Joel Beck, MD - Plastic Surgeon in Charlotte, North Carolina

Eva Sheie (00:03):
The purpose of this podcast is simple. We want you to get to know your doctor before meeting them in person because you're making a life-changing decision, and time is scarce. The more you can learn about who your doctor is before you meet them, the better that first meeting will be. There's no substitute for an in-person appointment, but we hope this comes close. I'm your host, Eva Sheie, and you're listening to Meet the Doctor. Welcome back to Meet the Doctor. My guest here at the Aesthetic MEET live in Austin, Texas is Joel Beck. He's a plastic surgeon in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Dr. Beck (00:36):
Thank you for having me.

Eva Sheie (00:38):
How's the meeting been?

Dr. Beck (00:39):
The meeting's been good. I've learned some nice new tricks to take away back to the office, some new services, and it's going well. It's nice to see people, friends that I haven't seen in a while.

Eva Sheie (00:52):
I know there's things you get here that you just cannot get anywhere else. You can't build relationships really with social media or with LinkedIn. So seeing people in person, it's a big deal.

Dr. Beck (01:07):
It's definitely nice to be part of this association and just kind of you grow when you're around your associates because you all talk about the same types of common things, problems, issues, awesome, great things for the practice, so having the time to spend with people and be real, it's really nice to have. And you don't really get that unless you're at a meeting like this.

Eva Sheie (01:30):
How has your practice evolved over the years?

Dr. Beck (01:34):
That's an interesting question because this really changed over the years. I'd say probably one of the most changed of any practice, I would think. Originally, I started over in California and I had a practice there in the Bay Area for 18 years, and I just decided to change up and moved to the East Coast. So I've been there for now almost six years, and the transition from California to North Carolina actually went pretty smooth. And I think it has to do a lot with utilizing your resources and your online presence and focusing it in a totally different location. So for potentially other doctors who are interested in doing that, they don't have to feel strapped to one area. From the standpoint of patients, because I did have that online presence, I really think that it grew much faster than I was anticipating, which was great. And the people in North Carolina, my employees have just been a huge part of the success of this practice. One thing I've learned is that your employees and just your staff could either make or break a practice.

Eva Sheie (02:44):
So you went through Covid in North Carolina, or was that in California?

Dr. Beck (02:48):
Actually, I was moving back and forth right during Covid. So I started my practice in 18, 2018 in North Carolina. And it was, yeah, March of 2020 when I was almost stuck in California and I ran over to, made it over to North Carolina just so I could be at home with my wife. And then of course, we were on hold for a while, and that was really scary, having two practices, one on each side of the continent and trying to manage that and manage employees, and it was scary.

Eva Sheie (03:24):
Did those conditions maybe accelerate your shift eastward a little bit?

Dr. Beck (03:32):
I don't think so. I know that I had another physician who was looking at my practice and I ended up selling it to him, to his group, and he's great. And that really allowed me to kind of just finish my stint in California and begin my life in North Carolina.

Eva Sheie (03:53):
How are your patients different in North Carolina?

Dr. Beck (04:00):
I don't know. I mean, as far as the interest and the types of procedures, that hasn't really changed a whole lot. Just the makeup, Northern California is a very heavily Asian population, and in North Carolina that's not so, is probably just more Caucasian. Well, it's a mix. It's a good mix, but the cases that we're doing are very similar.

Eva Sheie (04:25):
What about personality wise? Do you feel like people are, maybe, I don't, I don't want to make any assumptions. Are they more laid back in Charlotte maybe than San Francisco?

Dr. Beck (04:38):
I would say so. I would think in Northern California, everybody is so conscious, they're just trying to make a living driven. They're so driven, they have to work extra hard. They don't have extra time to even socialize. They go to work, they go home. And it's a frustrating life for a lot of people. Whereas in North Carolina, just because the cost of living is different, people really value friendships more. There's more of a social network that we have. We have some of the best friends ever, just from that short period of time being there. And it's been a really nice experience for my wife and I and my family.

Eva Sheie (05:23):
What motivated the move? I don't think you told us.

Dr. Beck (05:27):
I think what motivated the move was, well, partially the cost of living in Northern California is crazy. I mean, I had a small little house. I wanted to move into a bigger house, but the cost is exorbitant. And so that was one the cost of just taxes and just running a practice, the congestion, it was just over the top and I was ready for a big change. And it's kind of interesting living almost half of your life or your entire life on the west coast, and now I am on the East coast, so we have new experiences, a lot of excitement, having a great wife and being able to experience those things together for the first time rather than having history somewhere else. So it's been great.

