July 26, 2022 • 39 mins
Today, host Louis Carr speaks with Dr. William D. Yates, MD, premier hair loss doctor and hair replacement surgeon in Chicago.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Louis cart host of the Blueprint Connect podcast. The
Blueprint Connect podcast is an extension of the Blueprint Men
Something where we have consistently given men a prescriptions book
not just for themselves, but also for their families and
their communities. During these podcasts, we will educate and motivate
our listeners about entrepreneurship, careers, finances, health and wellness and relationship.
(00:29):
And on today's episode, Dr William Yates, sergeant hair expert,
hair scientists and a great friend of mine with us today.
Welcome Dr Yates. Thank you my pleasure as always very good.
Dr Yates. You grew up in Chicago. You went to
(00:51):
Northwestern University and got your b A. Then you went
on uh, stayed on there and got your m d. Uh.
Then you went to Washington d C. Howard University Hospital
and got your surgical internship there, then your general surgeon
(01:12):
surgery residence at Howard University Hospital, and then your fellowship
in Critical Care Trauma at the University of Maryland. So
you've got a lot of education behind your doctor Yates, Yes,
I do. When actually, when you hear about it and
you're doing it doesn't seem like that much. But now
(01:33):
that you mentioned it, and I'm thinking back, thus were
a lot of years, man, you know, so so, Dr Yates,
when did you decide that you wanted to go into
the medical field. Was it in high school? Was it
in college? When did you sort of make that decision? Um, well,
it started early in my life when my mom was
(01:55):
a public school teacher and she would always look at
my hands and say, I had long, skinny hands. And
she watched a general hospital a lot. And this was
in the early sixties, and of course there were no
black doctors, you know, on the general hospital or anywhere.
And my middle names Roy, and she would say, Roy,
you have such pretty hands, you should be a surgeon.
(02:16):
And you know, when you're a little kid, you're like, yeah, sure,
I'd rather, you know, hit a baseball or something like that.
And then I guess the event that was really the
changing moment. She died when I was a freshman in
high school at Kinwood from cancer kind of just uh,
no one knew she was sick, and she was a
public school teacher. She went home in June said she
(02:38):
was tired. She got admitted to the hospital when she
died in August. So that next year, my sophomore year.
I had two choices. Either to do like you know
a lot of people would is rebel and be bad
and be mad at the world, or not let her
life go in vain because she would have wanted me
to do better. So I took the second route and
(02:58):
said I wanted to be a doctor, or for that reason,
that other kids wouldn't lose a parent like I did.
So that really I made the decision when I was
a sophomore in high school. Wow, Wow, that's that that
that that's amazing. And did you have anyone to sort
of help you design that path to becoming a doctor?
Did you kind of figure that out on your own? Well?
(03:21):
I had two people that really kind of helped me
do it. One was my family practitioner. His name is
Walter McFarlane, and he was like the Jeffersons, you know
how black people back then. I grew up in Lake Meadows,
as you know, and he lived in pill Hill and
we would go to his house and I'd be like,
oh my god, he had a pool at Goldfish. You know,
(03:42):
they had you know fans, they ate TV dinners and
you know, back then, my parents are not gonna let
us eat TV. Dinners anyway. But he was a family practitioner,
and he also caught me roy and said, you know,
you should be a doctor. And then he kind of
mentored me in that way. And I had a good
friend who was a couple of years ahead of me
in school named Glenn Gardner, and he went to Saint
(04:04):
Ignatious and he was such a good student. His family's
actually the people beside behind soft Sheen and those hair products,
the Gardener family. He got in a six year med
program at Northwestern where it cut off two years of
medical school and they accepted you to medical school from
high school. And so he said, Bill, you can do this.
(04:25):
I got in it. You know, just study hard, you
can do it. So basically I followed Glenn Gardner's path
all the way to med school. Wow. So Dr Yates
sounds like he was a way maker and his sorts,
No question. He he still is. He's a prominent anesthesiologist
(04:46):
in uh oak Brook. But he's kind of been my
personal mentor that I've always looked up to. And how
did you decide on Northwestern? Um? I was in a hurry,
and he told me that you could get you know,
the medical school cut two years off and get accepted immediately,
(05:07):
and if it was good enough for him, it was
good enough for me. I applied to Howard as well,
and a couple of other schools, but Northwestern had a
lot of prestige, It had a good name, and I
just put my mind to it that I was going
to get in that accelerated program and you know, be
a doctor. And in that program did you decide her
(05:28):
was going to be the thing? At that moment? What
type of doctor were you really sort of gearing towards.
Like most doctors when you go in, you're always thinking something.
Unless you've been exposed to medicine. Like a lot of
my classmates whose parents are doctors, they kind of have
a head start on the whole game. They know they're
going to be a neurosurgeon, optimologists, so forth, and so on.
(05:50):
Everyone else is just a guess. You know, you think
you want to be a family practitioner. I thought I
wanted to be a cancer doctor because my mom passed,
and I ended up actually being a trauma doctor. Uh
as a surgeon dealing with basically all the people gang violence,
the shootings and stabbings in Washington, d C. And St.
(06:13):
Louis that's what I ended up doing, being a trauma surgeon.
And I see you, surgeon, But it didn't start that way.
I wanted to be a family doctor or a cancer doctor. Um,
that's how it started. So you went from trauma and
did you immediately go to hair or were there some
steps in between? There? There weren't many. No, it wasn't
(06:34):
many steps. I did trauma for about fifteen years, and
like we were talking before the program, I was losing
my hair since I was a senior in high school.
Like if I look back at my high school yearbook,
I can see little inklings of my hairline moving back.
I had a hair transplant when I was a trauma surgeon.
I was thirty eight years old, and it changed my life.
(06:57):
I had it done by a gentleman who's a well
known hair surgeon, and I did it on a whim.
I was watching a commercial at two am and saw
this guy and I went there the next week. It worked.
It helped myself image. And you never know after you
have these procedures, because you start doing better. You don't
(07:17):
know is it internal because you feel better about yourself
and you're presenting yourself in a different way, or is
it external. Other people are seeing you differently and treating
you different or is it some combination. But I'll say this.
After I had a hair transplant, it just seemed everything
was easier, you know, just in society. Socially, everything was easier.
(07:39):
So I switched and became a hair transplant physician in
two thousand five. So I've been doing it now, you know,
several years. So doctors, why do some people you said,
you start losing your hair? And and as a senior
in high school, why do some people lose their hair early?
And then I got some friends who are old as me,
(08:01):
and they got a head full of head, don't look
like they've ever lost the strand Okay, well, the news
that they male pattern baldness and female pattern baldness. It's
it's the great equalizer among men and women because it's
mainly genetic. The minute you're conceived, Um, the genetic process
(08:22):
has already dictated a blueprint for when you'll lose your hair,
How fast, how slow, Um, it's pretty much out of
your hands. So most hair loss is genetic, whether it's
in men or women, and whether it's going to be
in your twenties, thirties, forties, or fifty. That's also in
the preconceived blueprint. You know, you don't know it, but
(08:45):
it's nothing you can control. Is there something people could
do to slow it down at least? Or is it?
It is what it is? Um, it is what it is.
And the footnote to that is there are some medications
that men can take to block the balding hormone. One
is called propitia. It's a pill you have to take
(09:05):
every day, and you have to take that, uh, foreseeably
for the rest of your life. And there are side effects,
like sexual side effects. So if you tell somebody, hey,
this might help you save your hair, but you know
the sex thing might not be so well, I think
they right some people, well, you know some people maybe
(09:26):
they won't even get to that point without hair. So
you gotta make that decision. You know, that's a personal choice.
