Deborah Ekstrom, MD - Plastic Surgeon in Worcester, Massachusetts

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 to Meet the Doctor. My guest today is board certified plastic surgeon, Deborah Ekstrom, who is based in Worcester, Massachusetts. Welcome to the podcast. 

Dr. Ekstrom (00:42):
Thanks, Eva. Thanks for having me on. 

Eva Sheie (00:45):
Now we got to start here because you're not like the ordinary average surgeon and you have your own podcast. And I want to start with that because that is extremely interesting to me since this is a podcast about learning to podcast. 

Dr. Ekstrom (01:00):
Okay, great. So in plastic surgery, I've gravitated toward cosmetic plastic surgery because I get to help people, especially women, increase their confidence and their success and all of that. That's what it's really about for me. And I've always loved finance and how you go about making money and how you become successful. At one point, I had a patient who came to me and she said, it's apparent to everybody in the room that when you walk in that you're on for everybody's success. And I thought, wow, I had no idea that that's what I was radiating. But anyway, going through all that finance stuff and also being an artist, which is a business owner and business lover, that I guess is kind of an odd combination, but I wanted to make more people successful all at once. So I did a lot of studying through the years and when I was freed up from child activities, my kids grew up, I decided to start a company called Money Loves Women, which is now, it started out as a podcast and now is expanding into training and other things. 

(02:04)
But my whole premise for myself was to live an extraordinary life, which means living a life that's in accordance with your values and ideals, to have mastery of something and hopefully yourself to have a deep intimacy again with another person, your friends, your family, and a spiritual being, in my opinion, is important for an extraordinary life, having balance and having freedom. And I think the freedom that I'd like to share with other people is women especially, is financial freedom because I think it's more challenging for women to think of themselves as being in charge of their finances. And this is an interesting statistic. At some time, sooner or later, 98% of women are taking the sole responsibility for their finances and their money success.

Eva Sheie (02:58):
98?

Dr. Ekstrom (02:58):
98%, whether it's because you outlive your partner or you get divorced or you're out on your own after your launch from your parents and you're paying your own bills or whenever it is, 98% of women. 

(03:13)
So it's not something that women are used to thinking in of that way, but to be successful, really successful, you can make a living by doing formal education, but you have to do informal education and self-educating and find those who can educate you if you want to grow wealth and if you grow wealth, you can have freedom. You have freedom to choose what you do, and you have freedom to influence what's going on around you. And for me, getting women into that position is really important because I think that women are the future of the world and the future is feminine. We need more money, power, and influence in the hands of women to create a more balance of peaceful world. So that's the thing I do when I'm not doing plastic surgery. And then I'm also a big proponent of business acquisition as a wealth growing technique. 

(04:02)
So I've got a practice, I started a business and I acquired a business, so I got all of those practice models going for wealth building. So I did that with my fiance and my daughter-in-law and my daughter-in-law runs it, so it's kind of a lifestyle business for the two of us. And she makes it all run. She has a full-time job too, and two young kids. So she's a real dynamo. So we have multiple streams of income and going in that direction to build wealth. And not to say that I know everything because I don't, and I'm still learning. And the other thing I want to say about that is I've made lots and lots of mistakes so I know what not to do as well as what to do. 

Eva Sheie (04:43):
I heard somebody say once that one of the most important factors for being successful was just not quitting. And that, 

Dr. Ekstrom (04:50):
Yeah, agreed. 

Eva Sheie (04:52):
A lot of people quit before. I mean, some of us have to keep going. We have no other choice, like, for me. I have no other choice. I don't want to go get an actual job, job. This is what I'm doing. I'm not going to just stop. I have to figure it out. 

Dr. Ekstrom (05:07):
Yeah. Well, the university of figure it out is a lot of wealth building and a lot of success. 

Eva Sheie (05:14):
One of the things you mentioned there was balance. What does your day-to-day look like between your patients and your plastic surgery practice and the other things that you're obviously so very good at? 

