Medical Authority Marketing: How Dr. Philip Ovadia Uses Podcasting to Prevent Heart Disease

Warning, this podcast contains brutally honest opinions. If you're easily offended by the truth about your favorite shows, you might want to skip this. If you crave a no-holds-barred journey into what makes a podcast unskippable, then listen in as we, Tracy and Tom Hazzard, put our expertise and relationship to the test here on The Binge Factor.

Hey everyone, welcome to The Binge Factor. I'm Tracy Hazzard, and I have Dr. Philip Ovadia, and he has just blown me away with how he integrates his book, his podcast, his passion for the health and wellness space together in his show. His show is called Stay Off My Operating Table. After conducting over 3,000 heart surgeries, Dr. Philip Ovadia Thought that good health comes from lifestyle nutrition, not just from surgery. Sadly, many of his patients consider their heart attacks inevitable, and so he's now on a mission to help people stay off his operating table by giving them the tools and the mindset to never need him, never need a heart surgeon. In 2015, Dr. Ovadia adopted a low-carb way of eating and has effortlessly maintained a weight loss of nearly 100 pounds ever since. He has extensively researched the health benefits of low-carb diets and a focus on heart health and learned that our poor diets cause poor metabolic health. His recent book, Stay Off My Operating Table, shares the lifestyle principles to prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. He also hosts the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast and is a frequent guest on other podcasts focusing on metabolic and heart health. I was really glad to have him here. When he reached out to me, it was shortly after we had a heart health scare in my family with my mom, and it Took, it shook me. And I was really sitting back looking at, what can I do? Where can I get some advice? Where can I figure out what she should be doing, how I can support her, what I could be cooking? And I started doing what I usually do, go to Amazon, download some books, and go to podcasts and start finding what's out there. And just at the moment that I was out there searching, Dr. Avadia came straight to me.

Yeah.

It just came straight to me asking to be on my show. It took me a while to get him on the show here, but I'm so glad to finally get him on so that I could ask him some questions so that I could talk to him about what I was finding and what I was seeing out there. And here's the other part about it. It's like when you hear someone who's got such passion, who's way past 100 episodes, he's like 132 by the time we're recording this, we get to this stage where we can build trust in what he's saying. He really believes what he's saying. He believes the experts that he's coming on. That is a trust point for information that we really desperately need. desperately need in the health and wellness space. It is hard to maintain fake information if you don't believe in what you're doing and if you're not constantly correcting yourself. So I'm gonna ask him about some of those things. I'm gonna ask him about how he vets his guests, how he thinks about this, because that health and wellness space has a lot of fly-by-night. And I would say Dr. Philip Ovadia is not one of them. So, so glad that he came on my show, and I'm really glad that you're here to listen to my interview with Dr. Philip Ovadia. Stay off my operating table. Dr. Ovadia, thank you for coming on. Stay Off My Operating Table is— I don't usually recommend long titles, but that one is perfect. It's like 3 really big, important words and a couple of small ones mixed in there. Love the title. Was it your first title?

Thank you. Yeah, it was my first title for the podcast. It comes from the title of my book, Stay Off My Operating Table. So we just continued that on when we launched the podcast subsequent to the book release. Developing that as the title of the book was a bit of of a process, but I think it pretty effectively gets the message across about what we're trying to accomplish.

Oh, I definitely think you are. And then I also love, and I want everybody to take a look at that, he has the brand iFixHearts, which came from, we were talking before, from your Twitter handle. But it's so brilliant because it's like Stay Off Operating Table and iFixHearts. They're not the same brand, but they have the same message.

Yeah, I think they play into each other well. And as I was explaining to you, it was a bit of luck. I got that Twitter handle way before I had any thoughts of kind of launching this brand and being on this mission. Quite honestly, I was on a much different pathway at the time. I was a heart surgeon, and so I fix hearts. It, again, is pretty effective, I think, and pretty much says the message. Occasionally gets me confused with like a dating service or something like that. But for the most part, I think people guess off of it, heart surgery, heart care, cardiology, and then stay off my operating table has really become the mantra over the past few years as I have shifted my focus from being a heart surgeon and helping people with that need to trying to keep people off the operating table and prevent the need for heart surgery.

