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Buying Your Mentor’s Building — with Behrooz A. Torkian, MD (Ep. 222)

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Hello, and welcome to Beauty and the Biz where we talk about the business and marketing side of plastic surgery, and buying your mentor's building.

I’m your host, Catherine Maley, author of Your Aesthetic Practice – What your patients are saying, as well as consultant to plastic surgeons, to get them more patients and more profits.

Now, today’s episode is called "Buying Your Mentor’s Building — with Behrooz A. Torkian, MD".

Typically, after residency, you do a one-year fellowship where you get invaluable hands-on surgical experience from other successful experienced surgeons.

You also get the “behind the scenes” look at the business and marketing of how you run a successful practice, which is also invaluable.

And, sometimes, you get even more. Such as, buying your mentor's building.

I recently interviewed Dr. Behrooz Torkian, a facial cosmetic and reconstructive surgeon practicing in uber-competitive Beverly Hills.

We talked on the topic of "buying your mentor's building":

  • How he ended up buying the building from the very surgeon who mentored him years ago
  • His plans to expand by opening a separate med spa a distance away; and,
  • How he got on the TV show "The Doctors" three times and the impact that had on his practice and profits.
Visit Dr. Torkian’s website

P.S. Want my 5-Star Rated Book for FREE? Leave me a review and I'll send it out to you!

✔️ STAY UPDATED!

🤝 LET'S CONNECT! 🤝

Transcript:

Buying Your Mentor's Building — with Behrooz A. Torkian, MD

Catherine Maley, MBA: Hello and welcome to Beauty in the Biz, where we talk about the business and marketing side of plastic surgery, and buying your mentor’s building. I'm your host, Catherine Maley, author of "Your Aesthetic Practice, What Your Patients Are Saying", as well as consultant to plastic surgeons to get them more patients and more profits.

Now, today's guest is Dr. Behrooz Torkian, and he's a facial and reconstructive surgeon (who’s well-versed in the statement of “buying your mentor’s building”), practicing in uber competitive Beverly Hills. Now, Dr. Torkian specializes in rhinoplasty and facial plastic surgery, as well as reconstructive surgery, and he performs his surgery at the historic Lasky Clinic, and we're going to talk more about that.

Now, he attended Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and then his specialty training in head and neck surgery at the University of California, Irvine, where he also participated in the prestigious fellowship in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery conducted by the AAFPRS. Dr. Torkian, it is a pleasure to have you on Beauty and the Biz.

It's been a while getting you on here.

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Thank you so much. And yes, I've been looking forward to this, I think for three years now. I think the first time we connected regarding the podcast was during lockdown, during the COVID lockdown. And at that time, I said, yes, let's do it. But I don't know what came up.

I think what happened is that we were trying to figure out how to open the office again.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Gotcha. Well, now we have more to talk about, you know? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Now we have a lot more to talk. A lot has happened since then. The zoom boom is real.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Yes. So, what I would love to do. And the part I like so much is your journey from training to entering the real marketplace. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

What was that journey like? Because it's usually a fairly jagged road, or was yours a straight shot to Lasky clinic? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Oh, no. Okay. So, Lasky Clinic was a dream a, a, almost like a, kind of like a golden egg on a pedestal type of thing in, in facial plastic surgery. Pretty much any head and neck surgery program that has a facial plastic surgery program associated with it or within it has, has, Some conversation about, Oh, well, you can always go train at Lasky clinic.

That would be just the ultimate. And so, that's what it was like back then. Hopefully people still view it that way, but I'll tell you, my history. And I've been listening to your podcast and some of my colleagues on the podcast is not that different actually from many of my colleagues in, in head and neck, facial plastic surgery.

Many of us get into this, not knowing that we want to get into this. What happened with me was very similar to most of my colleagues, but I got into medicine not thinking that I was interested in plastic surgery. In fact, that wasn't, I, it was something that I thought was frivolous and it just didn't make sense.

And why would you want to go through a procedure for something like that? Just didn't know at that point, I wasn't enlightened to how much we can help people with the skills that we have and how important of a role we do play in their lives. But the initial reason I went to medical school was because I wanted to practice within my limits of knowledge of, or of my passion of microbiology and molecular genetics, and I wanted to apply molecular genetics to pediatric oncology.

That was, I was going to be a pediatrician, oncologist, and I was going to learn how to trick viruses to make cancer treatments, which are now finally happening about two decades later, which is why I didn't go into that field, of course. But many things happened since then, you know. Few people hold your hand, you get the right kind of influences around you, you get the right kind of mentorship, and then someone stops you along the way and says, son, you've got good hands and you need to use them.

And so, that's, that's kind of how you get into the surgical realm from medical school. A lot of people don't go to medical school thinking that they want to be surgeons either, they just don't know, you know. And so, as a kid, I was always very manual, took a lot of little tiny things apart and put them back together, turned radios into...

into hands free cell telephones and, you know, all kinds of cool stuff like that, gadgets that I thought I was inventing. And I learned again and again, and I still do today, that no idea is ever really had by me alone. And it's never the first time it's been had. The idea had a life of its own and it's been around.

And so, never invented anything that was brand new. But when I, when I, was at Vanderbilt, we had an amazing head and neck department. And I sat in on a couple of lectures where I learned a little bit more about the intricate anatomy of the head and neck, loved it. And that was my initial passion. And then I saw some of these kids who were getting reconstructed with their cleft lips and or burns at the corners of their mouths.

And sometimes with big scalp defects and I saw some of the big grotesque looking tissue expanders and those things just really piqued my interest in plastic surgery. And so, as, as someone who loved the anatomy of the head and neck, I stuck with the head and neck training and was one of 13, usually there's 2 percent of each class that go into head and neck surgery.

In our class of 100, 13 of us applied to head and neck surgery that year. Super competitive. Almost everybody got a head and neck. surgical Residency a few didn't and then they did it later in different ways But many of us went into facial plastic surgery So, I have colleagues all around from north Carolina to here to la that went to medical school with me to practice the same thing It's just been Yeah, it's been really interesting.

And there must have been some really strong influences and mentorship at that time. And so, that, that started me in the head of neck. And then at UC Irvine, my chairman, Roger Crumbly, who I, I adore to this day, I should be in more contact with him, love him. And my other amazing mentor, Tim Kelly. Really held my hand through this process and I just wanted to be like them, you know, that's that was what I wanted to do and they were both facial plastic surgeons in our head and neck program.

It's kind of rare to have a head and neck Surgery program have a facial plastic surgeon as their chairman But Dr. Crumley did that and he was one of the few in the country that ever did it And it was just an amazing influence to have him around us. It was it was wonderful and so that's how I got into it and then Lassie Clinic was just a dream.

I thought, you know, I could train here. I came and interviewed here for a fellowship with Dr. Kamer. I'm now sitting in his office. So, for those of you that can see this on video, these windows here used to look on Dr. Kamer and that, that, I never dreamed that I could have this. But I came here as a fellowship applicant.

And at the time I was kind of geographically strapped to the Southern California area. My wife was a medical student at UCSD and then she got her residency at Cedars Sinai and I was at UC Irvine and we were commuting from in between and so on. And so, I thought, you know, I told Dr. Kamer, I think this is the place for me.

I grew up here. I grew up in Sherman Oaks. Around the corner, I have family in West LA and we just had a baby and we want to be near the family and he said this could be a great place for you. But I still ended up at UC Irvine for, I won't say what reasons, but it had a little bit to do with me and a little bit to do with Dr.

Kamer, probably. But I, I still ended up at UC Irvine and did my fellowship there. And then years later, I was practicing with a dermatologist that I befriended because. to, to be frank and to make this story a little cuter. My grandmother met him and wanted to set him up with my cousin. Oh my god. She said, she said, you're perfect for my, for my granddaughter and I want you to meet my granddaughter.

And in, in the process of trying to get them hooked up, she introduced me to him because she said, you guys are both young doctors, you should know each other, should be friends. He just moved here from Ohio. His name is Don McRobbie, and she said you should be friends. And I said, great grandma Thank you So, we made friends and he and I had this dream about at that time Paul Nassif and Dr. Amaron were together and we thought look these guys did this thing where they had a facial plastic surgeon and dermatologist These are synergistic fields.

We had this dream of making our Center Better than theirs we were going to be the skin and face center and we were just going to kill it And so, we set up shop not far from here. I can see it from this window at the corner of Beverly…Wilsh— Beverly Excuse me, Wilshire Boulevard and Lyndon Boulevard I was there doing fine.