Dr. Ekstrom (05:25):
That's a great question. I struggle with balance, honestly. I love work. I love business and I tend to overdo it. So I spend four days a week now doing plastic surgery and I spend one day a week educating, working on money, loves women and advancing the processes and procedures in my plastic surgery practice. And I, in the past didn't do as much of that. I'm in an advanced investing course, which is just a blow away, and I'm just loving that and I feel like I finally have a handle on how the stock market works and how to make it work for me. So I'm in the middle of that. So I do that on Mondays and then I take about, I don't know, half a week or a week a month off either to travel with my fiance or to travel out where he has his practice in California. 

(06:14)
So we both go back and forth and work in each other's practices. So that's kind of what my life looks like. And I'm lucky that I don't have kids to support anymore. I couldn't have that level of involvement and balance when I had children, honestly. Well, at home it was always a scramble. And when my childcare arrangements fell apart, I just wanted to quit. It was so difficult, but I don't have that now. And now it's more finding the time and making the effort to see my grandkids and being in relationship with them, which is a total delight. But I love running my practice. I expect to live to be 140. So I don't see any reason to quit working. And I love to work, honestly. I love it and I love what I do. My plastic surgery practice is so incredibly fulfilling. I say to my staff often on me said, aren't we lucky to be able to do this work? Look at us. We come to work and have a great time. Part of the time we get to wear pajamas, which are really scrubs, but they're as comfortable as pajamas. 

Eva Sheie (07:19):
Thank you for being honest about the scrubs being pajamas. 

Dr. Ekstrom (07:22):
Yeah, they really are. And we get to do incredibly gratifying work where we're making people more confident and successful, enjoy every minute of it, and we enjoy working with each other. So we are really, really lucky to do what we do. 

Eva Sheie (07:40):
So do you find that your patients know about this other side of you? The money loves women's side, and is there a lot of crossover between the two now?

Dr. Ekstrom (07:49):
Some of them know about it. I haven't launched any, I haven't promoted it to my patients as of yet. I have a foundations course, and this is what I found. People don't want to deal with the foundations. They don't want to deal with that. They want to get into the investing and figure out how to make that all successful and then work backwards into the foundations where they're weak. 

Eva Sheie (08:09):
Are these like the Dave Ramsey baby steps? Is that sort of what the foundations are like? 

Dr. Ekstrom (08:14):
The foundations are first of all making a decision for building wealth because a lot of people have emotional issues around that. It's not okay to have money. It's kind of their money stories. A lot of us have it. So you actually have to make a firm decision because that's what the universe rewards is very clear intent, and it's also what drives forward, your persistence that you talked about, right? You made a decision about that you're going to do this work and you're going to do it no matter what. So there's no failure. I mean, okay, fail and get back up maybe, but there's no stopping. So making that decision and then assessing your mindset, taking responsibility for your money. A lot of us don't do that very well. We don't have a spending plan. We haven't made our priorities, we haven't decided what our values are. 

(09:07)
We sort of muddle through it, but we don't really sit down and put it on paper and think it through. And until you do that, you can't follow through. And then after that, designing your life with wealth in mind. So lots of people design their life with social good in mind. What can I do for the social good? There's lots and lots of us that have kind of a social worker mindset. And it's interesting to me that when I get involved with social workers who actually do that as their profession, a lot of them don't last because it's really, really stressful and not always very fulfilling and thank goodness for them. But what I tell people is, you got to put your boat in a fast moving stream if you want to grow wealth and even just support yourself. So you got to sort out how to design your life with that success principle in mind. 

(10:03)
And once you have that, then you figure out what your cash machine's going to be, and that's what you use for your living and to create excess cashflow. So typically that's related or in a tangent from what you studied as your formal education. So for me, it was medicine. And then once you create that excess cashflow and you're responsible and you've got structure in place and you've educated yourself, which is part of taking responsibility for your money, in my opinion, that's the foundation. And then you use excess cashflow to invest so you can use your money to work for you. And most of us do that in a very fluid manner. We don't say, okay, today I'm making my decision on next week I'm going to take responsibility for my money and so forth. You just do it in a very fluid way, but it's nice to go back and set that foundation and refine it. 