So in two thousand five, you you get into the
hair business. Yes, uh, did you start your own business
at that time? And where you're working for somebody else? No,
I was working for a big, big group called Bosley
(09:46):
and people probably you know, put more from our vantage.
You're more familiar with the Bossley commercials, with the white
gentleman with the white hair and the guys with no
hair looking sad, and then they have hair and they're
drinking a glass the wine with two nice ladies. You know,
they were known for those type of commercials, you know
when we were growing up, and I would watch those
(10:08):
commercials and I didn't see hardly one black person on them,
but I felt comfort that bow wow, if I lose
my hair, I can call Dr Bosley and he can
help me. So I started to work for them under
their corporate structure. And is that the who did your
hair transplant? Uh? No, well, actually one of the doctors
from Bosley has I've had more than one hair transplant. Um.
(10:32):
One of the doctors, they're they're all very well trained. Yes,
I would trust them with my hair. One of them did. Yes, okay,
And you are the first African American I've ever met
to sort of do this sort of work. Is it
common for people of color to be in this business
or not? No? It's uh, you know, I just saw
(10:55):
a statistic over the weekend where the doctors in the
US maybe five percent or black. I would say maybe
point five percent. Are people of any color in this field.
It's becoming a lot more. But it's still mainly, you know,
ruled by elderly white men. I'm not gonna even say
young white man, elderly white man. And is that because
(11:18):
we are not familiar with the practice, or is it
that it's economically not feasible for us to go through
all of the training and everything. Why are there numbers
so low? Because it's kind of a the path to
get here is not something that's straightforward, like you know, say,
(11:38):
if you just want to be a regular surgeon, brain surgeon,
heart surgeon, whatever that pack. I mean, that track is
pretty much laid out for you to be a hair surgeon.
Since you don't do your work in the hospital, there's
really no track for somebody really to teach you how
to do it and kind of uncover behind the wizard's
curtain really how to do it. There's really no one
(12:00):
to do it, so you have to seek that out
yourself or get hired by these big groups. And it's
not many of these groups around, so it's it's really
hard for you to dictate your fate as you would
just being another type of doctor. It's difficult. The bar
to entry is difficult. Put it like that, And and
(12:21):
is that changing as time goes on. Do you see
that improving changing in some way that more people who
look like us get into that feel, Yeah, it's changing
a lot. I know a lot of females that do
black you know, well trained doctors that do what I
do um, because one we just weren't aware that this
(12:44):
even existed. And to you know, doing African American hair
is a whole another animal than doing Caucasian hair. And
I can tell you now that I'd be more inclined
to go to an African American doctor because these new
one says, they're just something that if you know them
from growing up and makes your life a lot easier
(13:06):
as being a physician to treat these disease processes. So
I think as more people see me and see doctors
like me doing it, um, they start asking questions and
call me, and you know, I'll help do whatever I
can to make it a reality for them. So I
know you serve and all types of clients. Tell us
(13:26):
what are some of the primary differences in doing working
on African Americans who are losing their air and working
on white individuals who are losing their hair. What are
some of the primary challenges and differences I guess the
main difference is the type the hair follicle, and our
hair follicle is very curly and you can't even see
(13:49):
under the skin how this curliness continues like a corkscrewp
So it's very easy to injure when you remove those
follicles because the hair transplant is really nothing like farming.
I mean, it's just like farming, like taking plants, I say,
from the backyard, I mean the back of your head
and the sides and moving it to the top. So
when you remove the hair, you have to make sure
(14:11):
you don't injure the hair. And this is the problem
that it takes a lot of years to be able
to get African American hair out correctly without injuring it
to transplant it to the front. And if you don't
appreciate those nuances, there'll be problems. And it kind of
hurts my heart in that because I see a lot
of black people, you know, online and so forth, half
(14:35):
hair transplanted places who boast to be the best in
African American hair. These people aren't African American whatsoever, and
I think the results are marginal. You know, I'm not
gonna say that, but it it's disappointing that our own
race in two thousand twenty two is not smart enough
to understand that there might be a difference, you know.
(15:00):
So I'd say the toughest difference is just how the
hair is situated in the scalp and not injuring it.
And then the other difference is that we develop something
like a lot of women develop in the edges that
it's called traction alopecia and scarring alopecia. If you're not
familiar with those disease processes and just start transplanting them,
(15:22):
you won't have the best results. So they're pretty much
two sets of rules for transplanting. You have to be
aware afrocentric patients and then others Caucasian hair. Usually it's
very straightforward. It's a you know, straight up and down
hair follicle. Just make sure the scalp is healthy and
it'll grow. We'll be right back with more of my
(15:48):
interview after this quick break. No, Dr. You also have
other procedures that you offer, uh two clients that may
not want to have a transplant. Talk about some of
those other procedures. Sure, well, the one I think that
(16:11):
is a magic trick that's called it's called scout micro pigmentation.
So this is where you see it a lot in guys.
If it's done right, it's kind of like I'm looking
at myself here, like you can see on my beer,
like five o'clock shadow. It creates five o'clock shadow on
your scalt. So if you're losing hair and don't have
enough to do a transplant, you can give that illusion,
(16:33):
you know, like you you're just buzzed your head, kind
of like how Vin Diesel's hair used to look. You know,
guys can tell who's bald and who just buzzes their hair.
You know, a lot of guys think they're fooling somebody
when they they'll say they're not bald. But I mean
guys who are who are not bald, they never take
(16:54):
a bick and go to their head. They leave enough
to let you know that this is a choice. Okay,
I got hair. So we create that image on the scalp.
That's called micro pigmentation. It's a it's a beautiful thing.
Done right, it looks beautiful. We do that all the time.
The other things we do for people who don't want
to hair transplant p RP. These are all like new
(17:15):
treatments where we take you know, maybe twenty to thirty
ccs of your blood, which is less than you know,
like a dixie cupful, and in your blood their growth factors.
We separate, get these growth factors out and reinject them
into your scalp. These growth factors theoretically go to the
hair follicle that's not making good hair and re energizes
(17:39):
that hair follicle to produce better hair. So that's been
working very well for us. So we do a lot
of prp UM. We do a lot of micro needling.
Micro Needling is basically making tiny little um incisions in
the scalp that you can't see, and it creates micro
injury and the body secretes growth factors and collagen again
(18:03):
to stimulate the hair that was weakened to grow. So
those are probably the most famous things that we do
that I think works the best. There's something new that's
called exosomes that I'll just mentioned here. It's like everybody's
talking about stem cells and things like that. Exo zone
therapy is in that line of stem cells where we
(18:24):
inject that into the scalp as well, and that works
well too. So those are the main things that we
do for hair that aren't surgery um and they all
work well. Like if somebody comes in and they're losing
their hair and they want to try pr p X
zome's great, let's do it, you know, but we need
to do something. The problem with most people they're in denial.
(18:46):
You know, they're just thinking that they got they have
more hair than they do. And the rule is usually
it takes you to lose of your natural hair before
your I can tell that you've lost hair, so you're
already thirty down. Some people say, so when you can
start to tell your thinning, you've lost quite a bit
(19:07):
of hair. So Dr Yates, if you're in your early
twenties and you notice you start to lose your hair,
what would your advice be to a man or woman
who are losing the hair in the early twenties, I
would see a dermatologist first, because there are some things
other than just the genetics, which is going to be
(19:29):
the case of the case, but there's five percent of
the time there's different medical illnesses, different medications. Uh, sometimes
some temporary things can cause hair loss, like you know,
accelerated stress or their autoimmune diseases. Like everybody's seeing somebody
with these patches of loss on their head. That's called
(19:49):
alopecia areata. There's some things that don't have to end
up with you ending up being balved. They can be
treated with medications or you know, or stopping the medication
you're on. So the first person you would go to
would be a family doctor, then to a dermatologist. People
usually don't see me until they've done those things and
(20:09):
their doctor just says, hey, you know, as we said earlier,
it is what it is. And then they come to
me to see, well, it is what it is. What
can we do with that? You know that someone in
their forties or fifties, what is your advice to them?