So we had an incident with my mom this past year, and it Really shook us all and shocked us. She went in for a little shortness of breath and the next thing you know, she was having angiograms and angioplasty and, you know, everything was happening and it happened so quickly and I don't think anyone even realized it. And her coming off of that, realizing that her diet had to change, there's so much of your lifestyle that really has to change that it is a much broader subject. And what a shame that most doctors don't get to reach beyond their operating table when they do.

Yeah, very much so. Most people recognize that heart disease is the number one killer in the United States. Although interestingly, there was a study that came out a little bit ago that suggested that actually less than half of the people in the United States, when asked what the number one killer is, got that answer correct.

Oh no. So you'd think we'd know by now, but we just don't.

Exactly. But either way, what I have come to realize in my 20-plus years as a heart surgeon now is we do a great job at taking care of people when they get sick. We do a lousy job at preventing them from getting sick in the first place. And the reality about heart disease is that it is largely preventable, and probably 90%, if not more, of heart disease deaths could be prevented way before people get to the operating table or end up in a cath lab. For a lot of people, their first indication that they have heart disease is like your mother when they get sick, when they have the heart attack. And what I am trying to get the message out about is that we can figure out that people are at risk much sooner and we can intervene with things like changes in diet and lifestyle and do a much more effective job at preventing them from getting to the advanced stages of the disease.

Well, and how did this translate? I have to say that I've met a lot of doctors over the years through my, through my company here and podcasting. And they're not always great behind the mic. How did you make that transition and say, this is a re— I really wanna talk more about this?

Yeah, that, that's been a process. We don't learn this in medical school. Now, one would think, well, you're a doctor, you talk to people all day long and you're interacting with people. And, and that's true. But as you know, the skills of being on camera and podcasting is a lot different than having the one-on-one conversation with the patient bedside. I think a lot of it does translate is what I've come to realize, but a lot of it doesn't. Doesn't. When I first started podcasting and when I had the idea to add a podcast to what we were doing, quite frankly, my first attempts at it and my first vision was it'll just be a solo podcast where I'll talk about the stuff that I talk about. Didn't go very well.

It feels a little like giving lectures at that early stages, doesn't it? And that doesn't feel as good.

And it was painful, I'll tell you, both for me and for anyone who had to listen to that. Thankfully, I was connected with Jack Heald, who is my co-host and producer. And the original vision was he was just going to produce the show for me and I would do the show. And he said, how about we do it together? And our first run of episodes, our first 20 episodes or so, is really just Jack interviewing me. And as I became, I think, more comfortable on camera, we then decided to start bringing on guests. And we kept the co-host arrangement with Jack and I because it's a very interesting perspective. Jack is non-medical, and so he brings the sort of common man perspective. And most of the guests that we have on are medical, are practitioners, are scientists. And so the conversation that I might have with them, practitioner to practitioner, is very different than the conversation that Jack would have with them. And we get a good mix of both. So that has worked out very well. And many of the guests have commented how much they enjoy coming on our podcast and how they get different questions than a lot of the other healthcare-focused podcasts that are out there.

Yeah, I do think that that's quite unique about your show. I've seen other shows that are like that where there's one more expert and one of the co-hosts is a little more user-focused, right? Like listener-focused. So you're being advocating for, oh, the listener didn't understand that. Can you explain that? I think that's a really good way, especially in such a, a really deep, important subject is to say, timeout, I'm not sure I understood that, and dive deeper into those things. So I think you've done a wonderful job with the two of you there. But the other thing I thought about when I was listening to the fact that you had Jack on the show and that you have a— he's your producer along with everything— is that this is a great way to be much more accountable to showing up and keeping your podcast going. Because I know you busy professionals, especially you doctors out there, you get too busy to keep podcasting. It's the number one— the professional-focused podcasts are the ones that I see fade first.

