like that.

I said, okay, well, tell them no. I'm not signing another NDA.

Tell them to come in the office and explain why they haven't returned my calls for six months.

I know it's the pandemic, but you're sitting home.

And so they left.

And then they came back the next day.

And they go, my manager goes, doc, these guys are back.

right?

I'm sure.

Right? And so I think I was in one of these accelerated programs.

I went to Villanova, which now is Pope University because we have a pope that came out of there, right? And so it was this thing where you would do two years of college, go straight through and go right into medical school.

Well, after two years of college, I realized, whoa.

I don't really want to go to medical school right away.

This is like, what am I rushing to? And I remember calling my parents and saying, you know, I'm not going to medical school next year.

And they just, I could just, I had to hold the phone this far away.

Mm-hmm.

So now you realize, you know, you're in school and you want to be a plastic surgeon.

Right.

I get to this point where it's like I've done all the rotations, neurosurgery, orthopedics, you know.

But there was something about plastics that kept drawing me in.

But there was also the other side of it.

Other classes I took in undergrad in those two years were psychology.

And behavioral science was really attractive to me because I had made some observations in my medical school during my psych rotation that led to a publication that challenged one of the chairmen on a certain thing.

The peptides,

[laughs]

I was there on spring break, and, um, there were these four guys that just got off work, right? And they had a boom- boom box, and they were just, like, dancing.

And I was sitting there, you know, drinking a Red Stripe and watching these guys in the sunset just kind of, like, doing their moves.

And like, uh, you know, I'd gone down the Jersey Shore for a bunch of summers, and I was like, "All right, which one of you guys is the best?" And this guy schooled me at that moment....

goes, "Man." He goes, "It's such an American idea, being the best." He goes, "It's not about who's best.

It's all about style.

Each one of us has a different style-"

If you had to tell your younger self something, what would it be?