We had a couple of subtenants. He had the lease on it. Things were not going really exactly the way we thought with the skin and face center, but you know, we were doing okay I was getting building my practice so to speak and people were coming —

Catherine Maley, MBA: Let me interrupt you for a second Were you a partnership or were you a 50 50 partnership? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Were you just renting? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: We were discussing all that but we ended up just Him renting and I rented from him and we were loosely associated and so it didn't really become that center that we thought So, I was free. I didn't have any real ties except for a sublease which I was a handshake It was wonderful for me because I was very, very, flexible and mobile And I got a phone call from Dr.

Frankel, who is now my business partner of I would say 12 years now, a business partner of mine. Maybe less time than that. I was a tenant for some time and then became business partner as we bought into the surgery center.

Catherine Maley, MBA: And explain who Dr. Frankel is. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: So, Dr. Frankel is one of Dr. Kamer's old fellows.

He has been at the Lasky Clinic now for if I've been here 15, it would be 25 years. He and Dr. Stephens are the two main surgeons in the building, and I'll explain real briefly what the building is before getting back into that story. Don't let me get off track on that story. Okay. So, Dr. Kamer built this building in the 70s.

It was already built, but he turned it in the 70s, late 70s, into a surgery center. It was probably, by report, one of the first freestanding surgical centers in Beverly Hills. And it's downstairs from where my office is now. And he saw patients upstairs, and he had a lot of space. It's a 10, 000 square foot building.

It has a lot of little nooks and crannies in which things can be done, both clinical and non-clinical. And he had his fellow doing certain things in certain areas, and he had his post op patients go into certain rooms downstairs. Which were not really efficiently used, but they were very posh, and it was just wonderful, wonderful for his celebrity clientele.

And so, the building gained a lot of clout with his clout, with his popularity and his fame. He treated a lot of celebrities, he did amazing work, and he was a nice person to all of them. And so, they really admired him, and the community really admired him. And he's still around, and we see him every once in a while.

And he trained a lot of people in the area. Many of the Surgeons, plastic surgeons in this area, the facial plastics are, are pretty much, again, a stone's throw away from us or what they call disciples of Cameron, but they were trained by him. And so, we had, we had a tremendous respect for all of them, obviously.

And so, down the line, when he was retiring, He left part of his space open and Frankel and Dr. Andrew Frankel and Dr. Leslie Stevens, who is a general plastic surgeon that does all body work, including face work, were here as his tenants. Because towards the ends of his practice, he had them here as tenants, and they were using the operating room too, and there were at times other tenants as well.

So, when he left, there was some space open in the building, and Dr. Frankel and Dr. Stevens were here on their own, and they had some other tenants for some time upstairs here. And they had a space downstairs, which was a separate little nook that was on the west side of the building, opposite of where I'm sitting now, and had a beautiful window shape, kind of round shape window like this, and an entrance on its own.

And they were trying to figure out what to do with it. Previously used to be the fellows, what they call the fellows office, or what was the post op room where he would remove the bandages day one, and then go back into surgery. And so, what they called me about was to see if I wanted to. move in and use that space.

They were trying to find a tenant for that space. But when I got the call from Dr. Frankel, I said, Oh no, I wonder what I did wrong. I hope I didn't say something to a patient that got misinterpreted. And then they went back and said to Dr. Frankel that I saw a patient of his and didn't say nice. I said, Oh my God, I wonder what happened.

So, answer the phone hesitantly. But I said, hi, how you doing? What's going on? And he said, I need to talk to you, but I want you to come over here, here and have lunch. We need you to see something here. And I was like, wow, here I go again. I'm going to the last week clinic. Like, I wonder what's going to happen here.

So, I sat down with them. We had no lunch, but we had a conversation about that space downstairs. Shortly after I moved in, I didn't have much. I was running a tight, tight practice. It was me and one employee. We were sharing one of the other employees with Dr. Murabi at the other office. And so, I had just one person and me and a bunch of boxes full of Restylane, Botox, Juvederm, and some charts.

And so, it was really simple for me. I packed it all up in the back of my BMW and drove over. It was like that. It was that kind of, that kind of thing. And we started practice here in, it was 2000. nine, three years into my practice, and it's, you know, been steady growth, steady growth since then, since then, I bought into the surgery center, and as a loosely connected network of practices, we're not partners in our practices.

None of us work for each other and none of us have any financial tie in our main practices together But we own the surgery center together the three of us We've had other tenants here that have had part ownership in the surgery center before But at this time, it's just the three of us and we're hoping that our other tenants would all introduce in a minute will at some point be able to buy into the surgery center too as they get busier because they are paying into it all the time anyway.

So, it's, it's one thing that we think is, is best to have as many benefactors as beneficiaries in the, in the, in that practice.

Catherine Maley, MBA: As long as you can all get along. Absolutely. But let me ask regarding staff, do you share staff? Like, are there more than one receptionist or does everybody have their own receptionist and their own coordinator? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

And how is that, how does that work? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: We each have our own receptionist, our own medical assistants, and our own coordinators. I have a few more employees because I have a little bit more space than they do. So, I, I was able to kind of sprawl out a bit more. I have two so called physician extenders, or a nurse injector, an RN, and a nurse practitioner who does lasers and injections as well.

And I have a practice manager who helps me to oversee all, all the aspects, all the different parts of the practice, including so we have You know, as, as the revenue centers or the revenue generators, we have the nurse practitioner and the, and the RN and myself that are creating revenue. And so, it kind of got a little bit harder to manage for me and, and just the coordinator.

And so, we have a practice manager too. The other two have a few employees. They have a coordinator and a front desk person, and sometimes an MA. And that's, and that's all they function with. And, and we don't really mix together except in the lunchroom and in the hallways. and on our Christmas parties and so on.

The surgery center has a receptionist. And that receptionist works downstairs because the foyer or the entrance of the building, it's almost like a shared communal living space, almost. So, when people walk in, sometimes it's a little confusing. Are they here to go to the surgery center, which is downstairs?

Or are they here to see one of us? We're all upstairs. Or are they here to see the tenant of the corner office where I used to be, which you have to go outside to get to. So, it gets, it gets a little confusing. So, we always have. Someone down there, but that person is technically a, an employee of the surgery center because they are the surgical, surgical schedule coordinator for the surgery center.

So, they're the ones that receive all the requests for surgical schedules from us and from a handful of outside doctors. They use our surgery center. It's about five of them at the present moment and they coordinate our schedules for us. So, we're all very separate and all of our finances are separate We don't really mix that way and we don't really balance patients around unless there's a need to if someone needs a second opinion or if they want a breast augmentation and I think Dr.

Stevens is the right guy then they get sent there. So, we're really very separate but we own the surgery center together and operate the surgery center together and For some time, we had some good revenues because we had some insurance paybacks that were not bad for some period of time when we were doing the rhinoplasty, for example, that had septum deviations and so on, but we are now a break-even entity and we are just basically always just making, making just on our, on our black line.

We're never in the red. We just kind of bounced around between red and black and are usually just on our black line, which is kind of nice.

Catherine Maley, MBA: But when you say that the convenience of it is priceless. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Priceless, priceless, we do have a handful of outside doctors and we try to prioritize their schedules because we know they're coming from outside and they have to drive here.

Sometimes they walk here which is really nice, because we're not really that far from each other. But if they're coming here from outside and we know they have to get back to their practice and to their normal, ordinary, usual state of business, we prioritize their schedules. But for the most part, if I want to schedule cases on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I can.

If I have a VIP that wants to come on Saturday, I just have to ask and someone will volunteer and come in and they'll get paid extra and we'll do it. And so, that's, that's kind of how it works for us and it's really, it's very priceless to have that. It's also, from my perspective, from a safety perspective, Really important to me knowing that I can run downstairs, check the facial nerves, check for hematoma, make sure the skin in the tip of the nose is doing okay, and all that before they go, it is really wonderful.

It's, it's So, much better than getting a phone call from a nurse and then getting on FaceTime and trying to figure out what's going on with the patient before they're discharged. Or before, for example, one of our aftercare facilities picks them up if their blood pressure is going up and down. I can be here and I can help coordinate everything and free.

And that's a, that's a really nice safety perspective for us. And then so down the line, how many years later can't even or even I've lost track of it, but down the years are flying by the years are flying by things are going great business is building and I got another call from Dr. Frankel and I see him down up and down the hallway every day.

We see each other all the time. We actually. because the surgery center is an open concept, kind of like our offices are here. I can actually go into his room and say, good morning. How's your case going today? Great. I'm going to be next door. Great. And then we bounce things around ideas around, even sometimes while we're in surgery, he says, Hey, Bruce, come here and take my friends.

Call me Bruce. And that's kind of our, our colloquial language here. He says, Hey, Bruce, come take a look at this. What would you do with this thing? And sometimes I'll call him, same thing. And we were able to have this camaraderie and we've elevated our, our practices together that way. I hope he sees it the same way.

