Thanking My Team
December 24, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
For those of you who keep up with my blogs, you will remember that 2 weeks ago I did a series of blogs on Malcolm Gladwell’s phenomenal new book, Outliers, in which he talks about how successful individuals come from a product of their environment. With that spirit, I would like to thank each and every one of my staff members who have made LFP a true success with doubling percentage growths every year.
Constanze- Thank you for helming my ship and getting rave reviews from patients about your wonderful stewardship of my practice. Your organizational skills, phone skills, and educated knowledge of LFP make you an indispensable part to what LFP is all about. Your honesty and integrity define my opinion of you. Your work ethic is unmatched. You don’t leave until the job is done and done right. You are truly a rare and precious gem. Thank you for all that you do.
Marcy- Miss Flipper, the co-pilot, you are an intelligent and passionate individual whom I hear every patient walking through the door who has spoken with you that you have blessed them in both your delivery and content. I appreciate your Internet and technology savvy and all that you have done for my business on that end. You are a remarkable individual who has made everything that I do easier and more streamlined.
Dianne- Despite some health issues this past year, you have triumphed in both spirit and form and you look like a new person coming back from Italy. That has made me smile inside deeply since you are part of our family. Your stepping in during this critical holiday time has been so appreciated that I cannot speak what I feel in words. Your raw intelligence exceeds mine and your leading my surgical team and surgical center is unparalleled. I don’t think I need to tell you that.
Beth- You are just a radiant jewel that shines like a beacon to my patients. As I say all the time, you singularly get more compliments from my patients than any other staff member. You garner that praise because it is well deserved. Your perioperative work to help my patients during a time that can be scary alleviates them of that fear and gives them a warm family touch that I am confident they would never receive in any surgery center or hospital. You define the patient experience and serve as an exemplar to all around you for your care, compassion, and selflessness.
Emina- You are one of a kind not in the U.S. but in the world. Your knowledge in hair restoration from the front end, back end, surgical side, leadership, staff training, staff inspiration gives you the deserved nickname, Yoda. You are such a precious asset to me that I cannot even begin to thank you enough for how you literally bleed for our patients. We deliver a singular experience and result and I am so appreciative of your vital component to that success.
Darla- You are so very very smart. I appreciate that intelligence and being as a worthy co-pilot during surgery. You lead my MAs very well, and your graft dissection skills are tremendous. I don’t know how to thank you for your stepping up whenever duty calls where you needn’t do that but you do. You just are a tremendous team player and focused on what we give our patients. I can’t simply thank you enough.
Vassilka- I love seeing you every day. Your kind heart and generosity of spirit are unmatched. I know you do so very many things for me that I can’t even begin to thank you for. Your delicate hands during hair restoration, your great number sense and graft calculation, and your impassioned dedication to be always the best even during your pregnancy not only means so much to me but to our deserving patients as well. I have a smile that goes deep to my soul each and every time I see you. You bring a light to my world and to LFP every day you are there. We all missed you so much during your maternity leave. You are simply a beautiful person.
Stephanie- Although you have been with us only for a few months, you have proven your salt in a relatively short time. Your dedication to excellence and your innate intelligence have won me over. I hope that you can envision a long career with us because I am so very deeply proud to have you on my team at LFP. Keep up the tremendous work and continue to dazzle me with your massive brain power! I am also keen on seeing your talented hands at work on some of the things we have you training to do.
Donna- You bring beauty and intelligence to the team. Even though you are only here a day a week, I think my entire team looks forward to your coming. You are truly very very bright and I admire that (I don’t just mean your movie trivia skills). Hopefully, as LFP grows, you can come on board more. I really love seeing your smile and your helping me so effortlessly navigate the preoperative waters in a thoughtful, unrushed, and warm-hearted way.
Linda- You have won my respect. Your leadership skills now going from MA to Spa Director are amazing. You lead by example, passion, and work ethic. You have done so much to take a disparate team and make it follow in sync behind you. I am so appreciative at your creative energy because you never cease to amaze me at all you do. Thank you for becoming my newest and extremely strong leader. I am so very proud of you and when I look at you every time you give me a wonderful sense of almost parental pride that I gave the keys to the right person.
Philip- You are truly a gem to my mom and me. I know that I do not even have to look at the accounts because you are truly one of the most honest individuals that I have met. You are an individual of high moral worth and you are also one that gives everything you got. Thank you so much for making LFP run like clock work. Your presence is always felt and your love for our family is profound as ours is for you.
Richard- Richard, you are so rare a person that I don’t think God ever would make another like you. You give, give, give, give, give, give, give and never take. You give so much that I feel this deep guilt of calling you. The reason that WBW was built so well was because of you but well beyond that the reason that it still runs owes EVERYTHING to you, and I mean everything. You are the great Atlas holding up the world of WBW. If you were not here, there would not be a building. You give my mom and me peace of mind and a warm heart. I simply love you and Catherine like family because you are. Thank you for being such an amazing individual. I don’t want to fill two pages here otherwise my other staff might get a bit jealous in how I feel about you.