(10:50)
Most people aren't starting from zero. And I like to work with women who are already successful there, not trying to figure out how to get out of irresponsible debt or consumer debt. They've got their act together. There's a lot of people there that'll help you figure out debt and consumer issues and budgeting and all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of that out there, but I don't think there's great teaching around how to women invest and women are wired for investment. They're good shoppers, they're cautious, they like to know a lot about it before they invest. They're not impulsive. And the most important thing is they're not ego-driven typically. And men are ego-driven, and that's sorry, but that's kind how their mind is wired. When male fetuses are eight weeks old, their brain is exactly the same as women's, females. So male and female, fetus brain is the same. 

(11:42)
And then they have a surge of testosterone and their brain changes and it prunes the connections for socialization and communication and the area for sexuality and competition and aggression. So their brains are different than ours, and we shouldn't try to make men into bigger women, and they shouldn't try to make us into smaller men. Our brains are different. So that also when you have that competition piece, your ego tends to drive things, and if you're not aware of that as a male, it gets to be a problem. So women aren't so ego-driven, very driven to cooperate. They're driven to communicate, they're driven to socialize, and I think they have more of the long view just because they have kids. And it's like, how's this going to work out for my kids and my grandkids and my great-grandkids? Whereas men are a little less oriented in that way, and it's okay. They had to go out and kill the bison and the malice. 

Eva Sheie (12:43):
It's funny, my sister uses an investing analogy all the time when she talks about parenting, she just refers to it as putting money in the bank, the things she says, the things she does, and the way she takes care of her children. She sees that as investing in them. 

Dr. Ekstrom (12:59):
Yes, it's exactly right. 

Eva Sheie (13:01):
Yeah. 

Dr. Ekstrom (13:02):
 I had a coach who taught me every interaction you have with any person is the opportunity to get in the green or take out money and get in the red. And if your relationship gets enough in the red, then you get in trouble in your relationship. And I really love that analogy too. You have to handle your money and your kids are such a great investment, such a great investment. I think our kids are our most precious national resource. Absolutely. 

Eva Sheie (13:33):
Yeah, no arguing from me. There's a third piece of you that we haven't touched yet, which is that you're an artist, and I wonder if that was the original you, is that who you were when you were really young before you became the doctor and before you became this force for helping women with money? 

Dr. Ekstrom (13:54):
That's such an interesting question. I didn't have a lot of opportunity for art early on, but I was good at it. And I haven't done it a lot lately because I've got my hands on so much other stuff, but it does give me joy, and it's probably the reason I'm a plastic surgeon, not say a cardiac surgeon or a GI surgeon or something like that. I also am really good with my hands. And I went into psychiatry for a while, which was helpful in many ways in all parts of my life, but I didn't get to use my hands, and it was a real missing for me. I thought my hobbies and fiber arts and things like that would make up for that, but it didn't make up for that. I needed to use my hands. So I guess the craft and art of plastic surgery, I'm definitely on the artist end. I don't know how many plastic surgeons you interview, but they're kind of on a continuum with one extreme being artists and one extreme being engineers. And they're both successful. They just come at things in a different way, and then people are all the way along on that. I have some engineering genes because my staff calls me MacGyver because I can fix things, 

(15:03)
But I'm really on the artistic end of it. And to me, it comes very easily and I thought everybody had it, but I guess it's not true. 

Eva Sheie (15:11):
I have interviewed, I think you're episode 81 or 82, and that's just the ones that we've interviewed for the podcast this year. But I've been talking to surgeons for 20 years and I have definitely, I could picture the most engineer and the most artist when you said those two things. And it is a range for sure. The other thing I've seen a lot is there's the ones who absolutely knew they were going to be a doctor from the time they were very small, and the other one is they fell into it backwards, and then that's how they discovered that that's what they were going to be. And my favorite was the one who was a professional ballet dancer, went skydiving, broke his back, and the next day, maybe it wasn't the next day, but within a week or two decided I'm going to go to medical school and became a surgeon. 

Dr. Ekstrom (16:04):
Wow. 

Eva Sheie (16:05):
I know, you're all a bunch of characters. 

