houston, who is the best person to go to, right? Based on my knowledge as a plastic surgeon, like I, a criteria that I would use being in the know who would be the best person, where they went to school type of doctor, they are number of before and afters. How often do you, like I have an algorithm that I use that we put this in, that we screen our doctors by,

Kevin Horek: Okay. I want to dive into that in a second. I think as somebody that's known people that have gotten kind of different things all across the different spectrum, it seems like the hardest part. I think a lot of people don't seem to do is the research because it is time consuming. Like you mentioned, a lot of people don't know where to even really start. The fact that if somebody chooses to go down this road, the fact that you're giving them that much research and recommendations, I think is very helpful.

Dr. William Kennedy: For sure. I mean, a lot of it has to do with, the comfort of knowing that we've done a lot of research that we're not, we only have, I think maybe 150 doctors, 120 doctors on our site. Were careful who we bring on, right? We don't, we're not just doing a blast of just bring anyone on there. Not only that, but really a critical part is that, doctors will plastic surgeon or cosmetic doctors will list like every procedure in the book, like on their side that they do. Those may not be a, like say a closed rhinoplasty and particular Dr. May have not done that for like five years. If you haven't done a metaplastic in five years, man, you're not going to be good at it. We make sure that the procedures that they list on our site or we send patients on our site are procedures that meet our criteria, that you're going to be, have the highest probability you're going to do a good job at it.

Kevin Horek: Got you. Okay. How, like you touch on it quickly, but how do you actually screen the doctors that actually make it onto the site?

Dr. William Kennedy: That's actually patented technology.

Kevin Horek: Okay. Okay.

Dr. William Kennedy: I'm just getting the main, one of the main criteria in general are where they went to medical school, where they went, where they went to residency, that type of board certifications that they have. There are many different types of board certifications or quasi societies that people belong to. There's a difference between a cosmetic surgeon and an actual plastic surgeon. There are only a certain board certifications that we allow on our site. Apart from that, if you're going to list a, a procedure that you are wanting to have patients referred to you for, you have to document that you've done the procedure a certain number of times within a certain period within a certain time period. A certain usually it's about 10 procedures a year over the previous year or previous five years.

Kevin Horek: Got it. Okay. Interesting.

Dr. William Kennedy: We look at those, but we look at those before and after. They have to be good before not so good results for the procedures that you're actually going to be a listing on our site.

Kevin Horek: Got it. Okay. I'm curious to dive deeper into the app and just how I do this as a user, you mentioned you have to scan your face and you, so you kind of create like a 3d model of me in the app, and then I can kind of,

Dr. William Kennedy: You got it. Yeah. It's an actual three. What makes our 3d model unique amongst others is that most 3d models we use scan your face for whatever other application. It only does down to your neck or just underneath your chin. Ours extends all the way down to your shoulders, which is unique. That way you get a really accurate representation of what you'll look like after any type of procedure that you have when it says neck procedure, face lift, anything that involves usually an extends below the chin. BS, you get a 3d high resolution image of yourself. It doesn't look cartoony, it's 4k and it's resolution. So it's a good quality scan.

Kevin Horek: Got it.

Dr. William Kennedy: All done on your iPhone. This is not something that I have to go up into the cloud and takes like 10 minutes to render. It's like a two-minute rendering or last rendering time that you take your picture and it shows up on your phone.

Kevin Horek: Okay. So, and maybe this is a stupid question, but it can, I like if I want, I don't know, like.

Dr. William Kennedy: Save it.

Kevin Horek: Yeah. Like, like, I guess I'm trying to, I don't know how to explain it. Like if I, like in, when I'm creating, like my me emoji on the iPhone, I can like change my hair and eye color and size and no socks like to make it look like me. Can I do similar things to that? Like, can I say, I want my nose to be bigger, like this like that my hair look like, how does that work?

Dr. William Kennedy: A hundred percent. So you can go through each. It, it will be aggregate it'll each one you can go through, you can do change your nose and then you can change your lips. You can change your, you can, this will all be additive to your picture, right? You can continue to change your, their appearance. Again, this is all done within the realm of what's possible. It's not gonna allow you to change your eye color, change the color of your IRS or do things that are just, it may look good, but if that's not something that's achievable.

