Today, I introduce a new level of web 2.0 integration by incorporating social medial channels on every page of my website. Watch the short video I shot in my vlog section on this idea.

As many of you know, I relentlessly post videos on YouTube. However, you have to go to YouTube to find these videos or scour my site for the newest video that I have shot. Two things will rectify this encumbrance. First, the updates section will tell you when a new anything (video, text, section, etc.) has been posted with a direct link to it. Second, I will now have a link on every page to my YouTube videos. (Btw, another option is to subscribe to my videos on YouTube if you don’t mind an email sent to you that I have a new video shot and uploaded).

In addition, I have made a lot of changes to make this website a truly aggressive Web 2.0 platform, meaning fully integrating social media into this site with the incorporation of Facebook (a new group that I just created on Facebook dedicated to LFP’s shenanigans) that facilitates more easily my posting photos and other stuff that my staff and I are doing, e.g., thoughts that lie outside of my blog entries, vlogs, and forum postings. (Btw, you must register for Facebook to see the page). Twitter updates from my staff and me. (We’ll see how successful this is, but my staff is already getting crazy and loving to submit “tweets” [that is what short updates are called].) A direct link is also now displayed on every page to my podcasts (far right icon) that I publish in iTunes for your iPhone and iPod. Hopefully, these changes will encourage a broader sense of community, participation, and integration into what LFP has to offer our global tribe of followers.

Btw, as you probably would surmise, I really haven’t “completed” anything. This is just the beginning of the journey over the next 6 months and beyond.

I had to take my ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support) renewal this past weekend, as a requirement for maintaining my surgery center’s credentialing. I have always been bored out of my skull during these courses but not this time. Robert Twite, RN, brilliantly created a session that allowed me to sense his passion and his “why” (see Tuesday’s blog). His mission in life was to help others truly save others’ lives. I assume his vision for myself and as part of his crusade (see Wednesday’s blog), I posted a video on how to do good CPR and why to do it. My teaching skills for CPR pale in comparison to his so forgive me Robert for my feeble attempt but I need to get this message out to my readers and followers of this website.

What I found very interesting were a few things. First, he mentioned the idea of “hands only CPR” that has come into vogue recently was very very intriguing. He argued that many advocates have shown that just doing chest compressions without mouth-to-mouth can have very similar or same outcomes in survival. There are a few reasons for this. First, the air that is recycled from your lungs and breathed into the individual is filled with CO2. Second, if you breathe too often and too much (which is the natural tendency to do), you can make chest compressions less viable owing to a rise in pressure inside the chest wall. Rapid, early, and hard chest compressions can save a life.

Second, he talked about how we believe in the past that we better check a pulse before starting CPR. Well, yes, that is not a bad idea but not at the expense of starting early CPR. What he argued is that without chest compressions in someone who does not have a pulse will lead to a quick death. If you perform chest compressions in someone who has a pulse, the only negative outcome is a sore chest. Even if you find a weak pulse, additional CPR can oftentimes supplement the cardiac output of blood and lead to a better outcome. He offered the example that in children who even have a pulse but a slow one like at 60 beats per minute (that is slow for a child), the advice is to actually do CPR to improve blood flow. So if you check a pulse, then I check a pulse, and we both don’t know if there is a pulse, we are wasting precious time for no reason. Forget all that and start high quality CPR. Crappy chest compressions do nothing. High quality chest compressions only offer 25 to 30% of a normal amount of blood to flow out of the heart. Also, remember that you must lift off the chest, i.e., let the chest completely recoil back to an inflated position because you need the blood to return to the heart as well.

Finally, if your business does not have an AED (automatic extrenal defibrillator), you need to get one. Early shocks from this device will lead to a life saved. Without one, even chest compressions might not be enough. These devices will actually guide you when to shock and when not to. Basically today, the goal is 2 minutes of sustained high quality CPR with chest compression to breaths of 30:2 followed by the AED announcing when 2 minutes are up to determine if you need to be shocked or not. Even after a shock or not shock, continue CPR until told to stop. The AED however should interrupt CPR at the earliest time possible since the earlier you get an AED on someone the higher chance of survival for that person in many cases if the rhythm is shockable like ventricular fibrillation, which is a common cause of cardiac arrest.