He's ten years ahead of me in practice and ten years older than me. But, and we real, we really do all benefit from this and some of our newer tenants and some of the other outside clients of our surgery center really benefit from that too. And so, down the line, you know, as things are going so great, he calls me and he says, hey I need to talk to you about something.

Dr. Kamer wanted to sell the building. And because I have first right of refusal, he told me to make him an offer. And I said, awesome. Did you? And he says, yes. And he said, but I, but I think I want you to join me. And I said, well, what about Dr. Stevens? He's been here for so much longer. He said, I asked him and he didn't want to do it.

We don't know why, but you know, maybe he already, maybe he couldn't at the time, or maybe he already was starting to see, cause he's 10 years ahead of Dr. Frankel. He's starting to maybe see where he may be kind of phasing out too. And he didn't want to get strapped into something that could be a longer-term project.

And so, the two of us bought the building together. I won't disclose the percentages, but his is a lot more than mine, but that's the way it works because it was his, his baby and he's been here for so much longer. But for me, it was a no brainer. And I said, you know, if you can own this thing, you will have, it was definitely a no brainer.

You will have the stability knowing that someone else isn't going to come take over and kick me out and change everything that I love about where I practice. And the people with whom I practice, the staff in the surgery center, the anesthesiologist that service our surgery center, all this.

everything. It's a really nice place to come to work.

Catherine Maley, MBA: It's a cash revenue generating asset that you'll want forever. I'm hoping you bought it somewhere around 2008 when all hell broke out with real estate and it was good price? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Compared to now, it was still a good price.

Catherine Maley, MBA: I mean, it, it must have appreciated dramatically since then. Right? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: We believe it has we try to maintain our building impeccably, not only because we're here and we practice in it, but because we want to make sure that it maintains that value and continues to appreciate and value.

It's really. it's really a landmark of the area. It's, if you see it, it really stands out. And so, we, we feel obligated to it in that sense to keep it up and maintain its value. And you know, you know, naturally when you're a business owner, when you're a, when you're a, a Real estate owner you're always thinking about your rent rolls too because that's how the banks and the outside world are going to value that That asset as a as a practice or as a business of its own it's not necessarily land value plus improvements like it is for a home for example, but you know as our rent roll continues to increase because we're increasing our own rents and we have more tenants that we add and so on.

It, it does help to kind of boost the value of the building as well.

Catherine Maley, MBA: is the point when that other doctor's ready to retire, will he then sell his part of the building to somebody else? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: And then who wants to invest? Well, we haven't had so much discussion about that yet, but I would think that at that time, it would be much of it to my discretion at that time, but probably would be either me buying him out or both of us selling completely and just everybody going.

If he retires and I may just go somewhere else. And cash out on my part of it it's not something that's been really fully hashed out But you know in my mind I always thought, “I'll buy him out and I'll sell Parts of it to whoever wants to be here and can hang in for the long term”; because I'd love to see this Continue to be what it is

Catherine Maley, MBA: Well, the good news is you have options and that's what everyone wants. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

So, you're in very good shape. Now, rumor has it, you bought something else. Can you, can you talk about that? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Yes. Well, it hasn't really gone through fully yet. So, it's a bit premature, but I can talk about it because we, we, I have my accounts open. I have my malpractice. Hopefully in place by the next few days and so on, but, you know, I, I've expanded as much as I can here and I've always wanted to continue to expand and have different sources of revenue.

And you know, we always thought about other, other pieces of real estate and so on. And my wife and I my wife, my lovely wife, Adrian, you deem, who is a. Internist and obesity specialist who also is a subtenant of our space here. Oh, She and I have had many discussions about okay. Well, what can we do?

you know, we have to have something that's going to have us have given us some form of Inflow of cash when we're not actually working or you know That doesn't necessarily have to do with us with our own sweat and tears so to speak and so you know that it's

It's a tough thing to manage. I know the medical business and I know the medispa business as I have been a medical director for a medispa before. And so, I was tipped in by the attorney who actually does our contracts as a medical director for the other medispa. To a business that she works with and said is someone I know and she wants to retire and by the time you Are able to publish this this will have gone through but so many spa and you are Belinda wonderful nurse practitioner She's a doctorate and nurse practitioner.

She is a Council member of your Belinda. She was a previous mayor of your Belinda. She is just a Both beautiful on the outside and inside person who has tremendous skills and she's a teacher. So, she's one of those people that you just want to be associated with. Thankfully, she thinks the same about me.

So, when we discussed. potentially me buying her out so that she can move on with her plans of retirement and having her exit plans in place. She plans to be out of the business in about a year and is giving us that time. She could have retired tomorrow, tomorrow if she wanted to and, and probably did want to, but she's giving us that time because not only does she want to see that the practice, the business goes to.

Through the transition properly, but she also wants to make sure that her employees have The jobs that they have now and continue to enjoy the benefits that they have now and continue to work the way that they are And I promised her that as well and so we plan to be closing within the next five days So, we have this, this thing on the, it's, it's a tiny little place compared to Lasky Clinic, but it is, I believe, in that area, a powerhouse.

There are very few many spa types of practices, not even any plastic surgeons over there. So, I think there's one or two and they don't necessarily have the best. Will of the community necessarily. And so, a lot of people are going outside of the area for their plastic surgery needs. So, for me, it would be not only a revenue center, but also a referral center for me.

My plans are to be there once a week for the beginning, because That's very lofty plan, but maybe once every other week to begin. It's hard to get out of here, but my plans are to be there at least somewhat for consultation purposes So, that I can make it easy for the community. They can gain my trust and they get to know me a little bit and they don't have to drive out here to do it and then from there, hopefully we'll be able to just have a, an easy, easy system by which when the injectors are working and they see something that they know they can't handle with injections that they know is just not going in the right direction that they can, they can speak to and be sort of like mini coordinators or pre coordinators for a surgical treatment that patients can come here for.

That's our goal.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Well, to get things moving, though, if that NP is that well known in that community, you can live off of her transference of credibility. If everyone loves her, all she has to say is you know, Dr. Torkian's the guy to talk to, and hopefully she's a good referral source for you to get rolling. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: She's already been referring patients. Nice. And what I can see is a few have rolled in but what I can see is that she is Tremendously influential in the community and I knew that going into this It it's part of the goodwill of that business that practice And part of frankly what I'm paying her for and I'm so thankful for her being such an easygoing and just gem of a person she's just made this so easy.

I know she's itching to get out, but that's not a reason to make it easy She's selling her baby.

Catherine Maley, MBA: You know, and you know quite frankly if she happens to need a little facial refresher or maybe a bluff or a little mini lift and you could do that for her. She'd be a walking talking testimonial for you big time that year. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: We haven't crossed that bridge yet but does she need anything? Is she looking good? I think she's really pretty. But I, but I know she can point out a couple of things that she wants corrected. I know that's kind of the way it always goes.

Catherine Maley, MBA: I just want coordinators who have had a facelift done by their surgeon and they've tripled their conversion rates. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

It's just a no brainer because now they're not selling anybody, anything. They're not pushing. They're just telling their story about what they went through and how great they feel. Just so easy. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: You know, the coordinators here. So, I have, I have my coordinator, Martha. We're the user met before. Yes, she's lovely, but before and we have our practice manager Magda and we have our main receptionist, but she's, that's, that's a, not a nice term for her because she's so much more than that.

So, we called her the front desk manager, but she didn't really love that either because she said, you're trying to make me feel better about this. And I said, no, you're just so good at this. She just really handles that front desk amazingly.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Can she be the client concierge or something? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: She can be the client concierge.

I like that term. But I know what she's going to say. She's just going to laugh at me again. Because that's the relationship we have. But all three have had upper blood surplacities with me. And of course, they get injections and stuff too. They've all had upper blepharoplasty with me. And so, that, that helps, that really sells, but they're not old enough yet to need the facelift.

We're getting there, but quite frankly, you know, in our, our industry, and you probably have experienced this seeing other practices that you work with, we have access to a lot of stuff and the non-surgical stuff. As limited as it is, it's good. A lot of the non-certical stuff is very good, but they're limited, but together they add into, add up to something sometimes really good.

So, Martha and Olivia who have both had, you know, when I was playing around with InstaLive threads, and I don't love to do that anymore, I did one yesterday, but kind of reluctant, it was just the right person for the right reasons at the right time. for her. But in general, I don't really love the threads anymore.

I think that you can get a much better result from a surgical lift and it's way more, way more worth the downtime and the money that you spend, but we've done those on them. They've had all therapy. They've had the microneedle needle radiofrequency treatments. We now have virtue RF, which I'm a PR ambassador for.

They they've had reporters come in and we do, we do their PR with them. And I'm very thankful to have that as well, if they're listening. It's Virtue RF by Cartessa. We've done these things on them. And the combination has made Martha look now younger than ten years ago when I started to do this stuff on her.