Kevin Horek: Okay. How so, how are you guys doing that on the iPhone? Like, have you built different versions of say like noses and lips that are achievable or are you taking the 3d version of me and just modifying that? Or how does that work?

Dr. William Kennedy: What happens is, well, there's two different ways that you can actually do this and we do, we're doing it both ways. One actual measurements that's dumb just to make simplify it. One is measurements and one is machine learning, right? Just to explain the first way is, so aside from technology in general, right? Plastic surgeons, plastic surgery, all the literature, these goals, or what I don't wanna say ideal, but what a standard rhinoplasty result can give you are based off of facial measurement, like distance between your eyes, just a few bulls there's angles underneath your nasal labial angle. There's, there's probably about 50 to 75 different measurements we take of your face. Based on your unique facial characteristics and measurements, this is what your nose should look like. Right? We do all those measurements in three-dimension. You can't really do it in 2d. It has to be done in 3d.

Dr. William Kennedy: So we do all these nuts. Why we're able to do this now with an onset of iPhone 10, we're able to do these measurements and then morph your image. So we do all these measurements. Based on your unique characteristics or measurements, we can then change your nose based on what the ideal for your facial characteristics are. That's number one, got it. That's like the easier way, the other way is through machine learning and machine learning. Basically we take your picture of your face, right? It will, it'll do its machine learning thing basically. Based on your facial characteristics, it, then we then take people who have had rhinoplasty done in the past. We teach it based on your characteristics that this is basically what you should look like. It's mainly like we have to run through, I don't know, 10,000 images of people who have had similar procedures is show it to teach it that based on what your starting point is, this is what your end point should be.

Dr. William Kennedy: Two different ways to get to the same point we're utilizing both.

Kevin Horek: Got it. Interesting. That's that's totally fascinating. Just how, like you're applying that technology into this space, right?

Dr. William Kennedy: Right. A hundred percent, it's funny because people think machine learning is going to be the thing I like too. It's a feedback loop that takes off and becomes like super smart and takes over the world. Machine learning is only as smart as what you teach it. It doesn't go. Right. If like, in the beginning too, when I first started off, were doing this, it was like myself and two other white guys. Right. We were doing that. And we actually looked at it before. We started to bring on a board of doctors. We weren't very diverse in our pool of images that were teaching it when it's like school, it's like grade school. If we're not diverse and how we're teaching it, like we would, Filipinos were getting weird results. African-Americans are getting weird results. We really, our pool, our data set our training dataset, which now consists of like 50,000 images is very diverse.

Dr. William Kennedy: That, and all different ethnicity, you come on there we'll get realistic results for your specific characteristics that they can account gender, ethnicity, age, things like that.

Kevin Horek: Okay. To dive deeper on that, do I have to give you, or the app, some of those details, or you just know from the expands of meeting,

Dr. William Kennedy: That's the cheap way of doing it? It, you'll see some apps out there last year. Are you male? How old are you? What are your that's kind of cheating right? Cause you're just telling it where it direction. It will actually, it will. There's very, it's not an, like, it's a spectrum. It's a fight. It's an infinite spectrum of the, whether or not the color of your skin, it'll fit. It'll be very precise and choosing where you are on the spectrum, as opposed to only having five spots for your skin tone. We have a huge infinite spectrum where it'll pick you out. Yes, the short answer is when you take your scan, it'll analyze you and it'll figure out your gender, figure out your ethnicity, so to speak. It's actually a skin tone, things like that.

Kevin Horek: Okay. Well, and correct me if I'm wrong here, the fact that you're letting machine learning, detect that you can give me better, more realistic results in the app, correct?

Dr. William Kennedy: Correct. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yep, absolutely. And that's right now, that's what we're now we're working on being able to show people what they look like after procedure. Now we're also working on, now that we have this huge data set and training done that we're now working on the diagnosis side. A lot of people come in are like, I don't know what to, I don't know which procedure is going to tell you, like, Hey, you made an opt out of this, but you have this skin, you have hygienists, you have this skin condition, or you have young age spots on your skin that you didn't notice it'll do a diagnosis. Actually like give you a readout of what we think you'd have as if you were coming in to get a consultation.