Forties and fifties, It's gonna be a lot easier to
figure out what's going on with them. Most of the time,
forties and fifties, they will come see me first because
(20:32):
it's usually, you know, not going to be something that
popped out of the blue. It's gradual. They have the
typical pattern for genetic hair loss um. So I can
make those diagnoses myself and then we decide, you know
what we're gonna do. We're gonna do non surgical things.
Am I going to send you to a dermatologist or
are we gonna go straight to a hairdress plant. It
(20:53):
just depends on what the circumstances are. Um, but you
should see somebody like going to the inn or net.
And you know, hair loss is a billion dollar industry.
And if all those things on TV, if they worked,
I wouldn't have a job number one. And I can
tell you I don't know any of those things that
I see on TV all the time that are worth
(21:15):
a nickel, you know, And it's all marketing, and it's
just a waste of time. And when you lose your hair,
you're working against the clock. It's not like you have infinity,
you know. So I would get off the internet and
go see somebody who knows what they're talking about, so
you know what's going on and documents you you have
your own products. Also, how did you decide that you
(21:37):
wanted to create your own shampoos, conditioners and things like that?
How did you decide you wanted to get into that business. Well,
people always would come to me and say, well, what
shampoo did I recommend? So forth and so on. So
I started looking into shampoo's what makes good ones bad ones?
So I just wanted to simplify my life and make
(21:58):
it so that the shampoo is one didn't cause any harm,
scientifically had something in it that can actually grow hair,
which mind do um and actually worked and did something
that you could see or feel a difference after the
first use. UM. So I developed a line with natural
(22:19):
ingredients that does one does two things. We have a
thickening line of hair shampoos and conditioners, and we have
a hydrating line because we want you to switch back
and forth between thicking, thickening and hydrating. And then we
also have what's called apple cider vinegar shampoo, and that's
kind of the reset button. And you know everybody puts,
you know, grease or whatever on their hair and oils,
(22:42):
and this apple cider vinegar restores the scalt pH back
to normal, just like a reset button on your computer.
And then the other thing I have is hair fibers,
which I think are the best in the world where
you just sprinkle. I use them every day. Um. You
just sprinkle them on your hair um and it makes
your hair instantly thicker, and it's nothing but carratin. So
(23:04):
it washes out with shampoo. If it rains, it doesn't
come out. People always telling me, well, if somebody touches it,
will it come out? But I mean, in real life,
how many people in the last year have touched your hair?
I don't know anybody who's touch mind. People don't touch
your hair, you know when you get to be thirty.
But people always ask me that. They're like, what if
people touch your hair? I'm like, who touches your hair? Um?
(23:27):
But even if they did, it doesn't come out. Um.
I think the fibers like here, I'm just gonna show
you here. These are fibers, and this is an atomizer
and it kind of shoots out these little carratin fibers.
It's kind of hard to see. Let me just show
you another one right quick that here's a jar and
(23:50):
you would apply I don't know. You can kind of
see the black powder coming down like like this, you know,
and then just rub it into your hair and your
hair sticker. And when I washed my hair comes out.
Do I wash my hair every day? No? Um, that's
always another question often should you wash your hair? Everybody's different. Uh,
(24:10):
you wash it when it's dirty, you know. Um. And
African Americans in general don't make the oil they Caucasians do,
so we really should not be washing out hair every day.
So once a week I washed my hair, you know,
and start all over again, so dry. It's what is
stickening shampoo? Does it actually make your hair thicker or
(24:32):
the hair fiber witer? What is that? I see it
on shampoo's or something like Yeah, well, usually the rule
is with a thickening shampoo. Um, when you were little,
did you ever eat a ballpark, Frank? You know how
they say plump Sweeney cook it start? You know, it's
kind of the same thing as the ballpark, Frank. And
that the hair shaft has little openings. And there's what
(24:54):
we call a humectin, which is just a substance which
goes in the hair shaft helps the hair shaft absor
or water, so your hair looks plumper. Your hair actually
in reality is it thicker. No, but it looks and
feels thicker because your hair is allowed the shaft absorbs
some water, so it looks and feels thicker. So that's
(25:15):
usually how thickening shampoos work. Do they organically thicken your hair? No?
You know, to make your hair thicker organically you have
to do some' something under the soil, under the scalp
to make it thicker. But hair dressings are nothing more
than I say, like waxing your cards, working on the outside,
(25:36):
not where the engine is, you know, So that's usually
how they work. We'll be right back with more of
my interview after this quick break. So we're gonna make
a U turn right here. Dr Yates. You're also in
(25:59):
the secure of the business, yes, So tell us how
you went from hair to security. Well, I was always
kind of in the security business in the back of
my mind. Okay, that was a trauma surgeon because in
the emergency departments I would see so many people come
in with pretty dangerous situations where you know, people get
(26:22):
shot and they come in with guns, so forth and
so on. So I said, why aren't there metal detectors
in the hospitals. You know, why aren't there metal detectors
in the schools. Just think of all these shootings at
the schools. If they had metal detectors one, it would
be a deterrent all these kids. You know, you can't
wake up and say, well, you know, I'm gonna blow
(26:42):
up the school or do this knowing you've got metal detectors.
Even though a lot of people reject to how they look.
So in my mind, I said, there's got to be
a simple solution. So I started working with the manufacturing
company to manufacture metal detection equipment that looked more streamline
than what we were used to having that actually will
(27:04):
pick up whether you have a gun or knife, but
can tell the difference between that and a computer and
a phone, so it doesn't stop everybody because and I
think this equipment is going to be in every place
because the world is just too dangerous. So that was
basically my parlay over to the security business was because
I was sick and tired of nobody doing anything about
(27:25):
gun violence and it's preventable, or at least there should
be some deterrent you. People just shouldn't be able to
walk in places without thinking twice about it and just
open fire. So that's how it started, and that's progressed
to more X ray equipment. UM I sell because I
believe in this COVID prevention, prevention and what's something called
(27:47):
air ionization because that disables the COVID virus better than
a Hepper filter to help America get back to work.
But the metal detection is dear to my heart because
I think it's a simple solution. Think all schools should
have it, and I don't think there should even be
any argument against it. So so Dr Gates, what year
(28:08):
did you get into the security business? Two thousand seventeen. Wow,
so you've been in that business about five years now, right,
So Dr Gates always talk about this moment when I
heard Hill Harper talk about options, the actor Hill Harper
talk about options. And Hill Harper graduated, uh three times
(28:32):
from Harvard University, right, And as he says, he has
a job that you don't even need a high school
diploma for, but the degrees gave him options. Hearing all
the things that you're doing, talk about options to our audience,
you what not just happy and and satisfied being in
the hair business. You also wanted to do something else.
(28:55):
What is that in a person's mind that talks and
wants to give them additional options? Well, as you said,
first of all, options are everything, and everyone has to
understand in life. And you you know, I have four
kids and when they were growing up, they would always say,
I want to be a rapper, I want to shoot balls,
(29:17):
I want to do this, I want to do that.
But the reality of black people and for four hundred
years we weren't allowed to read. We have to read,
we have to get an education. I don't care what
you do. And I'd always tell my kids, and it
might sound flip it, but I would tell them, get
as many letters behind your name and the shortest amount
of time as you can and um, just because of options. UM.