Yeah, very much true, I think, and quite challenging. But I enjoy it so much that I do now prioritize it, and I make sure that that's protected time that we're going to get the podcast done. And yeah, sometimes there is some schedule shuffling. You know, I am still an active heart surgeon and things happen unexpectedly, but we work around that. And we're now 150 episodes in, over 2 years or so, and we do have good consistency. We make sure we get our episode out every week, and, and we've now set up things that we have some buffer and we're a couple of weeks in advance recording. So that's been going well. If you had asked me at the beginning whether I thought we would still be doing this 2 years later, the honest answer would have been no. But like I said, I do now really truly enjoy it. It allows me to have such great conversations with people that I'm interested in having conversations with, quite honestly. And that's— most of the guests are just people that I want to talk to. And so it really has become an enjoyable part of my very busy professional life, but we prioritize it so it happens.

Well, I'm going to say I usually do my psychoanalysis of your show and analyze the binge factor. And right there, you hit on what it is. I can hear in your show how passionate you are about the guests that you're bringing on and wanting to have time to have a conversation with it. And so often when I see a co-host situation, especially when they're a producer, they step in and they have lined up the guests and they do all the prep and announcements. But 9 times out of 10, from the episodes I've listened to, Jack is like, okay, who you got for us today? And you've got that all handled as to why you wanted them on the show and what you're going to dive into in the conversation. Your participation in that is truly why I think someone's going to binge on your entire show catalog and they're going to go back to the beginning and listen to all of them because they really want to gain that perspective that you have on who who you're interested in talking to is who they want to hear from.

Yeah, thank you for that. And it may be even more so true for Jack. Jack is oftentimes so excited. And by the end of the episode— and it seems like almost every episode these days— Jack is just like, wow, that was our best one ever. And I always kind of laugh to myself. And I'm like, Jack, I think you said that each of the last 10 episodes. But it really is true. I mean, it just gets better with time. We— the guests continue to grow and get more interesting. And we're now getting to that point where we're actually starting to circle back with some of our previous guests, which is another interesting and great experience because you then get to go deeper and you think about what you discussed the first time and now what you're going to explore the second time. So again, something that I'm very excited for, to have repeat conversations with some interesting people.

You know, and that's really great because then it allows someone to say, wow, as a listener, that's the second time this person's been on. Maybe I really do need to read their book. And so it really helps make those connections deeper. I also think that this is kind of a difficult area for especially doctors, but lawyers as well, anyone who's got some kind of professional certification of any kind where they feel a little uncomfortable with the guest model because what is that guest gonna say? And is that okay and valid advice? How do you handle that when they say something that you're not a firm believer in?

We have some challenging conversations sometimes, and there are certainly times when the guests and I might disagree on some aspects of things, and I always try and handle that respectfully. You know, one of the things that I think have recognized in medicine, and honestly, this has become magnified in the most recent years, is that we are less open to those conversations. And the reality is, is that science and medicine advances by challenging the norms. And I think that's an essential part thing that we in healthcare need to support. There needs to be debate about some of these things. There is a lot that we don't know. There is a lot that we thought we knew in the past that proves not to be true. And there are many, many historical examples of this. And so for us to look at any one particular topic today and say, well, we know this for sure, I think is just anti-science, quite frankly, and anti-medicine and not benefiting the patient ultimately. So I always encourage those conversations. And we've had guests on that we— that I may not align with fully, and that's okay. I've certainly been guests on other podcasts in a similar situation. And I think the way that I view it is if you can't handle challenges to your point of view, then you shouldn't be out there talking about it, quite frankly.

I agree. I think that's really of great benefit. But I also think it really opens up your own personal practice and your own mindset about Why aren't my patients complying with this? And, you know, why are all these experts, gurus popping up in social media and other places? It's because something's not working. And maybe through those conversations you start to see, what if I did this different in my practice? What if this, what if I added these resources?

Yeah. That has many examples of that that I can point to, that we've had a guest coming on that honestly, I maybe I'm a little unsure of, and is this something really we should be talking about? And we end up having very interesting conversations that oftentimes open my, and and expand my horizons and can translate into perhaps new ways of me doing things in practice. And certainly the audience is learning alongside of me. So like I said, I always welcome that opportunity on the podcast. And I do think that we try and give, at least give a chance for people to speak their minds and their view of things and see how it aligns or doesn't align.