Kevin Horek: Okay. Could you find something like skin cancer potentially?

Dr. William Kennedy: Yeah. I don't, we don't want to go down the, we don't want to go to that in the path of medical diagnosis. Right. So say, like melanoma, right. They have certain characteristics, the size, the one that is raised the color, things like that. We could go down that road, but that just kind of leads I don't want to get into, Hey, you have stage four melanoma. That's not kind of our thing, but yes.

Kevin Horek: Yeah. It kind of weird for an app to tell you that, especially something that's got kind of scary. Right.

Dr. William Kennedy: I hate you don't want to say, Hey, are you sitting down first or someone that ?

Kevin Horek: Yeah. Okay. Okay. But the technology's there, I guess is.

Dr. William Kennedy: It's just all the same. It's all the same technology. Yes. It could be a up, there's a wide ranging application. That's for sure.

Kevin Horek: Got it. Okay. The one other thing that I thought was really interesting is I can, if I was obviously qualified to do this and I had my own practice as a doctor doing this, I could white label your technology. Can we talk about that?

Dr. William Kennedy: Absolutely. I mean, that's a great point that you brought up. So, right now in the office, especially if you come out of practice, if you're fresh out of residency, you're new, you don't have a lot of money, right? This is a, this is a really important tool to have in the office, not ours, just in general, being able to show a patient beforehand what they can expect in your hands after a procedure is really powerful. Studies have shown just based on what the, by the companies that have done the in office equipment, that it doubles your conversion rate from consultation to booking a procedure. Like it goes from like 50% into like 90% just being able to give the patient that information. It levels sex expectations. It really allows the patient to understand what they're going to be able to expect. Our technology, if we white labeling this expensive tech in office technology that they have to use right now is like 10, $15,000 to purchase it for through our app is basically free.

Dr. William Kennedy: All you need is an iPhone and a laptop computer, and a patient can come in. If they're coming into the office, scan their face, they can sit with you in your office and you can actually morph their face. It's pretty, it's cost-effective for the doctor. Basically.

Kevin Horek: But then how do you monetize that?

Dr. William Kennedy: We monetize it on the consumer side.

Kevin Horek: Got it. That makes sense.

Dr. William Kennedy: It's basically free right now for the doctors. Once you becomes more and we have more features available, telling me that you consider doing for the doctors, but really the doctors, what they offer our patients, they give our patients or our consumers that they come to our site really exclusive discounts on our answer. Pretty significant discounts are benefits on either procedures they're exclusive to our consumers. That's kind of what they offer in return to the doctors that we give them this technology to help them with their businesses.

Kevin Horek: Gotcha. Okay. I want to dive deeper. Okay. I pick, I dunno, remove this acne scar from wherever, right? How do I know? Or how close can you get it to what I see in the app?

Dr. William Kennedy: Interesting. Let's see. How do I quantify this? I mean, I want to say pretty damn close. D we are going to be producing right now. We're in the process of putting out we've actually done studies, but it, this way we've done studies. All of our procedures that we've had on our app, we've had actually real people use our app beforehand and then more of their nose and actually get the procedure afterwards. It shows us it's pretty dang close, if not exact. I mean, you're pretty damn close with your results. Our app shows and the actual results that you get.

Kevin Horek: Fascinating. Okay. And so how like,

Dr. William Kennedy: We don't guarantee it, but I mean, it gives you in ballpark, you're pretty damn close to what you're going to well, you can expect to get after your procedure.

Kevin Horek: Right. Because you've screened, the doctor that's best suited to me that will do whatever procedure I picked. Therefore they know what they're, they know that they can get it as close as cause they're picking the patient just as much as I'm picking them, if they're a good doctor. Correct?

Dr. William Kennedy: Correct. Put it this way, the doctors that come into our site, and like I said, plastic surgeon or cosmetic surgery in general, we follow certain geometric rules of the face of your particular face. We know in general, what a nose will look like should look like after rhinoplasty, based on your facial characteristics. That's the result that we give the patient. We know that doctors on our site can give that result. Now, every doctor, like I said, is an artist and will adjust based on their discussions with the patient and what they think is more appropriate for them. In general, we'll give you a result that's ballpark of what you should expect for your facial characteristics.