Eva Sheie (06:13):
Is there a certain procedure type or a patient profile that you're known for specializing in now?

Dr. Beck (06:24):
I really would say that one of the things that I'm probably best at that people don't know as much of would be facial work. I've been really having done a lot of facial feminization in my career, craniofacial fellowship. Those are two things that really brings that experience, and I can apply that even to just normal aesthetic facelifts and brow lifts and things of that sort. So that's where I really want to be at some point in my career, I think I'm getting much busier doing that. So yeah, I love that part, but I mean, I still love to have a mix of cases from breast and body and face, so I don't think I'd ever want to just do the same thing all the time.

Eva Sheie (07:12):
I remember having this huge light bulb when even just the concept that a surgeon great at facial feminization would also be great at female faces because of that, whatever that skill set is that crosses over from one to the other. Am I on the right track there?

Dr. Beck (07:31):
Absolutely. Yeah. And what's interesting is that when you look at a woman who's a cis woman, they sometimes have masculine facial features that they don't even realize, or that may be a little bit more harsh. So being able to do a procedure like a facelift and a brow, well now you look at the brow and you see that they may have some broadness to their forehead, the frontal bone or the orbital rim in this area. And if you could soften that in addition to doing a lift and combining it and giving them a softer appearance, I don't think many people do that. And so that's, I think a very unique thing that I do now. Yeah.

Eva Sheie (08:13):
How did your craniofacial training kind of point you in that direction? How does that make you different from, not everyone does craniofacial, right?

Dr. Beck (08:22):
No, and quite honestly, I think just being comfortable working around the face, being comfortable working on bone was a lot of that. But the other thing is when I went, after I finished, I transitioned to practice from a senior plastic surgeon to myself, and he was the one who really got me involved in the facial feminization. He's like, this is something that's really going to take off and they're really nice patients. And so I took that to heart and then I started giving, I started perfecting what he taught me and kind of carried it to a different level. And then also went to multiple lectures around the country. I was donating to the cause and meeting a lot of people, and it's been an exciting part of the career. So I feel very blessed to be able to do things for people that are so grateful for my services.

Eva Sheie (09:20):
You were in San Francisco when that started, and that was just happening organically because of the demographics there?

Dr. Beck (09:25):
Well, also, I was going to different meetings and lecturing. I was doing that. It took effort. It took effort. But I was in San Mateo at the time, which is 25 minutes south of San Francisco.

Eva Sheie (09:39):
Did you get any pushback on what you were doing back then?

Dr. Beck (09:43):
Not really? It was interesting because I always joke about it. I was always kind of joking with people saying, God, that's just going to ruin my reputation if I do something like that, working with trans patients. And the fact is is that it absolutely didn't do that. And then there's a lot of people who say, if you could do that, then you could absolutely do a lot of other things on me as well. And then there was a lot of people who really congratulated me on doing that, so I didn't really get much pushback. In fact, if anything, I think it probably helped me in the long run.

Eva Sheie (10:21):
Did it come up when you moved to Charlotte? Did people ask you about it?

Dr. Beck (10:25):
Not really. Not really. I think what came up more is that there was nobody who was really doing that. Not to the extent that they were on the West Coast. I mean, they're sprinkled throughout the East coast, but there's not a huge number of 'em. And even then, more and more plastic surgeons are doing more of these procedures. It was just that I started back in 2003. It's been a long career, and there's a lot of things you learn over the years. Yeah, Northern California, I mean North Carolina, it's been great. And it's filling a void that they didn't have.

Eva Sheie (11:00):
Yeah. So do people travel from all over the place to see you for that still today?

Dr. Beck (11:06):
Yeah, absolutely.

Eva Sheie (11:07):
I want to hear more about your training prior to the craniofacial piece. What was the path that got you there?

Dr. Beck (11:19):
Well, I started off in, started off at UC Irvine for medical school. Did that. And then I went to UC Davis East Bay, which was a program out of Oakland, California, and did general surgery there for three years. And then I did a fellowship in burn surgery, research.

Eva Sheie (11:39):
Wait, so wait, were you in a hospital setting in Oakland?

Dr. Beck (11:43):
Yeah. Yeah.