Like, we did theotherapy treatment on her the first time ten years ago. And her jawline is better now with this combination of things that we've done for her. than it was back then. So, she's, she’s, my age. We just both turned 50. She looks phenomenal. She looks phenomenal. And, and I can't even imagine, you know, cutting on that face.

Not yet. Right. Same with Olivia. She had a lot going on here. She had, we were on the, on the Kybella trial, and she was It's one of their first volunteers volunteer patients. And you know, there was all these, all these other things that we've just, every time we get something, we play around with it with them.

And so, for now they don't need anything, but we need to get into that. We need to find someone, maybe I should do my mom's lift and just have her sit here. Yes.

Catherine Maley, MBA: At least get her in a video, you know, a video talking about her journey, how much, how much better she feels now. Just if she can't be there in person, at least video is your next best bet. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Right. Right. Right. So, so regarding business, last question what's been the biggest challenge? Cause now, you know, business almost as well as the surgery, cause you you've been in a few scenarios. What's the biggest challenge in today's world of running the practice? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: I think it's, It's always the same. I think it's staff management, communication with the staff.

When, when you as the surgeon are, are the COO, CFO, and CEO, as we mostly all start out, and for the most part, most businesses like ours, practices like ours, stay that way. Most people don't hire CFOs And I don't expect that I will either, as much as we may be expanding and growing. But when you're all of those things, and you're the primary revenue, revenue generator, means you have your hands in some kind of a patient treatment most of the time.

And so, having the time to touch base again with the staff, to make sure everybody's on this, on the same page, moving in the same direction, saying the same things to patients. And, and maintaining the same decorum with the, with the patients and with the way that we present ourselves and the practice and so on.

It's just so difficult. So, you know, I, I always tell, I told Magda, if I can listen to every phone call, I would, but I can't. So, when I call you guys from the office, And you don't know that it's me calling, and I hear you answer in a certain way, then I'm going to call you out on it, because that's the only time it happens.

That's the only time I hear it. And I have to presume that that's happening throughout the day. So, every once in a while, on my way in, I'll pick up my cell phone from the car and I'll just call. And if it's 8. 30 and the phones are still on, on voicemail, I go berserk. I tell, we open at 8. 30. Why are the phones still on voicemail?

Or if they answer the phone and they say thanks for calling Dr. Torkian's office, how can I help you? And they don't say their name, I go berserk. I say, wait, we have this conversation ten times. A week when I call into the office and still it's happening. And so, I think staff management is the hardest thing because you just can't be everywhere all the time and I’m really thankful for Magda because she's like my extension to me I think if there's anybody that I could give a C title two with three letters and a c in front of it the chief something it would be Magda She could just be the chief and the reason we hired her was for that because I felt I need the help Martha needs the help we need we need Someone to help us steer the yacht.

Yeah, she's, she's wonderful. And so, I think that that's been the hardest thing is just, is that the other thing that's been hard in my perspective, when we. When I started out in two, it was around 2008, actually, 2006, I finished my fellowship. And, you know, I came out and, and one of my, my esteemed and, and wonderful professors at UC Irvine, who was, who is still a mentor, although he doesn't see himself that way with me because we're friends.

He says, You are the LeBron James of rhinoplasty. So, that was, that was back when LeBron James was a rookie, you're going to be this, you're going to, you're that person. And I said, wow, this is amazing. And at that time, when I came out, I started to do mostly noses. And it built up because it was easy to market the noses, at that time we didn't have social media.

Facebook was just kind of beginning and it wasn't really that visual. And so, we had, it was kind of like a Twitter'esque kind of a situation with Facebook. So, we had basically just the web. And we had print ads still and I didn't take out many print ads because they were very hard. They were hit or miss And so, I made my own website.

This was how easy it was back then You could get a website generator called front page by Microsoft And I sat next to my friend at a surgery center God rest his soul. Dr. Peyman Simone, who I think you may have known love him and he's since passed away, unfortunately for covet during covet I don't know what the circumstances were but he and I sat next to each other and I shared my DVD ROM of front page with him and I said, “Check it out! I'm making my website. You want to do it too?”; and so, he puts it in his Laptop and we sat next to each other and we basically like passed ideas around on how to like make our websites did the SEO ourselves.

It was that easy, got a Google Analytics and ad account and started to do pay per click. And my other colleagues, Babak Azizadeh and these, these people that were in practice before us say, How did you guys, how did you get your name up here so quickly? I said, I don't know. I just did it. And we put it up and it's like you put a bunch of meta tags in there and it's like having a big billboard on your website and it worked.

And, and that was how I kind of got my boost and the rhinoplasty thing just happened and then revision rhinoplasty happened and I got better at them and word got around in the community. But what became really challenging was when social media then came in and I started to do social media early. I put a couple of videos on Facebook.

I did a couple of videos on YouTube, but I wasn't great at it. I was never really good at being a showy, what I thought was a showy person. I, I can't. boast about myself ever. I'm just not programmed that way. Maybe I wasn't brought up that way. I don't know. I feel like my grandmother used to show off about me a lot, but still my wife thinks she can get her on Instagram.

Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's a grandma's place anyway. Right?

Catherine Maley, MBA: Yeah. Well, someone's got to do it. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Someone's got to, someone's got to do, someone's got to be on face Facebook and Instagram. And so, it was hard for me to push that too much. You know, I, I couldn't be the person to come on Facebook and say the best plastic surgeon in town, the best rhinoplasty in town, it wasn't me.

And so, I didn't do a ton of it, but I put stuff out and it worked, but I quickly, very, very quickly got surpassed. As you know, that was like a boom of an, an explosion of growth for a lot of people. And I quickly got surpassed in that avenue. And so, now I see younger colleagues of mine and I look at them, how I know.

Some of my older colleagues back in 2006 through 8 were looking at me like, how did you get your name up here on this search engine so quick? I'm thinking, how did you get all these followers on Instagram so quick, you know? So, that's been a real challenge for me. It's been using that medium as a means of promoting myself.

Thankfully, I still have a lot of community referrals coming in, a lot of patient referrals and community referrals. I have some people that I work with who are estheticians and many spas who refer as well, and they trust me, they know my work and, and, you know, in the end, it's not just the work, it's not just the results and, and how people look after it's They're buying a feeling from you, and if they can come in and, and they can have a conversation with me that's friendly, and somehow builds their happy feelings inside of them up, somehow makes them feel warm about themselves, and they feel like they look good in the mirror, then they're going to send patients back to me.

They're going to send friends back to me. So, it's not about the picture on the, on the Instagram. It's not about how many followers there are in my practice at this time, although we are pushing that avenue a little bit more too, because we know we have to. It's, it's been, the challenge has been that, but the, the bonus to me has been that I always have people come in and they just say, you know, I've heard the nicest things about you as a person.

And then they talk about what they want surgically. And that's, that's really, to me, golden. That just makes me happy.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Well, if you weren't in Beverly Hills, if you were anywhere else, your social media would be solid. The problem is, is you're surrounded by these heavy hitters. And by the way, those who have 500 plus thousand followers, they're spending hours and hours doing that. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

They also have usually a full media team behind them. They're meeting with them. two or three times a week trying to map out what are we going to do? How are we going to, how are we going to do this using as least of the doctor's time as possible? But there's a whole bunch of strategy and money and effort and time that goes into that. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

So, anyone who makes it look easy, they're spending time or money on it, quite frankly. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: It's, it's difficult. You know, I know my colleagues I know a lot of them, how hard they work on that and how much time they, they put into it. You know, my focus has always been, I'm a very family centric person. You can tell how many times I've mentioned my wife, my grandmother, my parents, whatever.

Yeah. And some kids in there too. My, my goal has always been. I, I work, I do what I do because I really love it, and I love helping people in the way that I do. And I really love the surgery of it too, and the results and the instant gratification that we all get. But I always want to be home for din I want to be home for dinner.

This is the reason that I'm not doing head and neck reconstructions. We all get into this wanting to do that, you know, that's part of that, that story that we all have, but doing head and neck reconstructions would mean you're the second shift and you're not going to be home for dinner because someone else is sick.

Spent all day taking the cancer out, you know, so you're filling in a hole on someone's face. You're going to be second shift and No dinner tonight for the for you and the kids, but that's my goal and I've and I pride myself in that It's what I want to be known for. I want to be known as That amazing dad that amazing husband and son who's a great surgeon and treats people nicely, you know It's not about having the biggest Instagram and Facebook presence, but I have to tell you in and this is all new topic that we could discuss forever and on different social media platforms, but we're on different podcasts anybody who uses social media, even if you're using it just for advertising is susceptible to The effects of social media that the effects that they have on you as a person There is always the looking at what other people have.