(29:43):
And a lot of people I've seen in business that
are super you know, super smart and don't have any degrees,
but they get pigeonholed and they can't move forward, especially
with African Americans, because unfortunately I found throughout my life,
instead of p ful trying to make sure you get
to the highest place you can, they're always looking for
(30:05):
reasons to make sure that maybe there's somebody else out
there instead of you. So you always have to have
stack your deck twice as thick as anyone else. And
that's not bad because everything you learn makes you better.
And the reason that I've taken upon myself to do
these different projects because as you get older and wiser,
(30:28):
you become less afraid of failure, You become less afraid
of what the person next to you is gonna say
about you, and you see other people doing things that
you know you think, oh I could have done that,
this guy did that or she did that? What? And
then you sit down and think, well, I gotta answer
to this. Um, I'm gonna do it. And when you
(30:50):
understand that, and it took me to us at least
forty to understand that that, you know, your thoughts are
just as valuable as anybody else. Now the problem comes in,
and people don't realize is access to capital. Because everybody
has an idea of something to do. The trick is
how do you take that idea and make it happen
(31:14):
number one and number two? Monetize from that idea and
and don't get your ideas stolen along the way. But
to answer your question, I guess is the older I
get and the more people I meet, you know, you
become very comfortable in your your skin, expressing yourself and
letting people know the skills you have. I mean, I
(31:35):
have so many ideas. I mean sometimes it gets ridiculous
because you're thinking, oh my god, you know and I
that's smart And I'm being funny now, but I'm just
saying that there's just so many things out there that
when you think about, you could contribute to. You know,
so parlaying with h Hill and yourself. And uh, I
guess Reginald Lewis uh who wrote a book years ago
(31:58):
when I was, you know, young girl, you know, says
why do white guys have all the fun um? And
I would always say to my kids, I'm like, why
these white people smiling so much? And you know, going
we now when you're on vacation, why they are? You know?
And then I realized, shoot, you get all this. You're
happy too, and as as well as your book, you
know the secrets of corporate strategy. Once you only takes once,
(32:22):
once you see behind the Wizard's curtain and you're paying attention,
you'll be unstoppable, you know. And I saw behind the
wizard could once you understand that most of this stuff
you see out here with other people and I'm not
talking about black people now that it's all smoke and mirrors,
it's incestual, and you know it's Uh, they're very mediocre
(32:43):
at best, but yet they've achieved things that I can't
even dream of. You know, Once you see that and
understand it, then you're unstoppable. So well, doctor Gates. We
here at the way Maker community, we talked about every
successful person has had multiple for waymakers in their life.
You talked about the doctor who sort of put you
(33:04):
on a path to becoming a doctor. What other way
makers have you had in your life that have sort
of stepped in intentionally and made a turn left or
right to help you. Well, we'll start with the easy ones.
My grandmother was a school teacher from Mississippi who, um,
every day when I come home, she tell me one
thing that Roy, get your lesson. And she asked me
(33:26):
did I get my lesson? And I'd be like, I
get so sick of him, Like, yeah, I got my lesson,
you know. But I would tell my kids that every
day did you get your lessons? That you always have
to get your lessons. So my grandmother who's from you know, uh,
Piny Woods, Mississippi and was a school teacher there. I mean,
I tell people, now, get your lesson. We got one
(33:47):
thing to do. Put down the ball, get your lesson.
Um my family doctor Dr McFarlane, of course, my good
friend h. Glenn Gardner, who is still my good friend.
And then we move up the ladder to one of
the best doctor I've ever met my life, Dr Losalafa,
who was chairman of surgery at Howard University for several years.
(34:07):
He spoke eight languages, he played tennis, he lived all
around life. He just wasn't you know what you think
of a guy, you know, with a microscope and so forth.
He was almost a surrogate father. And and another person
Dr Leslie Bond, who was my mentor in St. Louis
when I went to St. Louis. He got me on
(34:28):
a lot of boards and I became an examiner for
the Board of Surgery because of him. He recognized talent
in me and he kind of mentored me. And uh,
he's passed away, but he's one of the best men
in my life. And I wouldn't be uh complete if
not saying. You know my dad as well. And my
dad said one thing to me when I was in
high school that has resonated every said, Roy, anything a
(34:50):
lot of people can do in life. It's not that hard.
And I would tell that to my kids too, meaning
that as he didn't say it was easy. But you know,
if a lot of pople are doctors, which they are,
a lot of people think I can't be a doctor,
Like why not? You know, of course you can be
a doctor, you know, is it easy. No, but you
can be a doctor, you know, now being an astronaut.
(35:12):
Like one of my kids would say, well, what about
an astronaut? Because my kids are like they always got
to say something. I would say, well, probably being an
astronaut's not hard either, but you know, it's still one
of those professions people don't know about. But you know,
so that's those are probably and my mom, you know,
of course it's getting like the Academy Awards. I gotta
(35:33):
keep going because I don't want somebody to see them
and say that grateful blah blah blah, I did this.
But you know, if I'm missing anybody, you know, I'm
gonna say I'm sorry. You know, but those are the
ones who I quote from their playbook the most. Those people.
Final question. Dr Yates someone who's in high school, maybe
(35:57):
in college right now, listening to this and said, I
want to be like that guy. I want to get
into the hair business. It's not that many black people
doing it. How do they do that? Give them three
or four things they can do to start that journey. Okay, well,
the first, of course, to be a doctor. Um. You
know you've got to be a doctor to do it. Um.
(36:19):
Number two. I would do a residency. I just wouldn't
jump into it right for medical squad. Either become a
dermatologist or get something behind your back as something else,
just internal medicine. I'll take three or four years. Once
that is done, and you sure you want to be
a hair doctor, you can look under this Society of
(36:40):
hair Surgeons and they have pictures of everybody. Or you
can just google African American hair transplant surgeons and find
one of them, call them and they'll mentor you of
what you should do. Because what you should do and
I'm mentoring a couple of doctors with me right now.
You should come visit with a doctor, have him or
(37:01):
her show you how to do the procedure, how the
business works, how to do good work, how to handle
you know, problem patients, problem work. And then it's a business,
so you have to learn how to market. UM. So
we do a lot of I think great marketing. Of course,
social media is a given um. But the best thing
to do would be to go seek out the doctor,
(37:24):
and African American doctor who is doing well and I
am I know that person will definitely mentor you because
they'll be glad to know that there are other people
around to carry the torch. But as far as doing
other things or even joining groups like I did with
Bosley and things like that, I would kind of stay
(37:45):
away from that if I were you, because that's a
corporate structure, and as smart as those corporations are, they
don't have your best interests at heart, because how could they,
because they have to have their best deustiness at heart.
So you want to go with a person that you
can develop a relationship with, That's what I would say.
And Dr h final thing. People who want to get
(38:07):
your services and want to get in touch with you,
how do they do that? Um? Easy enough. If you
just google Bill Yates UM Chicago, you'll find me UM.
Dr Yates Hair Science. We do a lot of YouTube videos.
Dr Yates YouTube videos were on Instagram, Facebook, you name it.
I guess they make me do TikTok's from here from
(38:28):
time to time. So I do TikTok's UM. But I'm
trying not to be a clown because I see a
lot of doctors on there, and as we know, a
lot of people can get away with stuff that you
and I can't. So I kind of walk a fine
line with you know, you know, clowning around with the
medicine thing, but I do do TikTok's yes. Well, Dr Yates, UH,
(38:53):
this has been an amazing uh interview and clearly you
have one of those careers and professions that are so
Thank you so much. M.