This blog is not intended to replace formal basic life support training but to encourage you to get certified. In the meantime, if you haven’t yet and the occasion arises where you need to save a life remember early and hard chest compressions with recoil time and get an AED fast and furiously then continue until help arrives. Don’t err on the side of checking pulses, checking pulses, then looking at each other. Most likely CPR and an AED will save a life more than whatever the ambulance or physician can do. Outcome studies have shown that only 2 things matter for survival: good quality and early CPR and an AED early, not fancy drugs or airways. Two things in conclusion: get CPR certified and make sure that your workplace has an AED on site. Thanks Robert for the brilliant education. I hope I can spread your message out there to all who can hear.

Simon Sinek talked about Apple’s success. The reason that Apple succeeds is not because they make good looking computers. They succeed because they have inspired their customers to aspire to be what they are all about, i.e., making good looking computers (among other things…that work well). I myself aspire to be an Apple aficionado because I cherish their values: great design, simple to use, and passion not to compromise that aesthetic vision. Do you think the reason that someone wears a Harley-Davidson tattoo is that they want to promote a Harley so that their stocks will rise? Well, that is a lot of dedication if it is the case. No, in fact the reason that someone has a Harley-Davidson tattoo is that the individual has taken that vision unto themselves as their own. They have assumed that vision and internalized it and made it theirs. Sinek said the reason that people marched on Washington D.C. in the 60s was not for Martin Luther King. It was for themselves because they assumed Reverend King’s vision for themselves.

One of my proudest moments this year (you might chuckle) was when a newscaster here in Dallas whom I do Botox, fillers etc. for told me she had walked into a room of 20 women where one woman was talking about not doing browlifts but to focus on balancing the anterior cheek, etc. Afterward, my patient went up to the lady and said, “Are you Dr. Lam’s patient?” She said, “Yes, how did you know?” Of course, my patient said, “Because you sound just like him.”

I hope that my vision for changing this world from an overlifted bizarre looking alien race to a natural beautiful ethnically sensitive balanced result will challenge you to assume my vision and make it yours. If you are not there yet, I hope you will be. I know that is sounding arrogant but I am not intending it to be. I hope you can be my agent of change and to renounce the status quo that noses need to be over-elevated in Asians, over-reduced in Middle Easterns, and individuals need brows in the middle of their forehead. That is why I was angry sounding this weekend in response to a forum posting because I would hope my patients not allow others to be subjected to antiquated surgery and what I view as an untenable philosophy.

BTW, THE WEB TUTORIALS ARE ALSO NOW LIVE!

Many of our businesses are predicated on the what and the how. What are we producing? What is it that the consumer wants? How do we improve things? How do we make the consumer happier? Let’s take a look at the real core issue: Why. I was listening to Simon Sinek last year at an EO event who talked about getting to why (more about that tomorrow as well). The why is why we are doing what we are doing.

I had a spa event a few weeks ago where a lady said what really bothered her were a few fine lines on her upper lip. No one in the room could see what she was talking about, and she asked me, “Dr. Lam, would you mind if I just came to you to fill these lines and nothing else?” I said, “No, that is fine. However if you continue to do that over the next 3 years, you are wasting my talent and I am wasting your money.” That being said, MOST women come to me solely to fill those fine lines because that is what they are programmed to think ages them. Obviously, if I have done what it takes to get you where I think you should be then we can fill those lines. That is fine with me to see you and to educate you but I do not roll out of bed to fill a line. I get out of bed for an entirely other reason…

What is my why? It is in a nutshell “to take care of people and to transform lives”. Audacious? perhaps but it is something that is driven into my staff’s brains. The why is not just the reason that I get out of bed, it is the reason that all my staff get out of bed too. Yes, they come for a paycheck no doubt. However, they come because of the difference they know we are making every day.

If any of them look at what I do as trivial, then they will not stay with me oftentimes not because I am going to fire them but because they are going to fire themselves. They can’t survive in a culture that is dedicated to relentlessly addressing our core why. Stephanie, who works as my MA, left her last job because they had no why. Their why was to gouge and steal from the customer. She has seen what our why is every day. She sees that I turn away as many customers’ desires as I accept. I fundamentally cannot and will not waste your money. I really love what I do until I bleed. However, my staff does too. We are here every day impassioned by YOU.

Remember that as much as you choose me as a surgeon, I choose you as a patient. This is a marriage of sorts. If you are principally negative and micro-managing. If you are here to do something that fundamentally is a waste of your money, you should not be my patient and I should not be your physician. Am I taking risks with this website? Absolutely, I am NOT all things to all people. I have defined my vision and my patients who are attracted to it come and stay. Those who are not, do not. They leave or don’t stay and I am more than happy about that. Same with my staff. Those who cannot share my vision at a fundamental level don’t last. Are they wrong? Am I wrong? No. No one is wrong. The fit is just not right.