Right, exactly. It doesn't sometimes. Well, I, I think that there's a lot of people who might be out there saying, oh, I don't have the kind of business that I need to be a podcast host. I need to be out in front of a camera or a microphone. I don't need that because, hey, my patients are gonna get on my operating table no matter what. Like, there's a steady flow, unfortunately. You decided not to look at it that way. You've decided to be an author, you've decided to be a podcaster, you've decided to participate out in that. What part of your business did you see that as expanding for? you? And did you see it as essential for your future?

Yeah. So my, I guess, story arc sort of goes from unhealthy heart surgeon, did things to improve my own health, and realized that that could be helping my patients. And again, came to this realization that most of the people who end up on my operating table really didn't need to be there. The healthcare system failed those people for the most part. And that led me on this mission to educate people as to how they can take control of their health and how they could stay off their operating— off my operating table, off any operating table. And so I did recognize that that was a very different approach than being a heart surgeon at a hospital where basically, like you said, people just show up at your door. You don't really need to do a whole lot of promotion and advertising for that. This is a message that needs to get out there. It needs to be promoted. So I recognized early on that it was going to take different approach. And we discussed about a little earlier, that was something that I wasn't necessarily comfortable with, didn't really know how to do, quite honestly. But I was fortunate to have some good contacts in my life who were able to help me with that and aligned with some business people and aligned with marketing people. And Jack is a marketer as well as the producer of my podcast. And so people like that have been able to help me along. And then the book turned into the podcast and really supports our telemedicine practice that I run, where we do— I work with patients one-on-one, work with patients throughout the US and even internationally in helping them to stay off the operating table, trying to prevent their heart disease from worsening or prevent heart disease in the first place. And there's a lot that goes into that as well. You know, we have courses and we have books and we have coaching and we have all the different ways that we work with people. And the podcast and the book really help to support that. That's oftentimes the entry point for people into our ecosystem and really into this topic at large. The topic of what we eat and how it affects our health is something that I don't think people pay enough attention to. And that sounds kind of funny because you say, Well, we eat all the time, every day of our life. Healthcare is all around us. It's essentially the biggest industry in this country. So how do the two not intersect more? But the reality is that they don't as much as they should. And so trying to get people to understand that relationship between what we eat and our healthcare is really the mission that we're on.

Well, and I think once you open their eyes to the things like what What happened with my mom happened right before Thanksgiving. And so she's like got this menu for Thanksgiving and I said, Mom, we can't make these things. There's too much salt in them. There's too much butter in them. There's too much of these things in them and you just had surgery. We're not doing that anymore. We need to change what we're doing. And she was like, I didn't even think about that, that it has these things in it. And because it starts to be habit.

Yeah. And this is maybe the ironic part of this is that the message that I'm out here giving about what we eat is actually very counter to the standard message. So I would tell you that the And the butter and the salt were maybe some of the healthiest parts of that.

Right. And that's what, that's what, as my, I did my research, this was what was on this list that they gave us from the hospital of don't eat this and don't eat that. And there was all this stuff on the list. And then as I went to do research, like figure out recipes and find new things, I was finding the opposite. And it made me wonder, where, where, who do I trust? Where do I go? I wished I had known you back in, it would've made Thanksgiving a lot easier if I had met you.

Well, we got plenty of time to work on this upcoming Thanksgiving now.

That's right.

