Advertise on podcast: The Trillium Show with Dr. Jason Hall

Send us Fan Mail Pricing in plastic surgery is harder than it looks. When Amanda and I first opened our practice, we did what I think a lot of people do: looked at what other surgeons were charging, picked a number that seemed competitive, and went from there. The problem is that you have no idea what’s behind somebody else’s number. Their overhead may be completely different. Their OR and anesthesia costs may be different. Their implants may cost more or less. And most importantly, the hour you spend operating is only a fraction of the time you actually spend taking care of that patient. In this episode, Amanda and I break down how we think about pricing at Trillium today—from surgeon time, consults, pre-op visits, and follow-ups to implants, supplies, anesthesia, staffing, and the other expenses that are easy to overlook. We also talk about why we reevaluate our pricing every year, how inflation and rising overhead quietly eat into profit, why being the cheapest practice in town is rarely the goal, and why the patient experience itself has value. If you own a medical or aesthetic practice, the question isn’t just, “How much revenue am I bringing in?” It’s: After everything that goes into delivering that service, am I actually making money? This is the framework Amanda and I have used to answer that question for the last 12 years—and one I wish we had understood when we first started.

Send us Fan Mail Being busy and being profitable are not the same thing. In this episode of The Trillium Show, Amanda joins me again to talk about one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned building Trillium Plastic Surgery from the ground up: revenue coming in means very little if just as much money is going right back out. We break practice overhead down into three areas I call the “three S’s” — space, staff, and stuff — and talk about where new practice owners can get themselves into trouble. From leasing an office that’s too big, to hiring before there’s a real need, to financing a $300,000 device because a sales rep promises it will “pay for itself,” expenses can get out of control quickly. Amanda also shares how she watches the numbers behind the scenes, why a packed schedule isn’t necessarily a successful schedule, and why five great patients can sometimes be more valuable to a practice than a day that simply looks busy. If you’re starting a private practice, considering leaving an employed position, or trying to figure out why your practice is generating revenue without generating the profit you expected, this episode is about learning to control what you can control before chasing growth. Because at the end of the day, the money coming in isn’t what you make. It’s what’s left after everything goes out.

Send us Fan Mail Amanda is back with me on The Trillium Show, and you’re going to be hearing a lot more from the two of us together. After almost 20 years of marriage and 12 years of owning a practice together, we get asked all the time how we manage working together, raising a family, and still making time for each other. The answer is that, over the years, we’ve developed a handful of things that simply aren’t negotiable. In this episode, Amanda and I talk about the routines that have helped keep our family connected: our weekly date night, Friday family nights, sitting down for dinner together, making fitness part of the schedule, creating one-on-one time with our daughters, and even the rules we’ve put around phones and social media. None of this is meant to be a blueprint for somebody else’s family. It’s simply what has worked for ours. As Amanda joins me more often on the podcast, we’re going to share more of what we’ve learned building a business and a life together—the things that have worked, the things we’ve gotten wrong, and what it actually looks like behind the scenes at work and at home. If you enjoy these conversations, subscribe to The Trillium Show so you don’t miss the next one!

Send us Fan Mail In 2024, Dr. Jason Hall recorded one of his most provocative episodes of The Trillium Show: “Smart Kids—Don’t Go to Medical School.” Two years later, he’s revisiting it—and some of the predictions feel even more relevant. The episode looks at three major changes reshaping medicine: the loss of physician autonomy, the growing influence of hospital systems and insurance companies, and the rapidly expanding role of AI in diagnosis and patient care. If medicine increasingly becomes a profession built around protocols, algorithms, and pattern recognition, what happens when AI can do more of that work faster and cheaper? And what does that mean for a student committing the next decade of their life to becoming a physician? Jason still loves medicine and surgery. But the profession has changed dramatically since he entered it, and the path that made sense for one generation may not make the same sense for the next. Whether you’re considering medical school, raising a child who is, or simply wondering where American medicine is headed, this episode asks a question that has only become harder to ignore: Is becoming a doctor still worth it?

Send us Fan Mail In the fourth and final episode of our business lessons series, Amanda and I take an honest look at the financial side of owning and growing a plastic surgery practice. Having money in the bank does not necessarily mean your business is profitable. We discuss how we use profit-and-loss statements, detailed spreadsheets, overhead calculations, and procedure costs to understand what the practice is actually earning—and why simply copying a competitor’s pricing can quickly put you in a position where you are losing money on a treatment. We also explain why staying small has been one of the smartest decisions we have made, how unnecessary staff and oversized office spaces can quietly drain a business, and why controlling expenses is just as important as generating revenue. Finally, we share our biggest financial regrets, including expensive devices that failed to deliver, financing contracts we should have read more carefully, and the hidden costs of running a business that many new owners never anticipate. From employee benefits and payroll taxes to insurance, marketing, and vendor expenses, this conversation covers the financial lessons we had to learn through experience. Whether you are opening a medical practice, growing a med spa, or running another type of small business, this episode offers practical advice for protecting your cash flow, making smarter investments, and building a profitable business without getting distracted by what everyone else is doing.