Kevin Horek: Right. Okay. Yeah. Right. Then, yeah, if they're a good doctor, they're not going to give you something wild and crazy that could probably get where, right. Like, yeah. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

Dr. William Kennedy: Let's that's like a huge concern of people. That's a huge, these are all barriers that people, that prevent people from moving forward with, even researching about some of these, even the non-invasive stuff. The more we're able to reassure people that what they're looking at is a realistic outcome that you can expect the better.

Kevin Horek: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. I know I mentioned this earlier in our recording about like, I'm, I was fascinated to learn how many people actually get it done. A lot of people don't talk about it and find like, I totally get that because it's kind of a interesting thing. Do you find like, is it mostly females males? A bit of both. I could take a guess, but I'm curious to get your thoughts.

Dr. William Kennedy: It's about 80. It's about 80 20, right. Okay.

Kevin Horek: Okay. Female, I'm assuming is 80%.

Dr. William Kennedy: I think it's about 80 20 for sure. Whether or not, I mean, that's just in general, that's just, industry-wide not just not, it also is reflected and to people actually come to our site to probably about 80 20.

Kevin Horek: Okay. Do you see that number becoming closer together? It seems like more and more people are seeming to getting even just minor stuff done.

Dr. William Kennedy: For sure. A hundred percent. It seems to be the gap seems to be closing. Do I ever think it will be 50? I doubt it just because some of the procedures and some are not, like lasers for the face because guys, usually you don't have facial hair it's problematic or you guys usually don't do lip fillers or brow lifts. Things like some of the procedures are really gender tend to be gender specific. Some of the other stuff like hair transplants under eye bags and under eye circles, any type of like Botox, guys don't use it like to have some guys do some guys like to have a wrinkle removal type procedures, but yeah, the gap should be clear. It shouldn't be 20%. It should definitely be increased. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just all a matter of educating the public about what's available and what's out there.

Kevin Horek: Sure. And actually that's a good segue. That was going to be my next thing. Like if, for people that have maybe thought about it, either male, female, or other, it doesn't really matter. Do you like, what advice do you give to them? Obviously you could just say like try the app and see what you like or don't. Outside of that, what advice would you give people that are maybe considering doing something.

Dr. William Kennedy: The most important thing is don't be afraid to research. I'm not saying don't be afraid to get something done, right? This is not a site that's trying to push people down the funnel and get some procedure done. Right. Right. This is a site that really, we developed tools to help empower users, to educate themselves about what's best, what their needs are. What's best for them, the different types of procedures and the different types of doctors. Right. So there's no pressure. Just, don't be afraid to educate yourself, utilize trusted sites like this one to learn more about what's out there. Cause it end of the day, there's a ton of great stuff out there that people just don't use. They just don't research. They don't kind of look into and it's really, I mean, that's the reason why once people start getting procedures done, they keep going.

Dr. William Kennedy: Right. Because they work because they do have a great effect, but there's just a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of fear out there. There's a lot of barriers up, a lot of white coat kind of syndrome that prevent people from even like dipping their toe in and researching. Don't be afraid to kind of get out there and utilize sites like this, to teach yourself on what's available.

Kevin Horek: Sure. Well, I think a lot of it too is it's such a personal thing that people are like I, I think like are almost like embarrassed by it or if we have something that bugs us, whether it really is an issue or not like if you can get something fixed and it makes you feel better about yourself, like it's working into like, and I'm not even talking just with anything really. Right? Yeah.

Dr. William Kennedy: Absolutely. I mean, this is cosmetic procedures are not vain. It's like when you get up in the morning and comb your hair, that's not vain. If you like brush your teeth and put on makeup, that's not a vain, right? These are all things that make you feel better. Right. Make you feel better about yourself, whatever it, these are all things that empower you, what you want and you're not doing it. Usually we help, tell people that you're doing for yourself. Don't do it for other people. These are all really great things that can improve your own. Self-esteem.