There is always the person who's on a yacht somewhere on vacation when you're not, or, you know, is constantly showing you pictures of where they're traveling to, or what kind of car they're driving or how many followers they have or so on. And it's, and we're all susceptible to that as humans, and it's very hard to separate from that, which is why I strongly believe that children should just not be on social media until they are very old.

We thankfully have been successful in that with our youngest one. Our two others are responsible, but I, I know that they're affected by it. Everybody is. And if you're a parent out there listening and you just one day you're home and your teenagers are down. Yeah, kids can get like down sometimes and they don't want to talk about it, especially when they're teenagers.

But I would guarantee that that in this day and age in our current cultural environment, 90 percent of the time, that's because of some you. Thank you. Thing not positive that happened on social media or something that just got them down that's on social media, and it's to me such a dangerous thing. So, as a business person, we are also susceptible to that.

And one of the best things that someone ever told me as a coach to practice and business was. You need to mind your own business and don't worry about theirs. It's okay to look at it. You consume it a little bit to know what's out there, to know what other people are doing. You may copy it a little bit.

Don't feel bad about copying, looking and seeing what ideas you can get from it. But mind your business. Don't worry about there so much.

Catherine Maley, MBA: I couldn't agree more. I have to ask you out of curiosity because in Beverly Hills, everyone has spent a lot of money on PR. And I don't know if it's, I mean, you got a really good piece on the doctors. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

And so, I just want to ask, cause I still get phone calls shouldn't I hire a PR agency? And frankly, in today's world, I don't think you need one. I, I, I'd rather just, if you want to go that route, then just go ahead and, you know, open up your phone and start doing videos yourself. Cause that would be more authentic. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Just tell me, did the doctors, did that piece help you? a lot, a little. It was just a nice ego boost. Like, what do you think about PR nowadays? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: It was all three of those things. Okay. There's a lot of different kinds of PR. And, and we got a little bit of all, I've worked with two different PR firms in the past.

One early, early in my practice. Got me on a couple of and we don't even have Good clips of them because they happened at a time where it was harder to get the digital clips They were in like 2008 literally so getting digital clips were a little bit more difficult But I did the under eye filler injection on Fox 11 As my first like big one There was a couple others where we talked about medical tourism with some other news outlets and so on and then you get quoted in magazines as Having been asked a certain question and so on and they help they add up They definitely can get you some cloud back then.

I think it was way more important than now I think now there's so much video content out there that if you're just doing your own video content and don't have a reporter involved It's more authentic. It's more meaningful more valuable if you can get the word out on your YouTube, which I, again, I'm not good at, but one of my good friends in San Diego is excellent at it.

And it's, it's working out really well for him because he has the time to put into it. He can put in that time and make these videos and they make them look really good because he's got a production team behind him, the right thumbnail on there and it's just golden. But the doctors, there were three visits there.

I had three different shows with them. One was. Was not with a PR agent. They called me one was with a PR agent and one was us calling them. So, we had, we did it all three ways and all three were great for a short period of time. Then they were just okay. Then they were ego boosters. And still to this day, they're, they're all three of those things because they just give you a little bit more clout having them posted on the website or every once in a while reviving one and of course now my hairline looks different, not very different because of the drops I'm using, of course, but, but, you know, like you look different, but now all of a sudden there's like this video of me from six years ago, seven years ago, doing the facelift for the weight loss patient on, on the doctor's show.

So, so the first one. And they called me and they had a trauma patient, they had a trauma person, and I don't know how they got to me, but somehow, they had called other people and they said, well, we don't want to handle this, maybe, maybe Torkian can handle it. And so, it was a patient who had been run over by a car.

And she had tremendous facial trauma, and she still, she was reconstructed beautifully and wonderfully in the desert area near Palm Desert. And she just needed some cleaning up of some of the reconstructions, and she couldn't breathe. So, she needed a little nasal, nasal overhaul, a complete nasal overhaul.

That was one. The second was... My PR group at that time, I was working with Arlene Howard. I think she's still in practice now, but slowly starting to phase out. Wonderful, big name in the industry. She was charging a lot, but it was at that time we considered it definitely worthwhile because it just kept on building the clout.

It was nice to have that. It's hard to be available for them enough though. That's the hard thing about working with PR people. If any of the listeners out there are thinking about it. Is that they want you sometimes to just drop everything and answer a phone call so that they can tell you about a reporter who wants to talk to you tomorrow while you're supposed to be in surgery.

And it's, it's hard. You know, you're doing all this so you can be in surgery, but then if you are, then you can't really take the time to do what they want you to do. For me, that became the hard thing.

Catherine Maley, MBA: I would say it's great if you can get it, but I, I wouldn't put a bunch of trouble in today's world. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Although it does look good on the website, as long as you don't look aged too much. It does give you a lot of credibility. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: It's totally true. I really, I really loved doing it, especially with the doctor's show. I love their staff. I love Dr. Orden. I even got to know some of the producers and occasionally would see them even outside of, outside of there and, and just, you know, just hang with them because they were just nice people and it was nice to know them.

So, the third one, we actually got on ourselves. I had seen a patient who really blew my mind with what she had come in with, but I saw her like five years prior to her real surgical treatment. And when I saw her, she was telling me that her nose is swelling and she's pregnant. And I was like, well, I can't do anything about this now you're pregnant.

Like there's doesn't make sense, but yeah, nose is swell when you're pregnant. And she says, no, it's really swelling a lot. And I reassured her. I said, it's not that bad. It's just swelling. It just happens. It's hormonal. And like five years later, she came in with a five-year-old. And sat at my office and said, so I have this thing on my nose.

And I said, how'd you acquire that? And I didn't even put two and two together. I don't remember it was her. The name sounded familiar, but I didn't remember. But she had this thing that looked like it was traumatically cut straight down the middle of the tip of her nose. And it turned out she had had what I thought, I suspected and confirmed later after surgery was a granuloma, a subcutaneous granuloma of pregnancy in her, the tip of her nose.

They normally happen inside the nose on the mucous membrane that cause bleeding, but this one is, it's kind of like a vascular tumor, but it happens to be so hormone responsive that it only grows during pregnancy while that hormonal environment is, is surging. And so, we confirmed it with a biopsy during her surgery, but I, I operated on her to correct this issue.

It was a rhinoplasty plus reconstruction of the tip skin. And I, and I thought, if I'm going to do this, I want to do it pro bono. I don't want to charge her because I really like connect with this situation Now that I know who this is and how we this conversation started five years ago And I said what if I can get you on a tv show?

Then we can do it for free. Would that be cool with you? She said anything you want doc So; I called the doctor's show and I said this is the deal. We have this patient I think it's a wonderful thing for people to learn about it's probably not going to happen to anybody out there because it's, it's only been reported like once or twice in the literature, but this is something that we could put out there and teach people about what kind of things can happen to noses during pregnancy.

And so, they took it and we did that one. That was, that was, I think, the most gratifying one to me. And I really loved working with them. It was fun to be, you can tell I like to talk, so it was kind of fun to be there. Hanging out in that environment.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Okay, that's good. So, just to wrap it up, what would be any advice you have for any up-and-coming surgeon? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

What, what advice would you give them to enter this marketplace or to survive in this marketplace? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Oh, it's so tough. I feel like I still need the advice myself. Because no matter how long you've been in practice and how far you get, you're always going to still feel like you're not where you want to be.

And you always have some growth to do. I think what resonates most with me, having your basic human values in place in your practice are always, should always be your priority. You should always be the kindest that you can be to people, and that also, of interest, will help you, as a side note, to help, kind of filter out some of the undesirables that come into your practice.

Sometimes, as a nicer person, you want to help everybody, and you end up getting some of that. You get wrapped into some of the narcissism that exists within the plastic surgery community, the patients. Sometimes, because... They're interested in their appearance. Some are interested way too much. And they're really wrapped up in it.

And they get everyone in the office wrapped up in it. And we are like that, because we're so nice to them. But still, a priority should be just treating people like people. That's the most important thing. And then, in your own life, treat yourself as a person too. You don't have to be a work horse.

You are the work horse of your practice. But you don't have to be Thank you. working that way. You should have a life outside your practice. You should have a gratifying, satisfying home life. And that, that is what will lead you. That's the drive for you to do better and better all the time. That's the whole point of it.

Catherine Maley, MBA: I think that's such great advice and I would say, also make sure your staff and any of your other partners, they have the same kind of values you do because it's tough to be in a practice where you do have home life balance and the guy next to you is just the lion in the jungle who's trying to crush it. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

It doesn't make for a, you know, a positive environment. So, last question before we wrap it up. Tell us something that we don't know about you. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Wow. There's probably so much, but a lot of people probably know this already. I am a do it yourself er.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Okay. I thought so with the radio. Yeah. You turned in into the cell phone. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: I think to some extent, probably all surgeons are right. We are manual. We like to do things. We like to see the results of the things that we do. So, I like to copycat stuff. I paint. But when I paint, I'm usually very heavily inspired by something else. So, I begin as a copy and I change it to me to make what I want it to look like.