Mom (Carol)- Last but not least, thank you for building this building, acquiring this land, and having blind faith in my skills and risking everything we have on my practice and me. Thank you for giving me life, and thank you for being a mom to all my staff who look to you for moral guidance, love, compassion, and leadership. You are such a rare mother that I could not even imagine anyone that would come close to you. Your business acumen, math sense, and salesmanship make WBW and LFP not only successful but fully thriving. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thanks to all my dear patients, clients, and patrons who frequent WBW, and I give back a touch of warmth and good spirit during this wonderful holiday season. All of you brighten my life and inspire me to be a better person and a better surgeon for you! Merry Christmas to all who celebrate Christmas and whatever religious persuasion you follow, I wish you the merriest holidays this season!
Seeing Things Differently as a Specialist
December 23, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
I had a Christmas party a couple of weeks ago for my EO (Entrepreneur’s Organization) forum group. One of my forum buddies, Larry Patterson, owns part of a franchise known as the Glass Doctor. He specializes in glass, both auto and flat. He came into my bathroom and looked at my all-glass shower and said, “Sam, if I had done your glass I wouldn’t have used this green-tint job. I would have used an all clear glass so that you could see the tile better. In addition, if you look at this hinge here, they put a spacer in because it is easier but I would have made the glass flush with the other piece without needing the rubber in between. Also, I would have used a teflon-like coating so that you would never have to wipe the smudges and water stains away.” I was floored a bit. I am still very happy with my shower, but I now recognize when someone specializes in something, they truly possess an entirely different eye for what is going on.
I actually plan on featuring some very interesting specialists in the next few weeks both in video and written format but more about that when the time comes. I have been asked by many people, “Do you see faults in every face you look at?” Of course, I sort of humbly shrug that off and say, “Well, not really.” However, the truthful answer is yes in many respects I do. That is my job, which I live, sleep, eat, and breathe. I am trained to see a pinched nose with an exposed tip graft and alar margin retraction; a rounded canthus of the eye that looks unnatural from a lower eyelid procedure done through a skin incision (which I never perform); and an upper lip that looks like a big McDonald’s Golden Arches staring at me. Even though you may be able to detect half of the individuals who look fake, I can see about 98% of them and tell you the reasons why that person looks off. In addition, I can see where maximal facial deficiencies are and how to correct them, i.e., I can help you prioritize the issues of maximal benefit to help you.
That being said, not to beat a dead horse, but I hope you now understand why I sit with you and look at you even without much of your input on what bothers you because I want to be able to help you achieve 2 goals: 1) if you have had obviously bad surgery even if you can’t detect that it is bad, I need to cover the problem so that instead of 80% not seeing it that hopefully 95% or more people won’t, 2) i help you prioritize where to spend your money best. With discretionary income, of course, you can ultimately do anything with me so long as I don’t hurt you. However, you should expect from me a more detailed analysis that can help you…within reason. For example, if you come in for rejuvenation of the aging face and you have a pretty strong hump on the nose, I probably will not mention it to you. However, if you came in for aging face work and your nose was pinched in and your bridge scooped out and I see that perhaps 70% of onlookers are looking at something not right, then i will gently help you see that even if you can’t.
I love how I see many plastic surgeons’ ads that read “Specializing in the Face and the Body”. What? Are you kidding me? Shouldn’t the ad read, “Generalizing in the Face and the Body”? Is it oxymoronic to say that one specializes in everything. You could say, “Specializing in Plastic Surgery” but you can’t say specializing in everything. That makes no sense.
After listening to my friend’s expertise on glass, it makes me more aware of how much I truly “see” that others do not. I would hope that when you come in for consultation that I don’t just rush you to a treatment or respond on what you want done without offering my opinion but to do so in a deliberate and intelligent fashion and offer my best advice to help you.
Our Brazilian Christmas!
December 22, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
For fans of the television comedy show (a Brit export or adaption should I say) the Office, you may recall a couple of weeks ago they had a Moroccan-themed Christmas party. Along those lines, LFP combined our holiday festivities with the Spa at Willow Bend to have a Brazilian-themed party. Fortunately, no one caught on fire unlike the TV show. That would have probably made it more interesting. Fortunately, we had Donna’s husband Mike, a fireman, present to control the festivities.
We all really had such a fun time, and the experience that my extended extended family shared was deeply enriching. I would also like to thank Waleska, from my spa, who is Brazilian for connecting us with Mario, a real-life gaucho. Interestingly, he is Japanese, as there is a huge Japanese community in Brazil. He cooked a wonderful assortment of meats including picanha (which is really the best piece of meat for all you churrascaria-rodizio fans out there), sirloin with garlic, beef ribs, bacon-wrapped chicken, whole chicken, and chicken hearts. (Make sure you offer a wish before you have the latter. They actually are delicious). I would like to say muito obrigado (Portuguese = thanks so much!) and gochiso-sama (Japanese = thank you for the great food) to Mario and his teammate Max. Waleska also created the famed Brazilian cocktail caipirinha for us. That was a real treat.