But yeah, that's really another challenge that we face and another reason that I wanted to get the podcast out there and connect with more of an audience because there are very diametrically opposed opinions about what we should be eating. Once we acknowledge that what we eat affects our health, that's the first challenge because many doctors, much of the healthcare system will say, no, it really doesn't matter what you eat. It's your genetics. It's something else. And then once we get people to accept, okay, what you eat is a primary determinant of, of your health, we then have the challenging question of, yeah, what do you eat? And there are all sorts of camps. And, you know, what I tried to do in the book and what we try and do in the podcast is really boil it down. And what I did was I looked at all of these different successful strategies that ultimately lead people to better health and help prevent heart disease. And I tried to find the common factor. And for me, the common factor really appears to be eat real food. And, and that's the message. Now, you know, there's meat and there's plants, vegetables within the real food categories. And honestly, there's a lot of debate there. You can be vegan, you can be carnivore. There are many things in between that you can do as you're eating real food. And I think all of those people are going to benefit. And then I think there are certain situations that maybe favor one versus the other. But again, I've had the conversation with vegan doctors. And I am a strong proponent of the carnivore diet. And at the end, we recognize that we agree on more than we disagree on. You know, the eat real food really becomes the big part of it and empowering people with that information, allowing them to take back control of their health and recognize that they can have a major impact on their health just by changing what they eat. You don't have to be dependent on the pharmaceutical company. and on the healthcare system to manage your sickness anymore. Let's empower you to be healthy and to take back control of your health.

I think that's so critically important. And I do think that conversations and those interviews that you're having, I think that's one of the things— my takeaways from listening to the conversation going is that it's really bringing this slightly different perspective and bringing in a— I have had egg allergies since I was a child. Eggs are not a great option for me on any diet, even though They're so wonderful as a protein. Not a good idea for me. So how do I adapt? What do I do? And it has to be personal, but if we feel like everybody's diametrically opposed, then it feels like, I should just do nothing. And that's not a good way to go about it, right?

Exactly. And we do have to recognize that we are all individuals, and that's why I say there is no one right diet for everyone. And just because, you know, I personally do a carnivore diet, that doesn't mean that I tell all my patients that you have to do a carnivore diet. We You need to figure out what is the right situation for your scenario. And there are so many individualized factors that go into this. And that's why in the practice, we take the approach that we take. And I'm not out here just kind of putting everyone on the cookie-cutter program. We really do work individually. Me and my team work individually with each of those patients to figure out and adapt it to what works for you.

Yeah.

And it gets even more complex because what might be the right approach for you today may change over time as well. You know, when you—

That's very true with a lot of us women who might be having some hormonal shifts at some point.

Hormonal issues and just general health. You know, when you come to me sick to start with and you might be diabetic or pre-diabetic, that's gonna lead you down one route that of how to reverse that. But once we reverse that and we get you out of that condition, that might change your options as to, you know, what's going to be the best strategy for you. So it becomes interesting talking about this on a podcast because you do have to balance that. Right.

Because it's very generalized in that way.

Exactly. Yeah. You're talking to an audience and you obviously don't really personally know the people in the audience for the most part. And so you have to, at the same time, give a generalized message that also allows individuals to kind of figure out what What their takeaway should be.

So the telehealth, was that always planned into your business, or did that come out of the pandemic and then come out of having the podcast?

No, that was an intentional choice that I made to be telehealth only for various reasons. It was around the time of COVID you know, I launched the practice in April of 2020, coincidentally. So it was right, and that was beneficial because telehealth became so well accepted and widely utilized, it allowed me to do some things that may not have been possible even a year or two prior to that. But we've now kept it telehealth because it just works well for what we're doing. And I have a team that's scattered across the country. I have 2 health coaches, myself, nurse practitioner now that we've just added to the practice, and all the behind-the-scenes team that we are organization that has now grown to a pretty decent size, but completely all tele-remote working. And we do the podcast over Zoom. So that, I guess, qualifies as well.

That's right. It totally does. You're still virtual. I love that. Well, this is the thing that most people do think about their podcast. They think, they think that they're going to have direct connections to their listeners. You and I both know that once you get into the podcasting ecosystem, there's no way for you to connect to your subscribers. Apple and Spotify prevent that. So that doesn't happen. But I find that those that have a really personal message, people wanna come back and they wanna tell you their story. They want to reach out to you and say they really got a value from your guest or from your resources. Did you find that early on? And are you finding that more and more as now that you're really close to 150 episodes in?