Dr. Ekstrom (16:09):
I can tell you that to be a surgeon, you have to be comfortable with some risk because you're putting patients at risk every day, and you have to have a lot of confidence because you're cutting into people and not everybody's good at that. And not everybody's hands are good. And not everybody has great eye hand coordination, but lots of people don't have that risk gene and they don't have the comfort level with cutting into people. You can understand that. But somebody who will jump out of an airplane, yeah, I can see where they become a surgeon. 

Eva Sheie (16:43):
It made a lot of sense. 

Dr. Ekstrom (16:45):
Yeah, I think there's lots of surgeons who it's the only thing that they can do. It's the only, not that they're capable of doing, but the only thing that really fits for them, and I run into lots of people like that. Unfortunately, people like that tend to also be kind of boring, cuz, it's all they can talk about because consuming, and I understand why that happens, because medicine is so consuming, it's so demanding. And so I completely understand that. And that's why people niche down because they just can't tolerate the breadth of knowledge that they have to be expert at 

Eva Sheie (17:28):
Surgeons, often I see that they can't not do the thing they're doing. There is nothing else in the world that even comes remotely close so they just keep going and going. And you especially see that when they niche down. And where I hear it the most is with rhinoplasty. Those people just want to do noses and that's all. And they're completely happy to do that every day, all day for the rest of their lives. 

Dr. Ekstrom (17:51):
Yeah, I see that as well. It's kind of interesting. It also happens with rhinoplasty, facelifts just doing facial rejuvenation, and I love to do body stuff, so I'm not in that category, but I like facial stuff, but I do it differently than most people. But anyway, I see that too, but I don't have that unifocal approach to medicine. I'm too curious and my interests are too broad. I like everything from physics, to neuroscience, to spirituality, to macroeconomics, and geopolitical forces. I love all that stuff. And I did in school too. So I think I came about being a physician a little bit differently. I was 13 years old. I was standing on a sidewalk outside the hospital, and I'm not sure why I was there, but talking to my girlfriend, Christine, and her father, who she didn't live with, she lived with her mom and stepdad, but I think she kind of idolized her father, and he was a physician and she said, I'd like to be a doctor when I grow up. 

(18:57)
And I thought, man, science, you get to be with people. Not too much math. I think I might like that too. So the two of us decided that maybe we kind of orient ourselves toward being physicians. And Christine a couple of years later moved with her family off to Minneapolis, and I was still in my local town and we didn't really connect much after that, but she ended up becoming a nurse. So she did end up in medicine, and I ended up becoming a physician, and I bounced around a lot. I thought I really liked to be a plastic surgeon, but it took so long to become one that I decided I better not do that. I'd just be a surgeon. I considered being a radiologist, and I didn't really think too much of OB G Y N because I'd done that rotation and I saw their lifestyle, but I really loved surgery. 

(19:45)
And unfortunately I was in surgery at a time when women did not go into surgery. In fact, there weren't many women in medicine even. So you were a real anomaly and no one knew how to relate to you. I had all kinds of peculiar experiences. Residency back in that time was pretty brutal. It was abusive. There's a lot of abuse in medicine. It's not unlike corporate abuse. Maybe worse. I don't know if there's other areas that are like that. I think Wall Street's very abusive to the people that come in there working, got to work 16 or 18 hours. Finance in general is like that, but medicines like that, maybe not as much, but there's reasons that there was legislation to limit how long residents work. So we were sleep deprived all the time. We were lucky when we got to go to the bathroom and get a shower, but we were also verbally abused and treated badly, and women were treated worse even. But men were abused too. And I think it came out of the old masters. Originally the interns were not allowed to leave the hospital. They were not allowed to get married. That was all at the beginning. Real men don't eat quiche. That's how it was. 

Eva Sheie (20:57):
They don't?

Dr. Ekstrom (20:57):
Apparently not the old masters at least. 

Eva Sheie (21:02):
Well, my daughter asked me the other day, what's my favorite food? She asked me, what is my favorite food? And I said, quiche. And she was like, what's that? 