So, I cook and I do the same thing. I will go to a restaurant; I'll taste something and my wife can see it in my eyes. She says, Oh God, he's thinking again. And then I go home and then the next day I've made that meal and I try to copy and emulate this really difficult, all the flavors that come out of it.

How close do you get? Sometimes very, very close. Oh, good for you. One of my favorite things to make is the artichoke, the artichoke from the Hillstone group. I don't know if you have a Hillstone where you are in Northern California. It used to be called Houston's. They're all over. Their first one was in Nashville.

But Houston's, which Hillstone group, they make the best artichoke and I've got that down. It's. You can find it probably in my TikTok account because I made a video of it. My daughter edited an amazing video, and I like to bake sourdough bread. It's a hobby of mine, so everybody comes over, they always want the bread.

Now we're experimenting with pizza as well, but it's, it's kind of an interesting thing. I, I just like to copy and emulate everything that I love. That's around me.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Well, well, you have some skills to fall back on if surgery doesn't work out for you, right? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Yeah, everybody, everybody who comes over our house says, man, you should have a bakery.

I said, no, no, no. Love that. I don't want any part of that.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Dr. Torkian, if somebody wanted to get in touch with you, I do know your website is drtorkian.com. Is there any other way you would want them to get ahold of you in case they've got some questions for you?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Right. Our email on the website actually gets copied to my direct email.

It is hello@drtorkian.com. That gets directed to me, and if anybody has any questions. wants to bring up any points or even maybe use our surgery center. We'd love that.

Catherine Maley, MBA: No, good plug. Yeah. I mean, it's really in a killer place. Everyone who lives in around that area, like I'm in Northern California, but even I've heard of the Lasky clinic in Southern California.

It's a pretty big deal down there.

And I wanted to add one more thing. Another little plug. If you're really interested in the marketing and the business side of plastic surgery, I did put together this incredible learning center full of training vaults.

If you can't get enough of me, there's a plenty of me in there for you. And it's called CosmeticPracticeVault.Com. You can also get it on my website at CatherineMaley.Com. But it just gives you a lot of insights into how the heck you do this in today's world.

Everybody that’s going to wrap it up for us today, a Beauty and the Biz and this episode on “Buying Your Mentor’s Building”.

If you’ve got any questions or feedback for Dr. Torkian you can reach out to his website at, DrTorkian.com.

A big thanks to Dr. Torkian for sharing his experiences on the topic of, “buying your mentor’s building”.

And if you have any questions or feedback for me, you can go ahead and leave them at my website at www.CatherineMaley.com, or you can certainly DM me on Instagram @CatherineMaleyMBA.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode on Beauty and the Biz, please head over to Apple Podcasts and give me a review and subscribe to Beauty and the Biz so, you don’t miss any episodes. And of course, please share this with your staff and colleagues.

And we will talk to you again soon. Take care.

The fastest way to success is to model other successful surgeons who have what you want, but you can only see their results, not the path they took to get there.

So, you continue to jump from one thing to another, hoping to find something that will work for you too, but it rarely does. So, try this shortcut instead. It’s guaranteed to move you forward. I compiled my intellectual property to grow cosmetic revenues, everything I’ve gleaned over the years into one playbook of the most successful practices and what they do to win.

Go to www.CosmeticPracticeVault.com and let’s grow your cosmetic revenue.

-End transcript for “Buying Your Mentor’s Building — with Behrooz A. Torkian, MD”.

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⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️

Hello, and welcome to Beauty and the Biz where we talk about the business and marketing side of plastic surgery, and buying your mentor's building.

I’m your host, Catherine Maley, author of Your Aesthetic Practice – What your patients are saying, as well as consultant to plastic surgeons, to get them more patients and more profits.

Now, today’s episode is called "Buying Your Mentor’s Building — with Behrooz A. Torkian, MD".

Typically, after residency, you do a one-year fellowship where you get invaluable hands-on surgical experience from other successful experienced surgeons.

You also get the “behind the scenes” look at the business and marketing of how you run a successful practice, which is also invaluable.

And, sometimes, you get even more. Such as, buying your mentor's building.

I recently interviewed Dr. Behrooz Torkian, a facial cosmetic and reconstructive surgeon practicing in uber-competitive Beverly Hills.

We talked on the topic of "buying your mentor's building":

  • How he ended up buying the building from the very surgeon who mentored him years ago
  • His plans to expand by opening a separate med spa a distance away; and,
  • How he got on the TV show "The Doctors" three times and the impact that had on his practice and profits.
Visit Dr. Torkian’s website

P.S. Want my 5-Star Rated Book for FREE? Leave me a review and I'll send it out to you!

✔️ STAY UPDATED!

🤝 LET'S CONNECT! 🤝

Transcript:

Buying Your Mentor's Building — with Behrooz A. Torkian, MD

Catherine Maley, MBA: Hello and welcome to Beauty in the Biz, where we talk about the business and marketing side of plastic surgery, and buying your mentor’s building. I'm your host, Catherine Maley, author of "Your Aesthetic Practice, What Your Patients Are Saying", as well as consultant to plastic surgeons to get them more patients and more profits.

Now, today's guest is Dr. Behrooz Torkian, and he's a facial and reconstructive surgeon (who’s well-versed in the statement of “buying your mentor’s building”), practicing in uber competitive Beverly Hills. Now, Dr. Torkian specializes in rhinoplasty and facial plastic surgery, as well as reconstructive surgery, and he performs his surgery at the historic Lasky Clinic, and we're going to talk more about that.

Now, he attended Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, and then his specialty training in head and neck surgery at the University of California, Irvine, where he also participated in the prestigious fellowship in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery conducted by the AAFPRS. Dr. Torkian, it is a pleasure to have you on Beauty and the Biz.

It's been a while getting you on here.

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Thank you so much. And yes, I've been looking forward to this, I think for three years now. I think the first time we connected regarding the podcast was during lockdown, during the COVID lockdown. And at that time, I said, yes, let's do it. But I don't know what came up.

I think what happened is that we were trying to figure out how to open the office again.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Gotcha. Well, now we have more to talk about, you know? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Now we have a lot more to talk. A lot has happened since then. The zoom boom is real.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Yes. So, what I would love to do. And the part I like so much is your journey from training to entering the real marketplace. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

What was that journey like? Because it's usually a fairly jagged road, or was yours a straight shot to Lasky clinic? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Oh, no. Okay. So, Lasky Clinic was a dream a, a, almost like a, kind of like a golden egg on a pedestal type of thing in, in facial plastic surgery. Pretty much any head and neck surgery program that has a facial plastic surgery program associated with it or within it has, has, Some conversation about, Oh, well, you can always go train at Lasky clinic.

That would be just the ultimate. And so, that's what it was like back then. Hopefully people still view it that way, but I'll tell you, my history. And I've been listening to your podcast and some of my colleagues on the podcast is not that different actually from many of my colleagues in, in head and neck, facial plastic surgery.

Many of us get into this, not knowing that we want to get into this. What happened with me was very similar to most of my colleagues, but I got into medicine not thinking that I was interested in plastic surgery. In fact, that wasn't, I, it was something that I thought was frivolous and it just didn't make sense.

And why would you want to go through a procedure for something like that? Just didn't know at that point, I wasn't enlightened to how much we can help people with the skills that we have and how important of a role we do play in their lives. But the initial reason I went to medical school was because I wanted to practice within my limits of knowledge of, or of my passion of microbiology and molecular genetics, and I wanted to apply molecular genetics to pediatric oncology.

That was, I was going to be a pediatrician, oncologist, and I was going to learn how to trick viruses to make cancer treatments, which are now finally happening about two decades later, which is why I didn't go into that field, of course. But many things happened since then, you know. Few people hold your hand, you get the right kind of influences around you, you get the right kind of mentorship, and then someone stops you along the way and says, son, you've got good hands and you need to use them.

And so, that's, that's kind of how you get into the surgical realm from medical school. A lot of people don't go to medical school thinking that they want to be surgeons either, they just don't know, you know. And so, as a kid, I was always very manual, took a lot of little tiny things apart and put them back together, turned radios into...

into hands free cell telephones and, you know, all kinds of cool stuff like that, gadgets that I thought I was inventing. And I learned again and again, and I still do today, that no idea is ever really had by me alone. And it's never the first time it's been had. The idea had a life of its own and it's been around.