Yeah, definitely. So, we've especially noticed this. We kind of were audio only at the beginning, and then we went to video and started a YouTube channel. And we see a lot of engagement on YouTube, a lot of comments. And now we even have team members that interact there and manage the comments. And yeah, it establishes that connection and we can direct people over to start interacting with our team directly, which I think is very helpful. And then quite honestly, it helps make the podcast better, getting that feedback. is very useful in figuring out different types of guests. And, you know, we've had guests being suggested to us and things like that. So another aspect of it that I find useful, and we've seen a lot of benefits from going to video and then not just posting the episodes to YouTube, but now we, you know, we pull out the clips and we use those as separate Shorts and Reels on social media. And doing all of that really helps to magnify the message as well.

Yes, I can see that that's really working for you. Well, before we go, what's next? You're going to do some things different in the next 150+? Are you going to do some things different? Is there something that's going to expand on the show? What are you going to do more of?

Yeah. So like I said, one of the kind of big milestones for us is starting to bring back guests for second conversations. And I'm excited for that. And then it really is just the continued growth, continuing to figure out new ways of getting this message out there. And expanding our reach, because ultimately all of this is done in service of the mission to keep people off the operating table, to prevent heart attacks. And so we're always exploring better and bigger ways of doing that.

Wonderful. Well, Dr. Ovadia, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for bringing Stay Off My Operating Table to the podcasting ecosystem.

We appreciate Thank you, Tracy.

You know, not every time I get a guest on do I think, oh, I'm totally gonna read their book. I'm totally gonna download that and I'm gonna read their book. But this is one. He built trust with me over this interview and conversation to the point that I just bought the book and sent it to my mom. And actually, the interesting part is I just found out last night that my dad's actually reading it first, that my mom hadn't even read it yet. She's still recovering. She's still doing her Her physical therapy and doing all of those things. So she hasn't read it yet, but my dad is. That says a lot. And you know what he asked me? He asked me, do I trust this guy whose book he's reading? And I said, well, I don't know yet. I haven't listened to all of his show, but he built trust with me on an interview. And here's what he had to say. And I told him a little bit about what you just heard. My dad said, oh, okay, I'm gonna go check out his podcast now. So now that he read the book, he's gonna check out the podcast. And I think hearing the voice, hearing Dr. Avidya's voice, hearing what he has to say, hearing how much passion he has and what he believes in, it's going to be really valuable to making that transfer to someone saying, I read this and I hear it, but now am I going to do it? Do I trust enough to do it? So the power of combining your podcast and your book is really strong and really important. Making sure that you're cross-marketing both those things Is essential because if when your book, you're not referencing the fact that you have a podcast and that you're gonna provide updated information, so if they wanna hear the latest, they should come to your show. I think that's a critical miss for a lot of authors. And Dr. Ovadia is not doing that, right? He's really got that model of making the two work together. It's part of his marketing model. It's part of how he nurtures his community. It's about what he shares with his membership. And really important for him to be able to combine the both and make sure that as he's building trust on his podcast, he's letting them know he does have this book, this resource for them that they could highlight, that they could write down, that they could share with others. Maybe their family and friends are not podcast listeners. My dad certainly isn't, at least not without a serious recommendation, right? So making sure that you do that is essential to I think, any kind of message that you're really passionate about getting out. So I'm so glad Dr. Avedia came on the show. I'm so glad I have a copy now of Stay Off My Operating Table and have put it in my podcast playlist. I have not gotten through very many, I have to admit that, but my day job is a little busy listening to podcasts, so I don't get them through, through them quite as fast. And I'm glad that it's actually reaching out to the people who could use it the most, my parents. So if you've got anyone in your life Who needs to stay off a heart doctor's operating table, go listen to this podcast, check it out, and really listen to the advice that Dr. Avadia gave us today about using the podcast to build that trust and how important it is for you to take your role seriously when you're presenting serious advice that is going to affect people's health and wellness, that you take that job of vetting that information very seriously. So go listen to Stay Off My Operating Table and come back next week. As we talk to more podcasters in more areas that might be more relevant to your business and your podcasting niche right here on The Binge Factor.

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