Eva Sheie (11:44):
So what was that like? Gunshots and

Dr. Beck (11:46):
Oh, it was great. It was great. Trauma surgery.

Eva Sheie (11:49):
Yeah.

Dr. Beck (11:50):
Yeah, that was really good. I remember sitting on top of the roof over at what was the old Highland Hospital, and you would hear a gunshot and all of a sudden your trauma pager would go off. It was crazy.

Eva Sheie (12:03):
Oh, wow.

Dr. Beck (12:04):
I did that.

Eva Sheie (12:04):
That sounds like a TV show.

Dr. Beck (12:08):
It was really good experience. And the people who are there have great experience with that. I mean, if I ever, God forbid, had a problem, I'd want to go to one of the major county hospitals for trauma resuscitation.

Eva Sheie (12:19):
Have you been watching The Pit?

Dr. Beck (12:21):
No. No.

Eva Sheie (12:22):
Oh, no.

Dr. Beck (12:23):
Is it good?

Eva Sheie (12:24):
It's great. Doctors keep saying it's accurate.

Dr. Beck (12:28):
Oh, really?

Eva Sheie (12:28):
Yeah. That means it's well done.

Dr. Beck (12:31):
Yeah.

Eva Sheie (12:31):
So it's Noah Wiley who was on ER, but it's his show and it's like 24 across with ER. So it's one hour at a time. And I think there's 14 hours total. And I think hour 11 just came out.

Dr. Beck (12:45):
Okay.

Eva Sheie (12:46):
So it's bingeable. You can download it to your phone and watch it on the plane ride home.

Dr. Beck (12:51):
Very nice.

Eva Sheie (12:52):
And you're going to have to let me know if it's accurate or not accurate.

Dr. Beck (12:55):
I will. Thank you.

Eva Sheie (12:56):
Very entertaining. Even my little kids are like, can we watch The Pit?

Dr. Beck (13:02):
Maybe they'll be doctors someday.

Eva Sheie (13:05):
Should I hope for that?

Dr. Beck (13:08):
It is always a nice profession no matter what. I mean, that's how I got to it. I mean, my interest in medicine started when I was going to dental conventions with my father and my mother. My dad was in classes, and my mom took me up and down the exhibit halls kind of like here, and they had taped video, videotaped oral surgeries, and I watched one standing there, and my mom's like, doesn't that bother you? And I'm like, no, I think it's really cool. And I think that that was the spark of what I wanted to do.

Eva Sheie (13:35):
That was it. It was a dental trade show exhibit hall? Yeah.

Dr. Beck (13:39):
We used to go to those quite often. We try to, I would compete with probably my sister at the time, and we would try to get as many toothbrushes as possible. And back then we would get like a hundred toothbrushes.

Eva Sheie (13:51):
This is dental show swag. It's just toothbrushes and floss.

Dr. Beck (13:55):
Toothbrushes. Trident gum.

Eva Sheie (13:57):
Oh my goodness.

Dr. Beck (13:58):
Floss. Yeah, we had a whole bag. It was like Halloween.

Eva Sheie (14:03):
That's really funny. So your dad was a dentist?

Dr. Beck (14:05):
Yeah. Yeah.

Eva Sheie (14:08):
Do you have great teeth now?

Dr. Beck (14:10):
I don't know, not after going through residency. The trauma of that. Probably not.

Eva Sheie (14:15):
Oh no.

Dr. Beck (14:17):
Crazy.

Eva Sheie (14:18):
Did your mom work?

Dr. Beck (14:20):
My mother, she was a hygienist for a period of time, and then after that she retired and just took care of the kids and she was great. Super warm family.

Eva Sheie (14:35):
You grew up in California or somewhere else?

Dr. Beck (14:37):
I grew up in Southern California.

Eva Sheie (14:39):
Oh, what a life.

Dr. Beck (14:40):
Yeah. In fact, while I was going to medical school, I was living with my parents at the time. They were in Orange County and I was going to school over there in Irvine. It worked out great. Saved some money. It's good.

Eva Sheie (14:55):
Do you ever miss the ocean or you just have a different one now?

Dr. Beck (14:59):
We just have a different one.

Eva Sheie (15:00):
Yeah.