Do you know what your why is? Why do you get of bed every day? Why do you go to work every day? Is it just for a paycheck? Is it to punch in the time clock and leave so that you can party with friends? Fundamentally beyond the what and the how lies the why. That is the core of any vision.

BTW: THE UPDATES SECTION IS NOW LIVE. ENJOY!

My favorite quote of all time is as follows:
“Vision without action is only a dream.
Action without vision is only passing time.
Vision with action will change the world.”

I have used these words to close many of my lectures on leadership. It is the core of my belief system. It is the core of this website. I had a blog entry (you will see that many blog entries relate to one another, partly because I have a finite brain but also because I have deep abiding passions that are focused in nature) that talks about “walking the talk.” I have dealt with a lot of dreamers who have seen the glorious building I have built and who want to be part of the vision. My tagline which has become a bit of an inside joke is “Join the vision now”, which is what I used when I was first recruiting physicians for my building. I found that physicians (pardon me) can be divided into one of two types: the lone maverick whose ethical decision making is circumspect to say the least or the risk-adverse individual who is ensconced in his or her own fears. The first type is a big dreamer but I do not like their actions. The second type is neither a dreamer not a doer, leading ultimately to failure at getting the bigger slice. I infrequently encounter a medical professional in whom I have the rare respect of having both the right vision and the right action. In any case, I have not compromised my vision for anyone (not even for my patients. We’ll get to that on Wednesday.)

A huge reason that I joined Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) is that these are gentlemen and ladies who have a big vision for changing the world and who have put all their risk behind that vision. I slavishly defend my brethren in that organization and have rarely if ever missed a meeting. I missed only September’s this year for our learning event because I was in Montreal at the hair restoration meeting. I have missed no forum meetings this year because I make that a priority. We are all given one miss. I take that to mean zero if at all possible.

Reading this weekend entries from a young gentleman from the UK in my forum postings, I like what he said, “a mentor/friend of mine said that you become the top 5 people you surround yourself with. it led me to change my entire social circle, create a mastermind, and my life has changed so drastically over the last year, and continues to every single day. It’s really hard to get rid of negative influences in your life, especially when you bonded and create some level of co-dependency. So I absolutely agree with thoughts in this post!” Thanks Vince for your wonderful entries. He also offered his apologies for talking about irrelevant subjects on this website. I have made it a point that there is no such things by opening a section called “Tell me about your passions”. This website aspires to be much more than a website on facial cosmetic surgery. It is about a community inspired to change the thinking of the world. Okay, once again I get ahead of myself. Read Wednesday’s blog.

Jan May, our Botox business development rep, just gave us the good news: we have the best wait times in Texas based on a uniform customer satisfaction survey provided nationally. Remember these are only the top practices across the U.S. that even get these services so these are the busiest practices that at least reach platinum status with Allergan (300+ bottles of Botox a year, which we are way over). Obviously, for a slow practice with 10 patients a day, you would expect the wait times to be great. However, we are the best of the busiest and that says a lot.

I am obsessed with quality customer service and so is my staff so I am extremely proud that despite our very busy practice that we can garner this distinction. In addition, I always make it a point to make sure that my patient knows that I am running behind if I am, and I do so personally myself rather than delegate that responsibility to my staff. Further, my staff tries to ensure that every waiting patient is attended to with appropriate amenities to make their time more enjoyable and perceptually less prolonged. In short, I am really happy with our results, and I am glad that my patients overall are satisfied with our expeditious service!

Satisfaction and complacency are not words that I know. I am grateful for the stellar reviews of this website, but I want to continue to refine and make this website more user friendly and more extensive in its scope. With that, I am rolling out the beginning of some major additions and changes to this site that will probably take 6 months to a year to complete in full. I have been working on some of these preliminary elements for over 6 months now with my webmaster with a focus specifically to help out-of-town patients get in and get out of Dallas more easily and to make their stay more seamless, enjoyable, and less difficult.

As a huge percentage of my patients come in from out of town, I am trying to help them out. In fact, I cannot remember a day in the last 3 to 4 months that a patient did not come in from somewhere out of town, state, or country. With that in mind, I have aimed to streamline this large percentage of my practice in a unique way through a custom-built “hospitality kit”. I would like to thank Jeff from Chicago who came up with and executed in great detail his idea of a “hospitality kit”, which in short is intended to help the out-of-town visitor truly be able to visit Dallas effortlessly and with less trepidation. He was the $5000 contest winner with his elaborate idea of the hospitality kit, which I am presenting today.