Send us Fan Mail What happens when your spouse is also your business partner? In Part 3 of our business series, Amanda and I talk honestly about what it has been like to build Trillium together while raising a family and navigating nearly 20 years of marriage. We get into the years when work followed us home every night, the boundaries we’ve had to learn to set, and why our very different personalities have ultimately made us better business partners. I’m the big-picture person who is always thinking about what’s next. Amanda is the detail-oriented one asking how we’re actually going to make it happen. That combination has helped us grow, but it has also created some hard lessons along the way. We also talk about how building the practice affected our daughters, the sacrifices we made early on, working through disagreements when you still have to show up together the next morning, and whether we expect our kids to someday carry on the family business. Running a business with your spouse isn’t always easy, but after more than a decade of doing it together, we’ve learned a lot about partnership, boundaries, family, and knowing when the next big idea needs to wait.

Send us Fan Mail Neither Amanda nor I had any formal business training when we decided to open a medical practice. We had backgrounds in medicine, a young family, and plenty of lessons we would have to learn the hard way. So in this second episode of our business series, Amanda and I are sharing how the decisions we made years before opening Trillium helped make it possible. We talk about living below our means, our early Dave Ramsey envelope system, the $4,000 furniture purchase that became an unexpected lesson in taxes, and why we chose to start small and open the practice without debt. We also discuss leaving Houston, moving closer to family in Knoxville, the mistakes we made while building the business, and why we both wish we had asked more questions and sought out experienced mentors sooner. Finally, we answer one of the questions we hear most often: Is working together harder on the business—or on the marriage?

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Trillium Show, I’m joined by my wife and business partner, Amanda Hall, for the first episode in a four-part series about what it really takes to run a plastic surgery practice together. Over the next few episodes, we’re pulling back the curtain on the business side of medicine: how we started, what we got wrong, what we’ve learned the hard way, and how our roles have evolved over the last 11 years. This episode starts with what may be the hardest part of owning a practice: hiring and managing people. Amanda and I talk through our first hires, what we were looking for in the beginning, why we learned to be slow to hire and quick to fire, and how much a bad fit can affect the entire team. We also get into the role of an office manager, why policies and procedures have to be built from the inside, how hard delegation can be for two type A people, and what we look for now when someone applies to work in our office. This is a candid conversation about employee management, team culture, leadership mistakes, and the reality that people can make or break a business. If you’re a physician, surgeon, business owner, or someone thinking about starting your own practice, this episode is a look at the lessons we wish we had understood sooner.

Send us Fan Mail Tummy tucks and body contouring procedures are consistently some of the most popular surgeries in plastic surgery, and for good reason. Patients want to remove excess skin, repair their core, improve their waistline, and feel more confident in their body. But what happens when the goal shifts from improving shape to changing the structure of the ribs? In this episode of The Trillium Show, I’m joined again by Dr. Jessica Walker to talk about RibXcar, RibX, rib remodeling, rib removal, and the growing conversation around surgically altering the floating ribs to create a smaller, more dramatic waistline. We break down what these procedures are designed to do, how rib remodeling differs from rib removal, why ultrasound technology is being used, and why post-operative compliance with a corset or waist trainer is such a major part of the result. We also talk about the concerns that come with this trend: pneumothorax, bleeding, nerve or vessel injury, asymmetry, unrealistic expectations, and the bigger question of whether changing someone’s skeletal structure for a cosmetic waistline is really worth the risk. This is one of those procedures that may look impressive online, but deserves a much deeper conversation before patients decide to pursue it. If you’ve seen RibXcar or rib contouring on social media and wondered what plastic surgeons actually think about it, this episode is for you.

Send us Fan Mail Breast implant sizing is one of the most important conversations in any breast augmentation consultation, but bigger is not always better. In this episode of The Trillium Show, Dr. Jason Hall is joined by Dr. Jessica Walker to talk about how they help patients choose the right implant size based on goals, anatomy, measurements, frame, tissue quality, and long-term outcomes. They discuss why cup size and implant volume alone can be misleading, why goal photos can be helpful, and what patients should understand before choosing a larger implant. They also explain what can happen when implants are too large for a patient’s body, including stretched skin, thinning breast tissue, neck and back pain, more complicated revision surgery, and why using a bigger implant to avoid a lift is usually not the right answer. If you are considering breast augmentation, this conversation will help you think beyond the number of cc’s and focus on what is safe, proportional, and sustainable for your body long-term.

