Dr. John Layke on Trauma Pivots, Innovative Skincare, and Collaborative Surgery

As part of my series about healthcare leaders, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Dr. John Layke.

Dr. John Layke is a celebrated plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, CA. He specializes in rhinoplasty, eyelid surgery, and facelift procedures using cutting-edge technology that can help achieve the best possible results for his patients. He is also the co-founder of Beverly Hills MD, an internationally known innovative skin care line that blends dermal technology and natural skin care ingredients. All of his training has culminated at the Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery Group, where Dr. Layke works in tandem alongside his partner Dr. Payman Danielpour.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! What is your “backstory”? What led you to this very interesting career?

I was planning to be a trauma surgeon as I loved the excitement, and we were saving lives.

During my 3rd year, I was the chief on trauma, and I was called at 2am, we were trying to save a drunk man. This man had just drove through a stop light where he had killed a mother and her two young children, and he was spitting at me while I tried to save his life. I looked around the emergency room and I saw a plastic surgeon walking through, he had a suit on, he was well dressed with a smile on his face, everyone in the ER liked him, and he told jokes, and I thought, you know what, plastic surgery might be a good specialty. After some thought, I made the career pivot, and the doctor I saw in the emergency room on that fateful night took me under his wing and I never looked back.

Plastic surgery is a very exciting career as we operate from head to toe, and it is not just cosmetics, we perform breast cancer reconstructions, we create noses and we perform cleft palate surgeries. It is an interesting field that I gravitated towards.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

There are so many, one of the first cases that my partner Dr. Payman Danielpour and I ever had, happened one night, when we received a call from an emergency room in a hospital located in downtown Los Angeles. The hospital had a patient with a gunshot wound, this young man, who was about 30, was shot twice while he was on the Metro. He had held up his hand to block the gun shots and as a result he was shot once through his hand and once in his thigh. Fortunately, his iPhone caught the bullet in his thigh. We took x-rays of his hand and we saw that the bone and tendons were blown out and that they required re-constructive surgery where we had to take a bone from his hip to create a bone for his hand. His hand required multiple surgeries, including tendon transfers. Sometime later, the young man returned to the hospital to thank us and to shake our hand, he wanted to show us that his hand was fully functional.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

There was one funny thing that happened in the beginning of my plastic surgery career, I was evaluating a patient, and they asked me what I would you do. I said, I would refine the nose, shorten it, make it a bit narrower, narrow the base of the nose and remove the bump. She said no, I was asking you about my ears. Well, from that moment on, I said I will never answer that loaded question and I will ask each patient to tell me what bothers them.

Are you working on any new or exciting projects now?

In addition to our surgery practice, Dr. Danielpour and I started a skin care line, Beverly Hills MD, We have a variety of new topical cosmeceuticals as well as new ingestible/supplement products in the line that we are very excited about. Beverly Hills MD’s Dermal Repair Complex, is one of the first skincare supplements that works from the inside out and it incorporates an advanced blend of scientifically-backed nutrients.

We also have a new supplement ElastaBoost, which has been created with an advanced blend of elastin-support compounds and nourishing plant extracts. Elastin is a key protein for helping skin look firm, lifted, supple and plump. ElastaBoost provides the skin with key nutrients that support the skin’s elastin production

Another new product we are excited about is Rejuv-GH, it was inspired by HGH, one of the most powerful “youth” hormones in the human body. Combining a blend of rare polypeptides to support the skin’s natural collagen production as well as precious botanicals, each application of this concentrate will support the skin’s growth of new cells.

Another exciting project I am working on is a new technology, Ellacor, from Cytrellis, a medical technology company. Ellacor is a novel, proprietary system with Micro-Coring technology that scarlessly removes skin without invasive surgery. Currently this technology is FDA-approved only for the lower third of the face. I am the first person to do an upper lift study with this new technology. A lip lift has the potential for a horrible scar, Ellacor can greatly improve on the current surgical technology and enable plastic surgeons to perform a scarless lip lift.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There are three individuals who have had a major impact and helped me with my career.