I'm Louis cart host of the Blueprint Connect podcast. The
Blueprint Connect podcast is an extension of the Blueprint Men
Something where we have consistently given men a prescriptions book
not just for themselves, but also for their families and
their communities. During these podcasts, we will educate and motivate
our listeners about entrepreneurship, careers, finances, health and wellness and relationship.
(00:29):
And on today's episode, Dr William Yates, sergeant hair expert,
hair scientists and a great friend of mine with us today.
Welcome Dr Yates. Thank you my pleasure as always very good.
Dr Yates. You grew up in Chicago. You went to
(00:51):
Northwestern University and got your b A. Then you went
on uh, stayed on there and got your m d. Uh.
Then you went to Washington d C. Howard University Hospital
and got your surgical internship there, then your general surgeon
(01:12):
surgery residence at Howard University Hospital, and then your fellowship
in Critical Care Trauma at the University of Maryland. So
you've got a lot of education behind your doctor Yates, Yes,
I do. When actually, when you hear about it and
you're doing it doesn't seem like that much. But now
(01:33):
that you mentioned it, and I'm thinking back, thus were
a lot of years, man, you know, so so, Dr Yates,
when did you decide that you wanted to go into
the medical field. Was it in high school? Was it
in college? When did you sort of make that decision? Um, well,
it started early in my life when my mom was
(01:55):
a public school teacher and she would always look at
my hands and say, I had long, skinny hands. And
she watched a general hospital a lot. And this was
in the early sixties, and of course there were no
black doctors, you know, on the general hospital or anywhere.
And my middle names Roy, and she would say, Roy,
you have such pretty hands, you should be a surgeon.
(02:16):
And you know, when you're a little kid, you're like, yeah, sure,
I'd rather, you know, hit a baseball or something like that.
And then I guess the event that was really the
changing moment. She died when I was a freshman in
high school at Kinwood from cancer kind of just uh,
no one knew she was sick, and she was a
public school teacher. She went home in June said she
(02:38):
was tired. She got admitted to the hospital when she
died in August. So that next year, my sophomore year.
I had two choices. Either to do like you know
a lot of people would is rebel and be bad
and be mad at the world, or not let her
life go in vain because she would have wanted me
to do better. So I took the second route and
(02:58):
said I wanted to be a doctor, or for that reason,
that other kids wouldn't lose a parent like I did.
So that really I made the decision when I was
a sophomore in high school. Wow, Wow, that's that that
that that's amazing. And did you have anyone to sort
of help you design that path to becoming a doctor?
Did you kind of figure that out on your own? Well?
(03:21):
I had two people that really kind of helped me
do it. One was my family practitioner. His name is
Walter McFarlane, and he was like the Jeffersons, you know
how black people back then. I grew up in Lake Meadows,
as you know, and he lived in pill Hill and
we would go to his house and I'd be like,
oh my god, he had a pool at Goldfish. You know,
(03:42):
they had you know fans, they ate TV dinners and
you know, back then, my parents are not gonna let
us eat TV. Dinners anyway. But he was a family practitioner,
and he also caught me roy and said, you know,
you should be a doctor. And then he kind of
mentored me in that way. And I had a good
friend who was a couple of years ahead of me
in school named Glenn Gardner, and he went to Saint
(04:04):
Ignatious and he was such a good student. His family's
actually the people beside behind soft Sheen and those hair products,
the Gardener family. He got in a six year med
program at Northwestern where it cut off two years of
medical school and they accepted you to medical school from
high school. And so he said, Bill, you can do this.
(04:25):
I got in it. You know, just study hard, you
can do it. So basically I followed Glenn Gardner's path
all the way to med school. Wow. So Dr Yates
sounds like he was a way maker and his sorts,
No question. He he still is. He's a prominent anesthesiologist
(04:46):
in uh oak Brook. But he's kind of been my
personal mentor that I've always looked up to. And how
did you decide on Northwestern? Um? I was in a hurry,
and he told me that you could get you know,
the medical school cut two years off and get accepted immediately,
(05:07):
and if it was good enough for him, it was
good enough for me. I applied to Howard as well,
and a couple of other schools, but Northwestern had a
lot of prestige, It had a good name, and I
just put my mind to it that I was going
to get in that accelerated program and you know, be
a doctor. And in that program did you decide her
(05:28):
was going to be the thing? At that moment? What
type of doctor were you really sort of gearing towards.
Like most doctors when you go in, you're always thinking something.
Unless you've been exposed to medicine. Like a lot of
my classmates whose parents are doctors, they kind of have
a head start on the whole game. They know they're
going to be a neurosurgeon, optimologists, so forth, and so on.
(05:50):
Everyone else is just a guess. You know, you think
you want to be a family practitioner. I thought I
wanted to be a cancer doctor because my mom passed,
and I ended up actually being a trauma doctor. Uh
as a surgeon dealing with basically all the people gang violence,
the shootings and stabbings in Washington, d C. And St.
(06:13):
Louis that's what I ended up doing, being a trauma surgeon.
And I see you, surgeon, But it didn't start that way.
I wanted to be a family doctor or a cancer doctor. Um,
that's how it started. So you went from trauma and
did you immediately go to hair or were there some
steps in between? There? There weren't many. No, it wasn't
(06:34):
many steps. I did trauma for about fifteen years, and
like we were talking before the program, I was losing
my hair since I was a senior in high school.
Like if I look back at my high school yearbook,
I can see little inklings of my hairline moving back.
I had a hair transplant when I was a trauma surgeon.
I was thirty eight years old, and it changed my life.
(06:57):
I had it done by a gentleman who's a well
known hair surgeon, and I did it on a whim.
I was watching a commercial at two am and saw
this guy and I went there the next week. It worked.
It helped myself image. And you never know after you
have these procedures, because you start doing better. You don't
(07:17):
know is it internal because you feel better about yourself
and you're presenting yourself in a different way, or is
it external. Other people are seeing you differently and treating
you different or is it some combination. But I'll say this.
After I had a hair transplant, it just seemed everything
was easier, you know, just in society. Socially, everything was easier.
(07:39):
So I switched and became a hair transplant physician in
two thousand five. So I've been doing it now, you know,
several years. So doctors, why do some people you said,
you start losing your hair? And and as a senior
in high school, why do some people lose their hair early?
And then I got some friends who are old as me,
(08:01):
and they got a head full of head, don't look
like they've ever lost the strand Okay, well, the news
that they male pattern baldness and female pattern baldness. It's
it's the great equalizer among men and women because it's
mainly genetic. The minute you're conceived, Um, the genetic process
(08:22):
has already dictated a blueprint for when you'll lose your hair,
How fast, how slow, Um, it's pretty much out of
your hands. So most hair loss is genetic, whether it's
in men or women, and whether it's going to be
in your twenties, thirties, forties, or fifty. That's also in
the preconceived blueprint. You know, you don't know it, but
(08:45):
it's nothing you can control. Is there something people could
do to slow it down at least? Or is it?
It is what it is? Um, it is what it is.
And the footnote to that is there are some medications
that men can take to block the balding hormone. One
is called propitia. It's a pill you have to take
(09:05):
every day, and you have to take that, uh, foreseeably
for the rest of your life. And there are side effects,
like sexual side effects. So if you tell somebody, hey,
this might help you save your hair, but you know
the sex thing might not be so well, I think
they right some people, well, you know some people maybe
(09:26):
they won't even get to that point without hair. So
you gotta make that decision. You know, that's a personal choice.