Some of the features of the hospitality kit include 360 virtual tours of the various hotel rooms in Plano and the immediate surrounding area that I personally shot and edited; a video tour through the hotels and attractions as well as my building to familiarize you with the Plano area; a custom-built map that permits you to view Plano and attractions that include restaurants, hotels, laundry services, tech services, atms, banks, book stores, etc.; full menus from area restaurants that feature takeout and delivery focused on the recovering patient; a peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing on travel assistance so that an experienced patient can help a prospective one; a list of DVD movies that you can rent from me including a player for no charge; a new concierge service that is both reasonably priced and offers such amenities as fully stocking your refrigerator with items you request in advance of your stay; and the whole shebang can be downloaded as a single pdf file for your convenience to help in planning your trip to DFW (the pdf feature should be live within 1 to 2 days).

Btw, even though my hospitality kit launches today, it is already in need of an update! I just learned of two new hotels opening in West Plano that I have not had time to explore but look absolutely amazing: Aloft and Nylo. For the first time, West Plano is getting extremely COOL hotels here! I am really excited. I have already made some comments in the new Patient Submitted (in this case I submitted) Travel Assistance section.

In addition, you can now see additional features (that we are still working on at this time) including web tutorials in which I personally navigate you through parts of this website that may interest you but you cannot find given that this website has now expanded beyond 3,500 total pages (I have just finished shooting all those videos last night. My webmaster just needs to upload them and put the page together). An updates section that automatically lists each day what sections have been recently updated (this should be up today or tomorrow). Besides the blogs and forum section, I update many sections almost daily so you might not know, for example, that I added a new video testimonial or photos from Emina’s trip to Tibet (which i just did) but now you will not have to scour the site for those changes. It will be listed with a direct link to the change in the updates section. Many thoughtful visitors have sent an email to me or my staff about problems they were facing with videos, text, pages, etc. not loading correctly. Now, that problem can be sent directly to the webmaster through “Report Bug” in which the problem page is already flagged when the message is sent. (Also, I will be radically overhauling your video experience in the coming months to make some of the infrequent problems much less frequent or eliminated all together.) I hope these changes will make your visit to LFP a much more enriching, educational, and enjoyable experience!

As many of you know, I love beautiful clothing, mostly Italian, where most of my design influences come from. However, I am celebrating today as the third and final installment on good design and quality craftsmanship, English tailoring and design. Anyway, the Italians learned their trade from the English to begin with. Although Armani is perhaps synonymous with great suit design, they are mass manufactured and lack the attention to detail that only Savile Row suits bear. I have many Armani suits that begin to fall apart at certain points over time due to the sloppy tailoring. Yes, the design is great but the craftsmanship is lacking. Armani has also brand extended themselves to mean very little. Mr. Armani does not even design most of the stuff that goes out with his name on it.

I was watching the movie, Layer Cake, with Daniel Craig and loved his suits. I attentively watched the rolling credits at the end to see who designed them. It was Kilgour. With that, I contacted Kilgour to have a suit made up for me. Since I have no time (not to mention the expense too) to fly to London for several fittings, Kilgour routinely flies out to the States to fit you. Unfortunately due to my extensive lecturing, I missed about 3 to 4 of their visits extending the time to actually complete my fittings to over 2 years time. I finally got my brown hopsack suit that I absolutely love. Perhaps I wear it too often for a brown suit but who really cares.

Kilgour began in 1882 and has gone through different iterations of a name, most famously, Kilgour French & Stanbury, which is still the official name of the company. Kilgour has dressed such timeless personalities as Fred Astaire, Rex Harrison, and Cary Grant. The only real negative today is that Kilgour has made a concession to the mass market through adding a ready-to-wear collection by Carlo Brandelli. Beautiful but not bespoke, as we are trying to focus on in this blog.

I think the art and craft of tailoring has been lost through mass-market consumerism. I love the idea that a tailor slaves as an apprentice to master his craft and then has the dignity and patience to create a work of art. A full bespoke suit can take 80 hours to make with what the website touts as “4000 baste stitches through the chest.” To be honest, I just went with an entry-level bespoke but it is already the most fantastically looking and feeling suit that just conforms to the body. I asked for a softer shoulder but in the future I would love to try Anderson & Sheppard, which makes a much more unconstructed suit. I think old world craftsmanship has become a dying art.

To continue my blog series on good design and quality craftsmanship, I would like to feature what I consider the ultimate watch company, Patek Philippe. Not Rolex? No way. Yes, I also own a Rolex (and I love it). Rolexes are machine made and mass produced. Pateks are handmade and individually crafted. For the non-watch connoisseur, Patek may be a foreign term. For the watch connoisseur, a Patek is the ultimate prize and the quintessential watch on the planet.