Send us Fan Mail Preservé by Motiva has been getting a lot of attention online, but what actually is it, and is it really as new or revolutionary as social media makes it seem? In this episode of The Trillium Show, I’m joined again by Dr. Jessica Walker to talk through the Preservé breast augmentation technique, Awake Breast Augmentation, smaller incisions, and the difference between marketing hype and surgical reality. We discuss what Preservé is designed to do, who it may or may not be appropriate for, and why a “minimally invasive” label does not automatically mean a procedure is better, safer, or right for every patient. Dr. Walker and I also get into the bigger conversation around breast implant placement, over the muscle versus under the muscle, implant size limitations, pocket control, long-term data, and the questions patients should be asking before choosing any breast augmentation technique. This conversation is not about dismissing innovation. It’s about helping patients understand what they’re seeing online, what we know, what we don’t know yet, and why the surgeon, the plan, and the long-term outcome matter more than the trend. If you’ve seen Preservé by Motiva online and wondered whether it’s hype, science, or somewhere in between, this episode is a good place to start.

Send us Fan Mail This week on The Trillium Show, we’re doing something a little different. I’m sharing a conversation I had with Liz Durham, host of Being Different and a Knoxville mom of three, where she turned the tables and interviewed me about mommy makeover surgery. We talk through what a “mommy makeover” actually is, which usually means some combination of breast rejuvenation, tummy tuck, body contouring, and sometimes liposuction, depending on the patient. More importantly, we talk about how to know whether surgery is the right next step, and when it is not. Pregnancy, breastfeeding, weight changes, hormones, stretched skin, and separated abdominal muscles can all change the body in ways that diet and exercise simply cannot always fix, but that does not mean every new mom needs to rush into surgery. Liz asks the questions a lot of women are already thinking about, from recovery with small kids at home, to breast changes after breastfeeding, to the pressure of social media, filters, aging, and feeling like you do not recognize your body anymore. We also get into one of the most important parts of any cosmetic consultation: making sure we are treating the right problem for the right reason. Cosmetic surgery is still medicine. The diagnosis matters, the timing matters, and the goal should never be to chase trends or look like someone else. The goal is to restore balance, proportion, and confidence in a way that still looks like you.

Send us Fan Mail One of the most common consults I see isn’t for first-time surgery, it’s for patients who’ve already had a procedure and want it improved. Revision surgery is one of the most complex and least talked about areas in plastic surgery. It’s harder, riskier, and far less predictable than doing a procedure the first time, and yet most people don’t hear about it until they’re already in it. In this episode, I break down why revision surgery happens and what you need to understand before your first procedure if you want to reduce the chances of needing one later. We talk through three main drivers:  Biology and aging, things no surgeon can control  Poor planning, including implant choices and surgical strategy  Mismatched expectations between patient and surgeon I also get into why revision surgery is technically more difficult, why some surgeons won’t do it at all, and the psychological side that often gets overlooked. The reality is this: the best revision surgery is the one you never need. And that comes down to making better decisions before you ever step into the operating room. If you’re considering plastic surgery, or dealing with a result you’re not happy with, this is a conversation you should hear.

Send us Fan Mail There was a time when plastic surgery was quiet, private, and reserved for a very small group of people. Now, it’s everywhere. You can scroll past it on Instagram, hear about it on TikTok, or walk into a strip mall and book a treatment like you’re buying skincare. So this week, I’m taking a step back and looking at how we got here, and more importantly, what it means for you as a patient. I walk through the evolution of plastic surgery, from its roots in reconstructive work after World War I to the rise of cosmetic procedures in Hollywood, and now into what has become a full-blown consumer industry. We talk about the role of social media, influencer marketing, med spas, and the shift from fixing problems to optimizing appearance. But the bigger issue is this: when surgery starts to look like a product, what happens to safety, judgment, and the doctor-patient relationship? I get into why speed, volume, and price are starting to replace experience and trust, why that’s a problem, and what I believe needs to change. This isn’t about being anti–plastic surgery, it’s about making sure the process still respects the fact that this is medicine, not retail. And I’ll leave you with the question I’m still wrestling with: is the commoditization of plastic surgery empowering, or is it just a new form of pressure? If you’re considering a procedure, or just trying to make sense of what you’re seeing online, this is where to start!

Send us Fan Mail We live in a world where cosmetic surgery is marketed like a product, something you can scroll, click, and finance like a handbag. But your body isn’t a product, and the operating room isn’t a store. In this episode, I’m walking you through 10 signs that tell me a patient isn’t quite ready for cosmetic surgery, and why hitting pause might be the most important decision you can make.  We talk about body dysmorphic disorder, unrealistic expectations shaped by filters and AI, and the idea that surgery can somehow fix deeper life problems. I also get into what I call the “shopper” mindset, vague goals, and the pressure people put on themselves to rush into surgery for a specific event.  Then there are the things people don’t always think about, like going through a major life stressor, not having a solid support system, smoking or vaping, or not being at a stable weight before a procedure. All of these factors matter more than most people realize when it comes to both safety and long-term results. This episode isn’t about talking you out of surgery, it’s about helping you make a better decision. The best outcomes don’t come from impulse decisions or marketing hype, they come from clarity, timing, and being truly ready for what surgery actually involves. If you’re thinking about a procedure, this is where you should start!