So in two thousand five, you you get into the
hair business. Yes, uh, did you start your own business
at that time? And where you're working for somebody else? No,
I was working for a big, big group called Bosley
(09:46):
and people probably you know, put more from our vantage.
You're more familiar with the Bossley commercials, with the white
gentleman with the white hair and the guys with no
hair looking sad, and then they have hair and they're
drinking a glass the wine with two nice ladies. You know,
they were known for those type of commercials, you know
when we were growing up, and I would watch those
(10:08):
commercials and I didn't see hardly one black person on them,
but I felt comfort that bow wow, if I lose
my hair, I can call Dr Bosley and he can
help me. So I started to work for them under
their corporate structure. And is that the who did your
hair transplant? Uh? No, well, actually one of the doctors
from Bosley has I've had more than one hair transplant. Um.
(10:32):
One of the doctors, they're they're all very well trained. Yes,
I would trust them with my hair. One of them did. Yes, okay,
And you are the first African American I've ever met
to sort of do this sort of work. Is it
common for people of color to be in this business
or not? No? It's uh, you know, I just saw
(10:55):
a statistic over the weekend where the doctors in the
US maybe five percent or black. I would say maybe
point five percent. Are people of any color in this field.
It's becoming a lot more. But it's still mainly, you know,
ruled by elderly white men. I'm not gonna even say
young white man, elderly white man. And is that because
(11:18):
we are not familiar with the practice, or is it
that it's economically not feasible for us to go through
all of the training and everything. Why are there numbers
so low? Because it's kind of a the path to
get here is not something that's straightforward, like you know, say,
(11:38):
if you just want to be a regular surgeon, brain surgeon,
heart surgeon, whatever that pack. I mean, that track is
pretty much laid out for you to be a hair surgeon.
Since you don't do your work in the hospital, there's
really no track for somebody really to teach you how
to do it and kind of uncover behind the wizard's
curtain really how to do it. There's really no one
(12:00):
to do it, so you have to seek that out
yourself or get hired by these big groups. And it's
not many of these groups around, so it's it's really
hard for you to dictate your fate as you would
just being another type of doctor. It's difficult. The bar
to entry is difficult. Put it like that, And and
(12:21):
is that changing as time goes on. Do you see
that improving changing in some way that more people who
look like us get into that feel, Yeah, it's changing
a lot. I know a lot of females that do
black you know, well trained doctors that do what I
do um, because one we just weren't aware that this
(12:44):
even existed. And to you know, doing African American hair
is a whole another animal than doing Caucasian hair. And
I can tell you now that I'd be more inclined
to go to an African American doctor because these new
one says, they're just something that if you know them
from growing up and makes your life a lot easier
(13:06):
as being a physician to treat these disease processes. So
I think as more people see me and see doctors
like me doing it, um, they start asking questions and
call me, and you know, I'll help do whatever I
can to make it a reality for them. So I
know you serve and all types of clients. Tell us
(13:26):
what are some of the primary differences in doing working
on African Americans who are losing their air and working
on white individuals who are losing their hair. What are
some of the primary challenges and differences I guess the
main difference is the type the hair follicle, and our
hair follicle is very curly and you can't even see
(13:49):
under the skin how this curliness continues like a corkscrewp
So it's very easy to injure when you remove those
follicles because the hair transplant is really nothing like farming.
I mean, it's just like farming, like taking plants, I say,
from the backyard, I mean the back of your head
and the sides and moving it to the top. So
when you remove the hair, you have to make sure
(14:11):
you don't injure the hair. And this is the problem
that it takes a lot of years to be able
to get African American hair out correctly without injuring it
to transplant it to the front. And if you don't
appreciate those nuances, there'll be problems. And it kind of
hurts my heart in that because I see a lot
of black people, you know, online and so forth, half
(14:35):
hair transplanted places who boast to be the best in
African American hair. These people aren't African American whatsoever, and
I think the results are marginal. You know, I'm not
gonna say that, but it it's disappointing that our own
race in two thousand twenty two is not smart enough
to understand that there might be a difference, you know.
(15:00):
So I'd say the toughest difference is just how the
hair is situated in the scalp and not injuring it.
And then the other difference is that we develop something
like a lot of women develop in the edges that
it's called traction alopecia and scarring alopecia. If you're not
familiar with those disease processes and just start transplanting them,
(15:22):
you won't have the best results. So they're pretty much
two sets of rules for transplanting. You have to be
aware afrocentric patients and then others Caucasian hair. Usually it's
very straightforward. It's a you know, straight up and down
hair follicle. Just make sure the scalp is healthy and
it'll grow. We'll be right back with more of my
(15:48):
interview after this quick break. No, Dr. You also have
other procedures that you offer, uh two clients that may
not want to have a transplant. Talk about some of
those other procedures. Sure, well, the one I think that
(16:11):
is a magic trick that's called it's called scout micro pigmentation.
So this is where you see it a lot in guys.
If it's done right, it's kind of like I'm looking
at myself here, like you can see on my beer,
like five o'clock shadow. It creates five o'clock shadow on
your scalt. So if you're losing hair and don't have
enough to do a transplant, you can give that illusion,
(16:33):
you know, like you you're just buzzed your head, kind
of like how Vin Diesel's hair used to look. You know,
guys can tell who's bald and who just buzzes their hair.
You know, a lot of guys think they're fooling somebody
when they they'll say they're not bald. But I mean
guys who are who are not bald, they never take
(16:54):
a bick and go to their head. They leave enough
to let you know that this is a choice. Okay,
I got hair. So we create that image on the scalp.
That's called micro pigmentation. It's a it's a beautiful thing.
Done right, it looks beautiful. We do that all the time.
The other things we do for people who don't want
to hair transplant p RP. These are all like new
(17:15):
treatments where we take you know, maybe twenty to thirty
ccs of your blood, which is less than you know,
like a dixie cupful, and in your blood their growth factors.
We separate, get these growth factors out and reinject them
into your scalp. These growth factors theoretically go to the
hair follicle that's not making good hair and re energizes
(17:39):
that hair follicle to produce better hair. So that's been
working very well for us. So we do a lot
of prp UM. We do a lot of micro needling.
Micro Needling is basically making tiny little um incisions in
the scalp that you can't see, and it creates micro
injury and the body secretes growth factors and collagen again
(18:03):
to stimulate the hair that was weakened to grow. So
those are probably the most famous things that we do
that I think works the best. There's something new that's
called exosomes that I'll just mentioned here. It's like everybody's
talking about stem cells and things like that. Exo zone
therapy is in that line of stem cells where we
(18:24):
inject that into the scalp as well, and that works
well too. So those are the main things that we
do for hair that aren't surgery um and they all
work well. Like if somebody comes in and they're losing
their hair and they want to try pr p X
zome's great, let's do it, you know, but we need
to do something. The problem with most people they're in denial.
(18:46):
You know, they're just thinking that they got they have
more hair than they do. And the rule is usually
it takes you to lose of your natural hair before
your I can tell that you've lost hair, so you're
already thirty down. Some people say, so when you can
start to tell your thinning, you've lost quite a bit
(19:07):
of hair. So Dr Yates, if you're in your early
twenties and you notice you start to lose your hair,
what would your advice be to a man or woman
who are losing the hair in the early twenties, I
would see a dermatologist first, because there are some things
other than just the genetics, which is going to be
(19:29):
the case of the case, but there's five percent of
the time there's different medical illnesses, different medications. Uh, sometimes
some temporary things can cause hair loss, like you know,
accelerated stress or their autoimmune diseases. Like everybody's seeing somebody
with these patches of loss on their head. That's called
(19:49):
alopecia areata. There's some things that don't have to end
up with you ending up being balved. They can be
treated with medications or you know, or stopping the medication
you're on. So the first person you would go to
would be a family doctor, then to a dermatologist. People
usually don't see me until they've done those things and
(20:09):
their doctor just says, hey, you know, as we said earlier,
it is what it is. And then they come to
me to see, well, it is what it is. What
can we do with that? You know that someone in
their forties or fifties, what is your advice to them?