I own just one but I waited over a year to get my watch. I attained a discontinued model that I had to have, as it reflected everything I loved in good design: an understated white face, black roman numerals, tapered hands, and a classic white gold hobnail patterned bezel that is self-winding with a date window. Pateks are actually great investments because they almost invariably go up in price and have steadily done so. You can easily sell your used model for more than you paid for it. I love Patek’s slogan used in their ads: “You never actually own a Patek Philippe; you merely take care of it for the next generation.” Patek Philippe holds over 70 patents and is the only manufacture that crafts all of its mechanical movements according to the strict specifications of the Geneva Seal.

Patek Philippe was founded in 1839 by Antoine Norbert de Patek and François Czapek. In 1844 Mr. Patek met the French watchmaker, Mr. Adrien Philippe in Paris where the latter presented his pioneering stem winding and setting system by the crown. Eventually Czapek left the company and the company was rechristened Patek Philippe (that is actually a bit of a truncated story to the evolution of the brand name.) Patek manufactures everything in house with master watch craftsmen who perform 1200 operations to create a single watch, which can represent over 600 hours of work on a single watch followed by 30 days of observation and evaluation for each timepiece. A self-winding watch runs for on average 1200 hours before it leaves the factory.

Each watch is individually assembled, polished and regulated by hand. They even polish parts that the owner will never see. I like this statement on aesthetics: “We strive for timeless aesthetic perfection. Beauty is also present where it cannot be seen. Bridges are angled, polished by hand and decorated with Côtes de Genève, and circular graining, or perlage, embellishes every movement. That an owner might never be able to see these many aesthetic touches does not discourage us. This is simply the way we make watches. Beauty, albeit understated, is all-pervasive at Patek Philippe. We know that the hundreds of parts operating in harmony make a watch work, but it is beauty that brings a watch to life.”

I was scouring the Internet for something I remember reading that for the ultimate in horological difficulty, the grand complication, a single man would work every day for 6 months to complete one such watch. Pateks represent the ultimate in style, taste, and craftsmanship (in my opinion).

I have had tremendous response to my philosophically and psychologically bent blogs. However, I would like to take a break this week from that topic. Another one of my deep passions is the eminent melange of good design (creative and understated artistry) and quality craftsmanship (handmade, individualized, technical quality work) that I adhere to in my profession of plastic surgery. The companies that I am going to celebrate I own NO stock in but want to share with you some great finds that you may or may not be aware of already. Besides the two qualities aforementioned, I also look for a brand to be a specialty house that does not vaunt a meaningless number of brand extensions (again like what I love in my practice which is being more of a specialist than a generalist in plastic surgery). Further, the brand should be one that a connoisseur prizes compared to the “obvious” brand that every consumer is familiar with. Okay here goes…

My first brand that I was introduced to many years ago by a good friend of mine, Tim, with whom I grew up, is OMAS. I remember opening the lovely package and wondering, “What is this? I have never heard of it.” I was hoping for a Montblanc, of course. Tim explained to me that the OMAS pen was a work of exceptional craftsmanship and design. I was not impressed since I had never heard of the brand. Now, I am in love with the beauty of OMAS and prefer it over any other pen. No, I am not a rabid collector. I really own a couple of OMAS pens but I love their design work. My favorite is the OMAS 360 which is a work of gorgeous beauty (featured in the photo) that has a 3 point triangular design that fits perfectly in one’s hand. It also looks really cool and is so simple in its design, echoing what Louis Sullivan popularized, “Form Follows Function.”

OMAS is an Italian pen company founded in 1925 by Armando Simoni, hence the name OMAS (Officina Meccanica Armando Simoni) and has been handcrafted since then. Each pen is handcrafted and requires over 100 stages to completion. The 12-sided models are shaped individually and polished by hand with cork. To create a celluloid model requires about 100 working days and reflects what their website calls a “goldsmith’s masterpiece”. Celluloid is a product of cellulose treated with camphor in an ether solution that is long and complicated with the above-stated 100 days of a production cycle to yield a sturdy, resilient, light, polished, and pleasingly tactile pen. Although practically speaking I do not often use a fountain pen, the broad-nibbed fountain pen offers the most delectable feeling during writing and creates the most gorgeous trail of ink across a sheet of paper, especially what I love the blue-black ink. Okay, enough salivating over a pen. I hope you enjoyed this blog even though you might not care too much about pens.