And so, never invented anything that was brand new. But when I, when I, was at Vanderbilt, we had an amazing head and neck department. And I sat in on a couple of lectures where I learned a little bit more about the intricate anatomy of the head and neck, loved it. And that was my initial passion. And then I saw some of these kids who were getting reconstructed with their cleft lips and or burns at the corners of their mouths.

And sometimes with big scalp defects and I saw some of the big grotesque looking tissue expanders and those things just really piqued my interest in plastic surgery. And so, as, as someone who loved the anatomy of the head and neck, I stuck with the head and neck training and was one of 13, usually there's 2 percent of each class that go into head and neck surgery.

In our class of 100, 13 of us applied to head and neck surgery that year. Super competitive. Almost everybody got a head and neck. surgical Residency a few didn't and then they did it later in different ways But many of us went into facial plastic surgery So, I have colleagues all around from north Carolina to here to la that went to medical school with me to practice the same thing It's just been Yeah, it's been really interesting.

And there must have been some really strong influences and mentorship at that time. And so, that, that started me in the head of neck. And then at UC Irvine, my chairman, Roger Crumbly, who I, I adore to this day, I should be in more contact with him, love him. And my other amazing mentor, Tim Kelly. Really held my hand through this process and I just wanted to be like them, you know, that's that was what I wanted to do and they were both facial plastic surgeons in our head and neck program.

It's kind of rare to have a head and neck Surgery program have a facial plastic surgeon as their chairman But Dr. Crumley did that and he was one of the few in the country that ever did it And it was just an amazing influence to have him around us. It was it was wonderful and so that's how I got into it and then Lassie Clinic was just a dream.

I thought, you know, I could train here. I came and interviewed here for a fellowship with Dr. Kamer. I'm now sitting in his office. So, for those of you that can see this on video, these windows here used to look on Dr. Kamer and that, that, I never dreamed that I could have this. But I came here as a fellowship applicant.

And at the time I was kind of geographically strapped to the Southern California area. My wife was a medical student at UCSD and then she got her residency at Cedars Sinai and I was at UC Irvine and we were commuting from in between and so on. And so, I thought, you know, I told Dr. Kamer, I think this is the place for me.

I grew up here. I grew up in Sherman Oaks. Around the corner, I have family in West LA and we just had a baby and we want to be near the family and he said this could be a great place for you. But I still ended up at UC Irvine for, I won't say what reasons, but it had a little bit to do with me and a little bit to do with Dr.

Kamer, probably. But I, I still ended up at UC Irvine and did my fellowship there. And then years later, I was practicing with a dermatologist that I befriended because. to, to be frank and to make this story a little cuter. My grandmother met him and wanted to set him up with my cousin. Oh my god. She said, she said, you're perfect for my, for my granddaughter and I want you to meet my granddaughter.

And in, in the process of trying to get them hooked up, she introduced me to him because she said, you guys are both young doctors, you should know each other, should be friends. He just moved here from Ohio. His name is Don McRobbie, and she said you should be friends. And I said, great grandma Thank you So, we made friends and he and I had this dream about at that time Paul Nassif and Dr. Amaron were together and we thought look these guys did this thing where they had a facial plastic surgeon and dermatologist These are synergistic fields.

We had this dream of making our Center Better than theirs we were going to be the skin and face center and we were just going to kill it And so, we set up shop not far from here. I can see it from this window at the corner of Beverly…Wilsh— Beverly Excuse me, Wilshire Boulevard and Lyndon Boulevard I was there doing fine.

We had a couple of subtenants. He had the lease on it. Things were not going really exactly the way we thought with the skin and face center, but you know, we were doing okay I was getting building my practice so to speak and people were coming —

Catherine Maley, MBA: Let me interrupt you for a second Were you a partnership or were you a 50 50 partnership? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Were you just renting? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: We were discussing all that but we ended up just Him renting and I rented from him and we were loosely associated and so it didn't really become that center that we thought So, I was free. I didn't have any real ties except for a sublease which I was a handshake It was wonderful for me because I was very, very, flexible and mobile And I got a phone call from Dr.

Frankel, who is now my business partner of I would say 12 years now, a business partner of mine. Maybe less time than that. I was a tenant for some time and then became business partner as we bought into the surgery center.

Catherine Maley, MBA: And explain who Dr. Frankel is. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: So, Dr. Frankel is one of Dr. Kamer's old fellows.

He has been at the Lasky Clinic now for if I've been here 15, it would be 25 years. He and Dr. Stephens are the two main surgeons in the building, and I'll explain real briefly what the building is before getting back into that story. Don't let me get off track on that story. Okay. So, Dr. Kamer built this building in the 70s.

It was already built, but he turned it in the 70s, late 70s, into a surgery center. It was probably, by report, one of the first freestanding surgical centers in Beverly Hills. And it's downstairs from where my office is now. And he saw patients upstairs, and he had a lot of space. It's a 10, 000 square foot building.

It has a lot of little nooks and crannies in which things can be done, both clinical and non-clinical. And he had his fellow doing certain things in certain areas, and he had his post op patients go into certain rooms downstairs. Which were not really efficiently used, but they were very posh, and it was just wonderful, wonderful for his celebrity clientele.

And so, the building gained a lot of clout with his clout, with his popularity and his fame. He treated a lot of celebrities, he did amazing work, and he was a nice person to all of them. And so, they really admired him, and the community really admired him. And he's still around, and we see him every once in a while.

And he trained a lot of people in the area. Many of the Surgeons, plastic surgeons in this area, the facial plastics are, are pretty much, again, a stone's throw away from us or what they call disciples of Cameron, but they were trained by him. And so, we had, we had a tremendous respect for all of them, obviously.

And so, down the line, when he was retiring, He left part of his space open and Frankel and Dr. Andrew Frankel and Dr. Leslie Stevens, who is a general plastic surgeon that does all body work, including face work, were here as his tenants. Because towards the ends of his practice, he had them here as tenants, and they were using the operating room too, and there were at times other tenants as well.

So, when he left, there was some space open in the building, and Dr. Frankel and Dr. Stevens were here on their own, and they had some other tenants for some time upstairs here. And they had a space downstairs, which was a separate little nook that was on the west side of the building, opposite of where I'm sitting now, and had a beautiful window shape, kind of round shape window like this, and an entrance on its own.

And they were trying to figure out what to do with it. Previously used to be the fellows, what they call the fellows office, or what was the post op room where he would remove the bandages day one, and then go back into surgery. And so, what they called me about was to see if I wanted to. move in and use that space.

They were trying to find a tenant for that space. But when I got the call from Dr. Frankel, I said, Oh no, I wonder what I did wrong. I hope I didn't say something to a patient that got misinterpreted. And then they went back and said to Dr. Frankel that I saw a patient of his and didn't say nice. I said, Oh my God, I wonder what happened.

So, answer the phone hesitantly. But I said, hi, how you doing? What's going on? And he said, I need to talk to you, but I want you to come over here, here and have lunch. We need you to see something here. And I was like, wow, here I go again. I'm going to the last week clinic. Like, I wonder what's going to happen here.

So, I sat down with them. We had no lunch, but we had a conversation about that space downstairs. Shortly after I moved in, I didn't have much. I was running a tight, tight practice. It was me and one employee. We were sharing one of the other employees with Dr. Murabi at the other office. And so, I had just one person and me and a bunch of boxes full of Restylane, Botox, Juvederm, and some charts.

And so, it was really simple for me. I packed it all up in the back of my BMW and drove over. It was like that. It was that kind of, that kind of thing. And we started practice here in, it was 2000. nine, three years into my practice, and it's, you know, been steady growth, steady growth since then, since then, I bought into the surgery center, and as a loosely connected network of practices, we're not partners in our practices.

None of us work for each other and none of us have any financial tie in our main practices together But we own the surgery center together the three of us We've had other tenants here that have had part ownership in the surgery center before But at this time, it's just the three of us and we're hoping that our other tenants would all introduce in a minute will at some point be able to buy into the surgery center too as they get busier because they are paying into it all the time anyway.

So, it's, it's one thing that we think is, is best to have as many benefactors as beneficiaries in the, in the, in that practice.

Catherine Maley, MBA: As long as you can all get along. Absolutely. But let me ask regarding staff, do you share staff? Like, are there more than one receptionist or does everybody have their own receptionist and their own coordinator? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

And how is that, how does that work? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: We each have our own receptionist, our own medical assistants, and our own coordinators. I have a few more employees because I have a little bit more space than they do. So, I, I was able to kind of sprawl out a bit more. I have two so called physician extenders, or a nurse injector, an RN, and a nurse practitioner who does lasers and injections as well.

And I have a practice manager who helps me to oversee all, all the aspects, all the different parts of the practice, including so we have You know, as, as the revenue centers or the revenue generators, we have the nurse practitioner and the, and the RN and myself that are creating revenue. And so, it kind of got a little bit harder to manage for me and, and just the coordinator.