Forties and fifties, It's gonna be a lot easier to
figure out what's going on with them. Most of the time,
forties and fifties, they will come see me first because
(20:32):
it's usually, you know, not going to be something that
popped out of the blue. It's gradual. They have the
typical pattern for genetic hair loss um. So I can
make those diagnoses myself and then we decide, you know
what we're gonna do. We're gonna do non surgical things.
Am I going to send you to a dermatologist or
are we gonna go straight to a hairdress plant. It
(20:53):
just depends on what the circumstances are. Um, but you
should see somebody like going to the inn or net.
And you know, hair loss is a billion dollar industry.
And if all those things on TV, if they worked,
I wouldn't have a job number one. And I can
tell you I don't know any of those things that
I see on TV all the time that are worth
(21:15):
a nickel, you know, And it's all marketing, and it's
just a waste of time. And when you lose your hair,
you're working against the clock. It's not like you have infinity,
you know. So I would get off the internet and
go see somebody who knows what they're talking about, so
you know what's going on and documents you you have
your own products. Also, how did you decide that you
(21:37):
wanted to create your own shampoos, conditioners and things like that?
How did you decide you wanted to get into that business. Well,
people always would come to me and say, well, what
shampoo did I recommend? So forth and so on. So
I started looking into shampoo's what makes good ones bad ones?
So I just wanted to simplify my life and make
(21:58):
it so that the shampoo is one didn't cause any harm,
scientifically had something in it that can actually grow hair,
which mind do um and actually worked and did something
that you could see or feel a difference after the
first use. UM. So I developed a line with natural
(22:19):
ingredients that does one does two things. We have a
thickening line of hair shampoos and conditioners, and we have
a hydrating line because we want you to switch back
and forth between thicking, thickening and hydrating. And then we
also have what's called apple cider vinegar shampoo, and that's
kind of the reset button. And you know everybody puts,
you know, grease or whatever on their hair and oils,
(22:42):
and this apple cider vinegar restores the scalt pH back
to normal, just like a reset button on your computer.
And then the other thing I have is hair fibers,
which I think are the best in the world where
you just sprinkle. I use them every day. Um. You
just sprinkle them on your hair um and it makes
your hair instantly thicker, and it's nothing but carratin. So
(23:04):
it washes out with shampoo. If it rains, it doesn't
come out. People always telling me, well, if somebody touches it,
will it come out? But I mean, in real life,
how many people in the last year have touched your hair?
I don't know anybody who's touch mind. People don't touch
your hair, you know when you get to be thirty.
But people always ask me that. They're like, what if
people touch your hair? I'm like, who touches your hair? Um?
(23:27):
But even if they did, it doesn't come out. Um.
I think the fibers like here, I'm just gonna show
you here. These are fibers, and this is an atomizer
and it kind of shoots out these little carratin fibers.
It's kind of hard to see. Let me just show
you another one right quick that here's a jar and
(23:50):
you would apply I don't know. You can kind of
see the black powder coming down like like this, you know,
and then just rub it into your hair and your
hair sticker. And when I washed my hair comes out.
Do I wash my hair every day? No? Um, that's
always another question often should you wash your hair? Everybody's different. Uh,
(24:10):
you wash it when it's dirty, you know. Um. And
African Americans in general don't make the oil they Caucasians do,
so we really should not be washing out hair every day.
So once a week I washed my hair, you know,
and start all over again, so dry. It's what is
stickening shampoo? Does it actually make your hair thicker or
(24:32):
the hair fiber witer? What is that? I see it
on shampoo's or something like Yeah, well, usually the rule
is with a thickening shampoo. Um, when you were little,
did you ever eat a ballpark, Frank? You know how
they say plump Sweeney cook it start? You know, it's
kind of the same thing as the ballpark, Frank. And
that the hair shaft has little openings. And there's what
(24:54):
we call a humectin, which is just a substance which
goes in the hair shaft helps the hair shaft absor
or water, so your hair looks plumper. Your hair actually
in reality is it thicker. No, but it looks and
feels thicker because your hair is allowed the shaft absorbs
some water, so it looks and feels thicker. So that's
(25:15):
usually how thickening shampoos work. Do they organically thicken your hair? No?
You know, to make your hair thicker organically you have
to do some' something under the soil, under the scalp
to make it thicker. But hair dressings are nothing more
than I say, like waxing your cards, working on the outside,
(25:36):
not where the engine is, you know, So that's usually
how they work. We'll be right back with more of
my interview after this quick break. So we're gonna make
a U turn right here. Dr Yates. You're also in
(25:59):
the secure of the business, yes, So tell us how
you went from hair to security. Well, I was always
kind of in the security business in the back of
my mind. Okay, that was a trauma surgeon because in
the emergency departments I would see so many people come
in with pretty dangerous situations where you know, people get
(26:22):
shot and they come in with guns, so forth and
so on. So I said, why aren't there metal detectors
in the hospitals. You know, why aren't there metal detectors
in the schools. Just think of all these shootings at
the schools. If they had metal detectors one, it would
be a deterrent all these kids. You know, you can't
wake up and say, well, you know, I'm gonna blow
(26:42):
up the school or do this knowing you've got metal detectors.
Even though a lot of people reject to how they look.
So in my mind, I said, there's got to be
a simple solution. So I started working with the manufacturing
company to manufacture metal detection equipment that looked more streamline
than what we were used to having that actually will
(27:04):
pick up whether you have a gun or knife, but
can tell the difference between that and a computer and
a phone, so it doesn't stop everybody because and I
think this equipment is going to be in every place
because the world is just too dangerous. So that was
basically my parlay over to the security business was because
I was sick and tired of nobody doing anything about
(27:25):
gun violence and it's preventable, or at least there should
be some deterrent you. People just shouldn't be able to
walk in places without thinking twice about it and just
open fire. So that's how it started, and that's progressed
to more X ray equipment. UM I sell because I
believe in this COVID prevention, prevention and what's something called
(27:47):
air ionization because that disables the COVID virus better than
a Hepper filter to help America get back to work.
But the metal detection is dear to my heart because
I think it's a simple solution. Think all schools should
have it, and I don't think there should even be
any argument against it. So so Dr Gates, what year
(28:08):
did you get into the security business? Two thousand seventeen. Wow,
so you've been in that business about five years now, right,
So Dr Gates always talk about this moment when I
heard Hill Harper talk about options, the actor Hill Harper
talk about options. And Hill Harper graduated, uh three times
(28:32):
from Harvard University, right, And as he says, he has
a job that you don't even need a high school
diploma for, but the degrees gave him options. Hearing all
the things that you're doing, talk about options to our audience,
you what not just happy and and satisfied being in
the hair business. You also wanted to do something else.
(28:55):
What is that in a person's mind that talks and
wants to give them additional options? Well, as you said,
first of all, options are everything, and everyone has to
understand in life. And you you know, I have four
kids and when they were growing up, they would always say,
I want to be a rapper, I want to shoot balls,
(29:17):
I want to do this, I want to do that.
But the reality of black people and for four hundred
years we weren't allowed to read. We have to read,
we have to get an education. I don't care what
you do. And I'd always tell my kids, and it
might sound flip it, but I would tell them, get
as many letters behind your name and the shortest amount
of time as you can and um, just because of options. UM.