By combining the spa and LFP into one holiday event, I think we really all shared how much WBW is a single extended family. I get a tremendous kick seeing everyone in my building every day, and I am really happy we could have such a massive party together. Unfortunately, the cold breeze outside made it impossible to light the fire pit, but we all stayed warm inside. I hope all of you are having a fun time at your holiday events for the office or with your family and friends this season. I hope you enjoy our little video and photos of our holiday event!
Predictably Irrational Part 5 of 5: How to Order off a Menu
December 19, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
Here is another study with beer. In Predictably Irrational, Ariely asked a group of individuals sitting down at a table in a bar to order from a limited list of beers: Summer Wheat Ale, Franklin Street Lager, India Pale Ale, and an Irish Stout. The first individual would call out his or her beer and then the ordering would progress around the table. At the conclusion of imbibing, the individuals would be asked to write down their rating of their beer. Interestingly, the person who asked for the beer first consistently rated his/her beer satisfaction to be the highest. The ratings would then go down proportionately to when the beer was ordered. The same experiment was tried by having individuals hand in their beer order silently without declaring their wishes aloud. Interestingly, almost every individual rated the satisfaction of their choice very highly. Also interestingly, when beers were ordered out loud, almost every person ordered a different type of beer; whereas when beers were ordered silently there was much more similarity in what was ordered. The same experiment was carried out in Hong Kong. However, in this case, when people ordered out loud, the second, third, etc. person would order most likely the same thing that the first person had ordered. As would be expected, their enjoyment was greatly less than what the first person ordered. What we learn from this experiment is that in the United States we value our maverick individualism even in spite of our best interest, and in Asia conformity is prized to a similar detriment. In summary, if you are going to order, order it first before everyone else so that you can enjoy your meal!
Sometimes in our society, we want to be different just for the sake of being different. Sometimes different is bad. Sometimes there is a reason why no one else is doing what you are doing. Sometimes different is good because the majority out there are doing things that are not good. We should fight against any of our cultural legacy (whether from the Occident or the Orient) that is our natural tendency to be “predictably irrational” so that we can make choices that are the right ones. In my field, I truly believe that too much lifting is being done for all the wrong reasons with absolutely dreadful results. As you know, I believe that the majority of docs out there who believe that lifting brows and cheeks is right are in a word wrong. However, I believe that Botox, almost despite its popularity, is so very right thing to do for long-term gains and to avoid what would otherwise be ineluctable aging. (If you don’t know what I am talking about, watch my 3 video logs: 1, 2, 3). I believe that Restylane and Perlane, which are the most popular fillers on the market in Europe and the U.S., are the most popular for a reason (which is corroborated by my clinical experience). Believe in the right thing whether it is popular or not, but don’t believe in something either because it is popular or because it is not.
Predictably Irrational Part 4 of 5: Expectations
December 18, 2008 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
In Predictably Irrational, Ariely gave a certain subset of participants in an experiment a vinegar-tainted beer to try while disclosing to these individuals in advance that the beer would be laced with vinegar. Almost all subjects who tried the beer reacted instantaneously in a negative way and refused to continue drinking the beer after the initial sip. In a second subset, the participants were told they were going to drink a quality brew and after consuming the first tastes, they were asked what they thought of the beer. After they finished drinking the beer, they were informed that balsamic vinegar had been added to enhance the taste of the beer. Almost all of the participants in this group did not change their mind about the taste of the beer when told of this unusual addition. Then, group one who had been informed in advance of the presence of vinegar was offered the chance to add the right amount of vinegar to help enhance the taste of the beer, which was two dropperfuls for every ounce of beer. Not suprisingly, no one accepted the offer to add the vinegar. When group 2 was offered the chance to enhance their beer with vinegar, most of them actually added the vinegar to the beer to make it more flavorful. This is a powerful study to show how perceived expectations can alter our enjoyment of an item, event, etc.
As you probably know, I tend to err on the side of conservative expectations rather than simply creating a false and uneducated bias toward how rosy everything will be. I outline for you in great detail all the limitations of any procedure you choose with me because I want to make sure that expectations are met rather than not. I tell you the vinegar in advance of your drinking the beer, so to speak. Perhaps not how marketers would recommend engaging in business, but this is plastic surgery not selling couches. I tend to create as realistic an expectation on the front end as humanly possible, as many of you who have sat in on a consultation with me know full well.
A great video log that I shot discusses the differences between education, expectations, and excuses. In short, an education is the same thing as an excuse, except that it was told to a patient before a procedure rather than afterward. Creating realistic expectations is critical. I always say that the only thing that I can predict about human nature is that it is absolutely unpredictable. That being said, expectations are so very hard to define. “Hey doc, will anyone notice your work at one week following a procedure?” How would you honestly answer that question? Who knows???!!! I simply cannot account for all facets of human responses. However, I help guide you to calibrate proper expectations by asking willing patients to film themselves during their recovery through diaries and journeys, shooting videos entitled companions to help you wade through the psychological dimensions you need to know, and to ask countless questions in the forum and shoot as many educational videos as possible. Even with all of this work, I still sometimes fall short of trying to capture every single patient’s expectations appropriately.