Dr. Ekstrom (21:11):
What is quiche? Yeah, well, I guess that whole thing of real men don't eat quiche is kind of outmoded, but. 

Eva Sheie (21:17):
I've never heard that before. 

Dr. Ekstrom (21:19):
It's really interesting to see my sons who are adults and how much more interactive they are with their children than say my dad's generation was, and how much more blurring of the lines of child rearing and housekeeping and homemaking and so forth, how much more blurring there is of those lines. And to me, it's really a wonderful thing. 

Eva Sheie (21:41):
It's a big improvement. 

Dr. Ekstrom (21:43):
Yeah.

Eva Sheie (21:43):
I agree. Well, when patients come to see you, especially for the first time, what can they expect from that? 

Dr. Ekstrom (21:52):
I think the thing that sets us apart is that we treat them with real dignity and respect and just making the effort to meet them where they are, I think is only the correct way and the ethical way and the loving way to handle a patient. But we care. And it's so funny because we have a really cohesive team and everybody gets along and we have one man and the rest are women. A young man who came in and we said, oh, how's this going to go for him? He's got three sisters and he's just fit in great. But we all get along and I don't think that's common, apparently. We all get along and it's very, very synergistic and extremely enjoyable. I think that patients seem to recognize that as soon as they come in. I had a really funny comment today. I had a patient, she's Hispanic, and she told me, you have mano santos. And I said, what? She says, you have saints hands. And I was very gentle with her, so I'm not sure what that means, but I was very complimented by her saying that. 

Eva Sheie (23:04):
Yeah, I can imagine. 

Dr. Ekstrom (23:07):
Yeah, I can't say I was always like this. I had to modify my personality. 

Eva Sheie (23:13):
Tell me more about that. What did you learn that caused you to have to modify? 

Dr. Ekstrom (23:18):
Well, when you start to take personality tests, you start to see some revelations, and I am what they call a driver. I have standards of excellence and I expect everybody else that they have the same and they don't. And I have a little bit of a tendency or did toward command and control, and that doesn't really work. So I had to learn a lot of things, and I am sure people that start businesses are all very similar. It's good to do some of those tests to kind of get some idea about who you are or how you handle yourself. I've modified my natural style so much that I don't think I could ever go back to it. I'm so much more empathetic, so such a much better listener. I've done a lot of personal development because I grew up in an angry household, and I didn't want to bring that in my relationships. So I had to do a lot, and I probably still have some to do. I'm about ready to do some more, so we'll see. 

Eva Sheie (24:14):
Always learning. 

Dr. Ekstrom (24:16):
Yeah, when I'm 140, I still won't be baked. 

Eva Sheie (24:20):
Nope, we never will. That's the driver too. There we go. 

Dr. Ekstrom (24:24):
Yeah.

Eva Sheie (24:24):
And I see you also went to school in Minnesota. I'm from Minnesota, so 

Dr. Ekstrom (24:30):
Oh, no kidding. Well, I'm from Minnesota, which explains a lot of things about the two of us, I guess. 

Eva Sheie (24:34):
It does. 

Dr. Ekstrom (24:35):
Yeah. 

Eva Sheie (24:36):
I can't believe it took us this long to get to that. 

Dr. Ekstrom (24:39):
Yeah, good work ethic, great relationships, a lot of neighborly interaction and support. That's what I think of as Minnesota. I love it there. The people there are wonderful. 

Eva Sheie (24:51):
And so where did you grow up then? 

Dr. Ekstrom (24:53):
I grew up way in southern Minnesota in the Worthington area. I grew up on a farm, so I grew up on a dairy farm, and that's what they do down there. Many generations probably of dairy farmers. My family immigrated years back from the Netherlands, so I'm a hundred percent Dutch extract after many generations still. So yeah, I grew up on a farm and then went off to Minneapolis to medical school. I went to the University of Minnesota Community College and then University of Minnesota. I didn't have a lot of money, so I got scholarships and worked my way through college, but I got done with college really fast because I didn't have a lot of money. So I got done with college a little over three years, and then I worked for a little bit and went to medical school. 