The first is Dr. Loren Schechter who was the motivation behind me becoming a plastic surgeon. The other two people were my program directors, they were very influential in my becoming the type of surgeon that I am now.

Is there a particular book that made an impact on you? Can you share a story?

I love learning and I love to read. One book that I loved as it was a fantastic novel,

Is “Shantaram”. Written by David Gregory Roberts, the book is based on the author’s life in Bombay from 1981 to 1987. I really enjoyed Roberts’ philosophical writing style.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

When Dr. Danielpour and I created Beverly Hills MD, we committed to donating a portion of its proceeds to Smile Train which is a nonprofit organization that provides corrective surgery to children with cleft lips and palates. So far, we have financially taken care of 3000 cleft lip and palate surgeries.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story about how that was relevant to you in your own life?

I came from a very loving family, we just got by financially, and once my world expanded, I could see what the world had to offer. I learned the lesson that by taking initiative, being motivated, and working hard, the efforts will pay off, whether that is financial or spiritual success, I learned that the hard work will pay off.

As Frank Lloyd Wright said “I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Successful Career As A Plastic Surgeon’’ and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

To have a successful career as a plastic surgeon you need:

1. Education
2. Board certification, this is very important
3. You need an environment in which you can grow and continue to learn. Sometimes doctors come out of their residency, and they are in a harsh environment. They may be working with someone senior to them that always treats that them like a junior. For the rest of their career even while having enormous experience, they are not permitted to grow out of the junior role.
4. To be successful you should have a partner or colleague that you can bounce things off and talk back and forth with, especially with difficult and challenging cases. To have a colleague, like I have with my partner Dr. Danielpour, someone in your career that can give you honest feedback is extremely important.
5. It is also important to be well-balanced, I am fortunate to have a wonderful wife and three small children. I love going to their dance recitals and ball games. I could easily work 20 hours a day, 7 days a week but I wouldn’t trade my family and our time together, they help balance me which in turn makes me a more successful doctor.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a plastic surgeon? Can you explain what you mean?

One myth of being a plastic surgeon is that you only perform cosmetic surgery procedures. Plastic surgeons do so much more including a variety of reconstruction surgeries, working with burn victims, working with people with breast and skin cancer, for example. We also perform hand surgery and reconstruct tendons which is quite a complex set of procedures. People who have been in accidents may need a plastic surgeon to reconstruct their face. Plastic surgery is much more than elective cosmetic surgeries.

If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?

To bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, would be the continuation of our rejuvenation anti-aging work. With the development of Beverly Hills MD’s skincare line, we have taken care of many people without performing any surgery. We have made people look and feel better by rejuvenating their skin with products they can use on the inside and out. There are many people that want help turning back the clock and for them we treat aging as we would a disease. Traditionally medicine treats the symptoms, and we must treat the source which is the body’s aging.

We recently broke ground on a facility where we can continue to study stem cell therapies. With new technologies we discover things very quickly and we can barely keep up with some of these technologies.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

If I had to choose someone to have a private conversation with, I would speak to Elon Musk. He is brilliant and sees beyond traditional paradigms and he would be a great partner to move forward with in the anti-aging space.

What is the best way our readers can follow you online?

You can follow our practice, Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery on Instagram @plastixdocs

Our skincare line, Beverly Hills MD, can be followed on Instagram @officialBHMD

I can be followed on Instagram @drjlayke

Thank you so much for these wonderful insights! We wish you continued success.

About the Interviewer: Luke Kervin is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of PatientPop, an award-winning practice growth technology platform. PatientPop is Kervin’s third successful business venture. Prior to co-founding PatientPop, Kervin co-founded and was President of ShopNation (acquired by Meredith Corporation) and was the first executive hire at StarBrand Media (acquired by POPSUGAR).