Reset the Face: Why Dr. Daniel Gould’s Face Lift Ethos Could Be the Future of Looking Like Yourself—Only Better

You don’t want a cubist doing your face. You want your face. And that is, quite literally, Dr. Daniel Gould’s entire philosophy in a single sentence.

I myself am about to turn 51, and every single one of my friends in my age bracket is considering a face lift. We know serums, face tools, face massages, and even retinol can only do so much. I was introduced to Dr. Gould several months ago and was struck by his face lift protocol—which, after a long discussion, I find appeals to me the most out of all the procedures I’ve looked into.

Tucked into the clinically immaculate but warmly human hum of Beverly Hills, Dr. Gould—plastic surgeon, researcher, and low-key anatomy philosopher—is quietly reshaping how we think about facial rejuvenation. His approach, dubbed the RESET Lift, isn’t just a face lift. It’s a facial thesis of sorts: natural movement, anatomical accuracy, emotional memory, all of it preserved. If I am going to do it—which, I want to; I keep turning it over every night in my mind when my estrogen patch is at its slowest and my anxiety at its highest—this would be the method I would feel most comfortable doing.

But let’s not jump to the scalpel just yet. Dr. Gould’s methodology unfolds across a logic-rich timeline. Prevention, intervention, and reversal, is the phased journey he often outlines to patients. A skincare continuum is how I perceive the RESET Lift. You can consider it a compound interest of sorts, but for your collagen. It all begins in the subtle. Gould is bullish on what you don’t see—namely, the sun, and the insidious cellular aging it triggers. Sunscreen is non-negotiable. From there, he prescribes a compounded nightly retinoid cocktail (tretinoin meets niacinamide meets hyaluronic acid meets turmeric), a sort of bioengineered skincare potion that reads like a dermatological love letter. “Minveritrol,” he tells me, referencing a proprietary antioxidant blend he’s particularly fond of, is like a cellular whisperer, calming inflammation before it leaves its mark. And yes, collagen supplements, a category long dismissed as beauty’s snake oil (which I strongly disagree with, for me it works wonders on my hair and nails), have now earned his scientific blessing, thanks to recent meta-analyses. This is a man who doesn’t deal in fluff. It makes sense—this grounding in science and structure—considering his background: an MD/PhD in bioengineering, 170+ peer-reviewed publications, editorial positions on several academic journals. It’s the kind of quiet pedigree you wouldn’t necessarily guess from his relaxed tone, but it's what draws patients from across the country, even internationally, for his RESET Lift. It’s so good, some have started calling it a destination face lift.

Between preservation and transformation lives the art of smart intervention. Gould’s toolkit includes the usual suspects, like neuromodulators and microneedling, but also CO₂ laser and his personal favorite: platelet-derived healing signals like PDGF, FGF, and VEGF. Basically, growth factors without the gore. “It’s about cellular signaling, and we’re giving your skin the memo to heal, even without a wound,” he says. I nod, taking mental notes while wondering if my face has ever received any memo besides ‘panic.’ I don’t like CO₂ laser and I don’t like microneedling unless it’s my trusted Editrix stamp, which I do because I am prone to melasma triggers.

So, given my issues, I want to tell you about his plans for the main event. Gould takes the deep-plane approach. That means he works beneath the SMAS layer, following the natural architecture of your face like a GPS-guided artist. No tight-pulled, windswept absurdity. No “smile block”—that peculiar post-op effect where people look like they’ve been paused mid-grin for eternity. “Form and function are inseparable. Preserve both, and you preserve you,” he says. It’s hard not to trust a surgeon who references both muscle vectors and memory in the same sentence.

But aging isn’t simply a downward pull. It's a multifaceted process. Over time, the soft tissues of the face don’t just fall straight down; they also move forward. The neck and lower face are like a cylinder with suspended muscles and ligaments that drop down and forward toward the chin as we age, which is why the RESET Lift focuses on more than just vertical lifting. The platysma muscle, for instance, tends to relax and fall forward, contributing to excess skin and sagging. This is where Gould’s RESET Lift excels—it uses multiple vectors (between 60 and 70 degrees), tailored to each patient’s unique anatomy, restoring the face’s natural structure by realigning the tissues in a way that looks, well, like you—just better, as he likes to reiterate. And because the neck is half the battle, he’s engineered a trifecta approach: submandibular gland reduction, platysma repositioning, and fat compartment refinement, resulting in a sculpted jawline that screams, “I sleep eight hours and don’t consume dairy,” whether or not either is true. Post-op care is where Gould’s inner nerd gets to shine. There’s a Day 0 check-in the night of surgery, then Day 1 hyperbaric oxygen and red-light therapy to supercharge healing. Protein loading and bio-optimized skincare follow, with laser or microneedling reintroduced at six weeks, all designed to make your three-month photos look less “recovering patient” and more “How does she look like that without filters?” Safety? Triple-checked. Quad A-accredited surgical suite, board-certified anesthesiologists, emergency redundancies in place. “I’ll take a safe 92 over a risky 100,” he says. (If that isn’t the grown-up energy that we all need...)

What makes the RESET Lift spectacular isn’t just the precision, it’s the intention. Gould is adamant: this is not about transformation, but restoration. “Partial face lifts look partially rejuvenated,” he says. “You want full harmony. You want people to look at you and not wonder if you’ve done something, but rather, remember you the way they did ten years ago. You, just as they remember.”

The outcomes he strives for are clear, rested, vibrant, and unchanged in all the right ways. And that’s the thing: Gould isn’t trying to give you someone else’s face. He’s trying to give you yours, the one that once lit up a room before gravity had an agenda. He’s not remodeling. He’s resetting.

“Education dissolves fear,” he tells me at the end of our interview. And I realize that’s exactly what he does. He doesn’t sell beauty. He explains it. And if I were ever to go under the knife, it would be with someone who knows where every nerve, every plane, every smile lives. Because I want my faceand the truest version of it.