Eva Sheie (25:40):
It's funny what you'll do when you don't have a choice. You just have to do it that way, so you do. 

Dr. Ekstrom (25:45):
Yeah, it worked. I didn't have a lot of time to have fun though, or paint pictures. I was in chemistry lab. 

Eva Sheie (25:55):
Yeah, there's not that much to do unless it's warm out. Anyway, and that's only what, a few months 

Dr. Ekstrom (26:02):
I tell people two seasons. 

Eva Sheie (26:04):
Road construction and 

Dr. Ekstrom (26:05):
Yeah, winter and road construction. I heard a great joke about Minnesota. You'll enjoy this being in Minnesotan, if somebody asks you what you do in the summer in Minnesota, you say, well, if it falls on a Sunday, we have a picnic. 

Eva Sheie (26:19):
It falls on a Sunday?

Dr. Ekstrom (26:20):
If summer falls on a Sunday, oh, 

Eva Sheie (26:22):
If summer falls on a Sunday, 

Dr. Ekstrom (26:24):
It's only one day long. 

Eva Sheie (26:27):
Yep. That's excellent. 

Dr. Ekstrom (26:29):
It's not so true anymore, right? It's not as cold in Minnesota as it used to be. And there's not as much snow. 

Eva Sheie (26:35):
I don't know. Last year it was so cold, there was so much snow that my parents had to replace their roof because 

Dr. Ekstrom (26:41):
Oh my.

Eva Sheie (26:41):
It got so heavy, it ruined their roof. And that's never happened in my lifetime. 

Dr. Ekstrom (26:46):
Oh, that's happened in Massachusetts, actually. But I can remember the year that I moved to Massachusetts before Thanksgiving. It had already been icy, and I was off the road in the ditch and had to get towed out of the ditch. And I remember that that winter before I moved to Massachusetts, we had had 60 days in a row of below zero weather.

Eva Sheie (27:07):
60.

Dr. Ekstrom (27:08):
60 days in a row. I'd had it by then. Yeah. 

Eva Sheie (27:12):
Do you remember, this is always one of my favorites is when it got back up to 20, it felt warm. 

Dr. Ekstrom (27:18):
Yes. 

Eva Sheie (27:19):
And then when it got into the fifties, people would go outside and like shorts and t-shirts because it was so warm.

Dr. Ekstrom (27:25):
It's so nice. It's so nice outside.

Eva Sheie (27:28):
So absurd. 

Dr. Ekstrom (27:31):
Yeah, absolutely true. 

Eva Sheie (27:33):
Yeah. Well, this has been such a treat. I feel like I could talk to you for two more hours and I'm so glad that we had you on the show. I would never have known you if 

Dr. Ekstrom (27:43):
I know two Minnesotan girls meet. <laugh>

Eva Sheie (27:49):
Yeah. If someone's listening today and they want to either listen to your podcast or learn more about you and potentially come see you, where should they look for more information? 

Dr. Ekstrom (28:00):
If they're interested in growing their wealth as a woman, or they want to hear about the pathways of women who've been successful or are driving success for other people as well. They can go to Money Loves women.com. There's some funny things. There's some fun things. There's training and there's always more coming. And there's the podcast, which is fun too, if you're out walking or something, it's fun to listen to and hear about some interesting people. 

Eva Sheie (28:27):
You're going to get another follower today because I'm going to go follow it right now.

Dr. Ekstrom (28:30):
Thank you. And then my practice is called Salisbury Plastic Surgery, and you can find that by salisbury ps.com. And that's Salisbury like Salisbury steak, S A L I S B U R Y,  P S for plastic surgery.com. 

Eva Sheie (28:45):
I will put links to that in all the show notes, so it's easy to find. 

Dr. Ekstrom (28:49):
Thank you. Thank you. 

Eva Sheie (28:50):
Thank you for sharing yourself with us today. 

Dr. Ekstrom (28:52):
Total pleasure. 

Eva Sheie (28:57):
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 Meet the Doctor podcast.com. Meet the Doctor is Made with Love in Austin, Texas and is a production of The Axis, t h e a x i s.io.