Kevin Horek: Sure. Well, because we're all, self-conscious about something. Right. If you can get rid of some of that, I am. It's interesting. You're and I think that's good advice. Like, do your research, look into this, see where your comfort level is with whatever it is. Right,

Dr. William Kennedy: Right. We're here to help you the whole, we have the whole journey, the whole, every step of the way we have live people that when you sign up to you're assigned an actual aesthetic expert, someone you actually can say, you don't want to actually just use the ML technology. You actually want to speak to an actual someone in the know that you can trust and develop a relationship with. You can do that. Right. You get assigned someone that you can actually ask questions to throughout the way. You don't have a question this month, you have a question next week, you can ask someone. We're here to like, really help them through the process.

Kevin Horek: Okay. What like, okay, so I sign up, I want to, I don't want to use, I want to talk to somebody. What is that? Walk, walk me through that journey.

Dr. William Kennedy: Oh, so after you sign up, you're introduced to an actual aesthetic expert. We have several on staff. They do an intro and they say, Hey, well, we're here for you. If you have any questions, this.

Kevin Horek: Just like a video call kind of thing.

Dr. William Kennedy: No, no, no. It's like a, it's like a chat bot. Here's a chat bot. So you can actually ask questions. If you want to call it, you can also call the video calls too. We haven't had anyone go. Usually they just like to do, it's a chat, basically. This is not a chat. Like there used to be another site out there called Rezi where, they would ask people if you had any questions, but it wasn't really someone in the know, these are very, these are certified people, nurses, LVNs, doctors, who, can give you real advice about questions that you have.

Kevin Horek: Got it. Okay. I'm curious, has the pandemic and the fact that a lot of us are working from home, sitting in front of, zoom calls or whatever, all day long changed, the industry stayed the same, a bit of both or how's the pandemic changed or not changed the industry.

Dr. William Kennedy: I mean, it definitely has changed the industry for sure. Whether or not I was going to swing back. I, I doubt it. I mean, I just, a couple of different ways. I mean, now this is, zoom, the zoom technology was crazy enough before the pandemic, no one used, right? The pandemic hit, it forced people to, it's all like trying out new, it's punch it. You got to try it. Once you got to dip your toe, once you try using it becomes a part of your life that God, well, how did I ever now you got off the goat over the hump of learning how to use it. You'll always use it. The same thing is going to happen when it comes to cosmetic medicine, in terms of the virtual consultations, where you can get on a zoom call and do whether or not it's machine learning AR VR technology, that helps you actually put the knowledge of a, of a doctor in the form of an app.

Dr. William Kennedy: You can get like 90% of the way there, but an in-person consultation, all these tools are really enhancing the way we deliver medicine. We're not even talking about the metaverse yet. So yeah, definitely has changed. And it's only going to increase. It's only going to this technology and improving more and more so that the education and the product that we deliver, it gets more and more valuable.

Kevin Horek: Interesting. You, you mentioned the metaverse like, do you want to expand on that?

Dr. William Kennedy: Metaverse is, Facebook changed their name from Facebook, no matter versus, I mean, they're dumping billions of dollars into this companies like CVS healthcare, hospitals are buying up quote-unquote land in the metaverse right. This is going to be a thing where you can actually go and put on your AR VR headset and you can go walk into a CVS or you can walk into a doctor's office, right? The same thing's going to happen. You'll have medical practices in the metaverse right now, the technology, you have an avatar, so it's you don't really, it's home right now. It's, you know, avatar. It doesn't really reflect what you've looked like. Right. It's a glorified, what we're doing now, like a zoom call.

Kevin Horek: Right.

Dr. William Kennedy: It's developing now utilizing technology like ours, where you can actually scan your face, your avatar looks like you, right. How's your character, what you look like now. You're looking at me, I'm looking at you in a matter of hours. I can actually, it's almost pretty dang, close to what you'll actually look like in person.

Kevin Horek: It's not very cool, but we're kind of coming to the end of the show. How about we close with mentioning where people can get more information about yourself edit and any other links you want to mention?

Dr. William Kennedy: Sure. So our website is a edit.com. That's H E D I t.com. You can follow us on Instagram at edit a DIT tick talk is at the underscore edit that's T I G underscore H E D I T. And you can also download our app. It's called the edit.

Kevin Horek: Perfect. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to be on the show. I look forward to keeping in touch with you and have a good rest of your day.

Dr. William Kennedy: Thanks much. You too.

Kevin Horek: Thanks Dr. Kennedy. Okay, bye.

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