Me and My Two Wives

Sometimes as I sit here I wonder how great life as a plastic surgeon must have been 20 or more years ago; wake up early go to the office, see lots of patients and go home at the end of the day.  You had competition, but if you worked hard in the ER and maybe did some print advertising you could develop a solid practice of consistent cosmetic patients.  But the Internet has changed all of that, and because of it I need two wives.

My first wife, my real wife Shelly, is a wonderful woman who is my best friend, wife, mother of my children and my boss.  Yes, my boss; I work for her.  Why, well it’s got to do with many issues but let’s just say I’m glad I do.  Shelly runs my office.  Okay, I’m a real man – she runs my life.  And I love it.  I trust her to deal with all of the issues that I don’t have time or patience for.

My second wife – my webwife –  is Eva.  Eva lives 3000 miles away on the west coast and I’ve never met her.   She is my connection to the vast universe of the web.  Before I met Eva, okay that’s not exactly right since we’re only connected by wire, but anyway,  my knowledge of the Internet was yahoo.com.  But, as my wife Shelly continues to teach me about life, my webwife Eva continues to teach me the power of the Internet.  No longer is plastic surgery advertising limited to magazines, TV and radio.  In fact 80-90% of advertising and self-promotion is via the Internet.  To get recognized you must be on the first page (or close) of any web search.  To get there takes months or years of work, 6-10 hours per day and both of us working on it.

My typical day starts by getting the kids dressed, fed, lunches made and my wife out the door to take them to school.  Then it’s either off to the office or the OR.  While I’m at the office I’m working on the blog, RealSelf.com,  Twitter, Plaxo, Namyz, Linkedin, Facebook, web or blog directories between patients.  After formal hours of work I continue my web work typically until 11:00 or 12:00 at night.  During this I usually call or email Eva once a day.  I’ve been trained in medicine but Internet training was not part of the curriculum.  So she holds my hand and explains what I need to do or not do or did wrong etc.-“user.”  Like Shelly, she has incredible patience.

At this point my wife, Shelly, and I have had 8 great years together and  I continue to learn how to be a better husband.  On the flip side my webwife and I have been together almost a year and I continue to learn how to promote my business on the web.  I’m sure the honeymoon is about to end but it’s been a good first year and I can’t thank my webwife or my real wife enough.  Two is better than one.