(29:43):
And a lot of people I've seen in business that
are super you know, super smart and don't have any degrees,
but they get pigeonholed and they can't move forward, especially
with African Americans, because unfortunately I found throughout my life,
instead of p ful trying to make sure you get
to the highest place you can, they're always looking for
(30:05):
reasons to make sure that maybe there's somebody else out
there instead of you. So you always have to have
stack your deck twice as thick as anyone else. And
that's not bad because everything you learn makes you better.
And the reason that I've taken upon myself to do
these different projects because as you get older and wiser,
(30:28):
you become less afraid of failure, You become less afraid
of what the person next to you is gonna say
about you, and you see other people doing things that
you know you think, oh I could have done that,
this guy did that or she did that? What? And
then you sit down and think, well, I gotta answer
to this. Um, I'm gonna do it. And when you
(30:50):
understand that, and it took me to us at least
forty to understand that that, you know, your thoughts are
just as valuable as anybody else. Now the problem comes in,
and people don't realize is access to capital. Because everybody
has an idea of something to do. The trick is
how do you take that idea and make it happen
(31:14):
number one and number two? Monetize from that idea and
and don't get your ideas stolen along the way. But
to answer your question, I guess is the older I
get and the more people I meet, you know, you
become very comfortable in your your skin, expressing yourself and
letting people know the skills you have. I mean, I
(31:35):
have so many ideas. I mean sometimes it gets ridiculous
because you're thinking, oh my god, you know and I
that's smart And I'm being funny now, but I'm just
saying that there's just so many things out there that
when you think about, you could contribute to. You know,
so parlaying with h Hill and yourself. And uh, I
guess Reginald Lewis uh who wrote a book years ago
(31:58):
when I was, you know, young girl, you know, says
why do white guys have all the fun um? And
I would always say to my kids, I'm like, why
these white people smiling so much? And you know, going
we now when you're on vacation, why they are? You know?
And then I realized, shoot, you get all this. You're
happy too, and as as well as your book, you
know the secrets of corporate strategy. Once you only takes once,
(32:22):
once you see behind the Wizard's curtain and you're paying attention,
you'll be unstoppable, you know. And I saw behind the
wizard could once you understand that most of this stuff
you see out here with other people and I'm not
talking about black people now that it's all smoke and mirrors,
it's incestual, and you know it's Uh, they're very mediocre
(32:43):
at best, but yet they've achieved things that I can't
even dream of. You know, Once you see that and
understand it, then you're unstoppable. So well, doctor Gates. We
here at the way Maker community, we talked about every
successful person has had multiple for waymakers in their life.
You talked about the doctor who sort of put you
(33:04):
on a path to becoming a doctor. What other way
makers have you had in your life that have sort
of stepped in intentionally and made a turn left or
right to help you. Well, we'll start with the easy ones.
My grandmother was a school teacher from Mississippi who, um,
every day when I come home, she tell me one
thing that Roy, get your lesson. And she asked me
(33:26):
did I get my lesson? And I'd be like, I
get so sick of him, Like, yeah, I got my lesson,
you know. But I would tell my kids that every
day did you get your lessons? That you always have
to get your lessons. So my grandmother who's from you know, uh,
Piny Woods, Mississippi and was a school teacher there. I mean,
I tell people, now, get your lesson. We got one
(33:47):
thing to do. Put down the ball, get your lesson.
Um my family doctor Dr McFarlane, of course, my good
friend h. Glenn Gardner, who is still my good friend.
And then we move up the ladder to one of
the best doctor I've ever met my life, Dr Losalafa,
who was chairman of surgery at Howard University for several years.
(34:07):
He spoke eight languages, he played tennis, he lived all
around life. He just wasn't you know what you think
of a guy, you know, with a microscope and so forth.
He was almost a surrogate father. And and another person
Dr Leslie Bond, who was my mentor in St. Louis
when I went to St. Louis. He got me on
(34:28):
a lot of boards and I became an examiner for
the Board of Surgery because of him. He recognized talent
in me and he kind of mentored me. And uh,
he's passed away, but he's one of the best men
in my life. And I wouldn't be uh complete if
not saying. You know my dad as well. And my
dad said one thing to me when I was in
high school that has resonated every said, Roy, anything a
(34:50):
lot of people can do in life. It's not that hard.
And I would tell that to my kids too, meaning
that as he didn't say it was easy. But you know,
if a lot of pople are doctors, which they are,
a lot of people think I can't be a doctor,
Like why not? You know, of course you can be
a doctor, you know, is it easy. No, but you
can be a doctor, you know, now being an astronaut.
(35:12):
Like one of my kids would say, well, what about
an astronaut? Because my kids are like they always got
to say something. I would say, well, probably being an
astronaut's not hard either, but you know, it's still one
of those professions people don't know about. But you know,
so that's those are probably and my mom, you know,
of course it's getting like the Academy Awards. I gotta
(35:33):
keep going because I don't want somebody to see them
and say that grateful blah blah blah, I did this.
But you know, if I'm missing anybody, you know, I'm
gonna say I'm sorry. You know, but those are the
ones who I quote from their playbook the most. Those people.
Final question. Dr Yates someone who's in high school, maybe
(35:57):
in college right now, listening to this and said, I
want to be like that guy. I want to get
into the hair business. It's not that many black people
doing it. How do they do that? Give them three
or four things they can do to start that journey. Okay, well,
the first, of course, to be a doctor. Um. You
know you've got to be a doctor to do it. Um.
(36:19):
Number two. I would do a residency. I just wouldn't
jump into it right for medical squad. Either become a
dermatologist or get something behind your back as something else,
just internal medicine. I'll take three or four years. Once
that is done, and you sure you want to be
a hair doctor, you can look under this Society of
(36:40):
hair Surgeons and they have pictures of everybody. Or you
can just google African American hair transplant surgeons and find
one of them, call them and they'll mentor you of
what you should do. Because what you should do and
I'm mentoring a couple of doctors with me right now.
You should come visit with a doctor, have him or
(37:01):
her show you how to do the procedure, how the
business works, how to do good work, how to handle
you know, problem patients, problem work. And then it's a business,
so you have to learn how to market. UM. So
we do a lot of I think great marketing. Of course,
social media is a given um. But the best thing
to do would be to go seek out the doctor,
(37:24):
and African American doctor who is doing well and I
am I know that person will definitely mentor you because
they'll be glad to know that there are other people
around to carry the torch. But as far as doing
other things or even joining groups like I did with
Bosley and things like that, I would kind of stay
(37:45):
away from that if I were you, because that's a
corporate structure, and as smart as those corporations are, they
don't have your best interests at heart, because how could they,
because they have to have their best deustiness at heart.
So you want to go with a person that you
can develop a relationship with, That's what I would say.
And Dr h final thing. People who want to get
(38:07):
your services and want to get in touch with you,
how do they do that? Um? Easy enough. If you
just google Bill Yates UM Chicago, you'll find me UM.
Dr Yates Hair Science. We do a lot of YouTube videos.
Dr Yates YouTube videos were on Instagram, Facebook, you name it.
I guess they make me do TikTok's from here from
(38:28):
time to time. So I do TikTok's UM. But I'm
trying not to be a clown because I see a
lot of doctors on there, and as we know, a
lot of people can get away with stuff that you
and I can't. So I kind of walk a fine
line with you know, you know, clowning around with the
medicine thing, but I do do TikTok's yes. Well, Dr Yates, UH,
(38:53):
this has been an amazing uh interview and clearly you
have one of those careers and professions that are so
Thank you so much. M.
Host
Louis Carr
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