Dr. Beck (15:01):
No, I miss the climate in Northern, in California in general. And the beauty of it, I just don't miss all the congestion and the high prices. And North Carolina is a beautiful state with beautiful people and friendly and warm, and we're not far from the mountains. We're not far from the beaches. It's pretty well, it's pretty good centrally located.

Eva Sheie (15:27):
It occurs to me with you describing it that way. There's also really great universities there, and I wonder if you're doing anything academic at all?

Dr. Beck (15:36):
Not with the universities right now. I've been building a practice, so

Eva Sheie (15:40):
Yeah, that's probably enough for now.

Dr. Beck (15:43):
Yeah, I mean, starting six years ago, we were in a small little office in Matthews, North Carolina, which is about 10 minutes from where I am now. Now I'm in South Charlotte. We built 9,000 square feet of office space with two operating rooms and a med spa and a clinic, and that's taken enough.

Eva Sheie (16:01):
Can you imagine doing that in San Francisco?

Dr. Beck (16:04):
No.

Eva Sheie (16:04):
Impossible.

Dr. Beck (16:05):
It would've been impossible.

Eva Sheie (16:06):
Yeah,

Dr. Beck (16:07):
For sure.

Eva Sheie (16:09):
Yeah. Wow. Totally different.

Dr. Beck (16:11):
Yeah.

Eva Sheie (16:16):
I like to ask a kind of funny question when we kind get to the end of this podcast, which is when you're on an airplane and they ask, the flight attendant ask, is there a doctor on the plane? What do you do?

Dr. Beck (16:30):
I raise my hand.

Eva Sheie (16:32):
How many times has that happened to you?

Dr. Beck (16:34):
I don't think it has

Eva Sheie (16:35):
Never?

Dr. Beck (16:35):
No.

Eva Sheie (16:37):
You're the first person who's ever said none.

Dr. Beck (16:40):
I don't think so. If it has didn't hear it.

Eva Sheie (16:43):
You had your headphones on.

Dr. Beck (16:45):
I had my headphones on.

Eva Sheie (16:46):
Everyone that has answered the question would say, you are really lucky that you have not had to do that. That's really interesting. Have you ever been anywhere where you had to jump in and help somebody on the street? Or has anything come to mind?

Dr. Beck (17:03):
Yeah, actually, I was doing research in Burns over at UC San Diego, and I was somebody who just passed out right in front of me, right on the ground, right outside the ER. And we got some people dragged him in, he lost his airway, and the residents were trying to do a crack on him.

Eva Sheie (17:32):
I know this from The Pit.

Dr. Beck (17:33):
Yeah. Yeah. And I had experience doing that over at Highland, and so I was watching kind of anxious and that, and then I said, do you mind if I give it a shot? And did it sunk in the tube and ended up saving his life?

Eva Sheie (17:52):
Oh my goodness.

Dr. Beck (17:54):
That was exactly what happened.

Eva Sheie (17:56):
Aren't you glad that didn't happen on a plane?

Dr. Beck (17:58):
Yeah, that would've been different. That would've been a pin in their neck. So

Eva Sheie (18:02):
Yeah.

Dr. Beck (18:03):
Yeah, a little different.

Eva Sheie (18:04):
Wow, that's a good story. We should make a TV show about your time in Oakland.

Dr. Beck (18:09):
Yeah, that could be a good TV show. Although I've been told that I should probably have a TV show anyways, because

Eva Sheie (18:15):
I'd watch that.

Dr. Beck (18:16):
They think that I'm pretty funny, but I don't think so. I don't think so. But everybody seems to laugh at me at times.

Eva Sheie (18:22):
It's a dry humor.

Dr. Beck (18:23):
Yeah, maybe that's it.

Eva Sheie (18:24):
Yeah, I can see that. Well, thank you for coming on the show today. It was really a pleasure to get to know you.

Dr. Beck (18:31):
I really appreciate you having me on it. This is a nice little experience.

Eva Sheie (18:38):
I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Dr. Beck (18:39):
I really thank you.

Eva Sheie (18:40):
You're welcome. If you are considering making an appointment or are on your way to meet this doctor, be sure to let them know you heard them on the Meet The Doctor podcast. Check the show notes for links, including the doctor's website and Instagram to learn more. Are you a doctor or do you know a doctor who'd like to be on the Meet the Doctor podcast? Book your free recording session at MeettheDoctorpodcast.com. Meet the Doctor is Made with Love in Austin, Texas and is a production of The Axis, theaxis.io.