And so, we have a practice manager too. The other two have a few employees. They have a coordinator and a front desk person, and sometimes an MA. And that's, and that's all they function with. And, and we don't really mix together except in the lunchroom and in the hallways. and on our Christmas parties and so on.

The surgery center has a receptionist. And that receptionist works downstairs because the foyer or the entrance of the building, it's almost like a shared communal living space, almost. So, when people walk in, sometimes it's a little confusing. Are they here to go to the surgery center, which is downstairs?

Or are they here to see one of us? We're all upstairs. Or are they here to see the tenant of the corner office where I used to be, which you have to go outside to get to. So, it gets, it gets a little confusing. So, we always have. Someone down there, but that person is technically a, an employee of the surgery center because they are the surgical, surgical schedule coordinator for the surgery center.

So, they're the ones that receive all the requests for surgical schedules from us and from a handful of outside doctors. They use our surgery center. It's about five of them at the present moment and they coordinate our schedules for us. So, we're all very separate and all of our finances are separate We don't really mix that way and we don't really balance patients around unless there's a need to if someone needs a second opinion or if they want a breast augmentation and I think Dr.

Stevens is the right guy then they get sent there. So, we're really very separate but we own the surgery center together and operate the surgery center together and For some time, we had some good revenues because we had some insurance paybacks that were not bad for some period of time when we were doing the rhinoplasty, for example, that had septum deviations and so on, but we are now a break-even entity and we are just basically always just making, making just on our, on our black line.

We're never in the red. We just kind of bounced around between red and black and are usually just on our black line, which is kind of nice.

Catherine Maley, MBA: But when you say that the convenience of it is priceless. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Priceless, priceless, we do have a handful of outside doctors and we try to prioritize their schedules because we know they're coming from outside and they have to drive here.

Sometimes they walk here which is really nice, because we're not really that far from each other. But if they're coming here from outside and we know they have to get back to their practice and to their normal, ordinary, usual state of business, we prioritize their schedules. But for the most part, if I want to schedule cases on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I can.

If I have a VIP that wants to come on Saturday, I just have to ask and someone will volunteer and come in and they'll get paid extra and we'll do it. And so, that's, that's kind of how it works for us and it's really, it's very priceless to have that. It's also, from my perspective, from a safety perspective, Really important to me knowing that I can run downstairs, check the facial nerves, check for hematoma, make sure the skin in the tip of the nose is doing okay, and all that before they go, it is really wonderful.

It's, it's So, much better than getting a phone call from a nurse and then getting on FaceTime and trying to figure out what's going on with the patient before they're discharged. Or before, for example, one of our aftercare facilities picks them up if their blood pressure is going up and down. I can be here and I can help coordinate everything and free.

And that's a, that's a really nice safety perspective for us. And then so down the line, how many years later can't even or even I've lost track of it, but down the years are flying by the years are flying by things are going great business is building and I got another call from Dr. Frankel and I see him down up and down the hallway every day.

We see each other all the time. We actually. because the surgery center is an open concept, kind of like our offices are here. I can actually go into his room and say, good morning. How's your case going today? Great. I'm going to be next door. Great. And then we bounce things around ideas around, even sometimes while we're in surgery, he says, Hey, Bruce, come here and take my friends.

Call me Bruce. And that's kind of our, our colloquial language here. He says, Hey, Bruce, come take a look at this. What would you do with this thing? And sometimes I'll call him, same thing. And we were able to have this camaraderie and we've elevated our, our practices together that way. I hope he sees it the same way.

He's ten years ahead of me in practice and ten years older than me. But, and we real, we really do all benefit from this and some of our newer tenants and some of the other outside clients of our surgery center really benefit from that too. And so, down the line, you know, as things are going so great, he calls me and he says, hey I need to talk to you about something.

Dr. Kamer wanted to sell the building. And because I have first right of refusal, he told me to make him an offer. And I said, awesome. Did you? And he says, yes. And he said, but I, but I think I want you to join me. And I said, well, what about Dr. Stevens? He's been here for so much longer. He said, I asked him and he didn't want to do it.

We don't know why, but you know, maybe he already, maybe he couldn't at the time, or maybe he already was starting to see, cause he's 10 years ahead of Dr. Frankel. He's starting to maybe see where he may be kind of phasing out too. And he didn't want to get strapped into something that could be a longer-term project.

And so, the two of us bought the building together. I won't disclose the percentages, but his is a lot more than mine, but that's the way it works because it was his, his baby and he's been here for so much longer. But for me, it was a no brainer. And I said, you know, if you can own this thing, you will have, it was definitely a no brainer.

You will have the stability knowing that someone else isn't going to come take over and kick me out and change everything that I love about where I practice. And the people with whom I practice, the staff in the surgery center, the anesthesiologist that service our surgery center, all this.

everything. It's a really nice place to come to work.

Catherine Maley, MBA: It's a cash revenue generating asset that you'll want forever. I'm hoping you bought it somewhere around 2008 when all hell broke out with real estate and it was good price? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Compared to now, it was still a good price.

Catherine Maley, MBA: I mean, it, it must have appreciated dramatically since then. Right? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: We believe it has we try to maintain our building impeccably, not only because we're here and we practice in it, but because we want to make sure that it maintains that value and continues to appreciate and value.

It's really. it's really a landmark of the area. It's, if you see it, it really stands out. And so, we, we feel obligated to it in that sense to keep it up and maintain its value. And you know, you know, naturally when you're a business owner, when you're a, when you're a, a Real estate owner you're always thinking about your rent rolls too because that's how the banks and the outside world are going to value that That asset as a as a practice or as a business of its own it's not necessarily land value plus improvements like it is for a home for example, but you know as our rent roll continues to increase because we're increasing our own rents and we have more tenants that we add and so on.

It, it does help to kind of boost the value of the building as well.

Catherine Maley, MBA: is the point when that other doctor's ready to retire, will he then sell his part of the building to somebody else? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: And then who wants to invest? Well, we haven't had so much discussion about that yet, but I would think that at that time, it would be much of it to my discretion at that time, but probably would be either me buying him out or both of us selling completely and just everybody going.

If he retires and I may just go somewhere else. And cash out on my part of it it's not something that's been really fully hashed out But you know in my mind I always thought, “I'll buy him out and I'll sell Parts of it to whoever wants to be here and can hang in for the long term”; because I'd love to see this Continue to be what it is

Catherine Maley, MBA: Well, the good news is you have options and that's what everyone wants. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

So, you're in very good shape. Now, rumor has it, you bought something else. Can you, can you talk about that? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Yes. Well, it hasn't really gone through fully yet. So, it's a bit premature, but I can talk about it because we, we, I have my accounts open. I have my malpractice. Hopefully in place by the next few days and so on, but, you know, I, I've expanded as much as I can here and I've always wanted to continue to expand and have different sources of revenue.

And you know, we always thought about other, other pieces of real estate and so on. And my wife and I my wife, my lovely wife, Adrian, you deem, who is a. Internist and obesity specialist who also is a subtenant of our space here. Oh, She and I have had many discussions about okay. Well, what can we do?

you know, we have to have something that's going to have us have given us some form of Inflow of cash when we're not actually working or you know That doesn't necessarily have to do with us with our own sweat and tears so to speak and so you know that it's

It's a tough thing to manage. I know the medical business and I know the medispa business as I have been a medical director for a medispa before. And so, I was tipped in by the attorney who actually does our contracts as a medical director for the other medispa. To a business that she works with and said is someone I know and she wants to retire and by the time you Are able to publish this this will have gone through but so many spa and you are Belinda wonderful nurse practitioner She's a doctorate and nurse practitioner.

She is a Council member of your Belinda. She was a previous mayor of your Belinda. She is just a Both beautiful on the outside and inside person who has tremendous skills and she's a teacher. So, she's one of those people that you just want to be associated with. Thankfully, she thinks the same about me.

So, when we discussed. potentially me buying her out so that she can move on with her plans of retirement and having her exit plans in place. She plans to be out of the business in about a year and is giving us that time. She could have retired tomorrow, tomorrow if she wanted to and, and probably did want to, but she's giving us that time because not only does she want to see that the practice, the business goes to.

Through the transition properly, but she also wants to make sure that her employees have The jobs that they have now and continue to enjoy the benefits that they have now and continue to work the way that they are And I promised her that as well and so we plan to be closing within the next five days So, we have this, this thing on the, it's, it's a tiny little place compared to Lasky Clinic, but it is, I believe, in that area, a powerhouse.

There are very few many spa types of practices, not even any plastic surgeons over there. So, I think there's one or two and they don't necessarily have the best. Will of the community necessarily. And so, a lot of people are going outside of the area for their plastic surgery needs. So, for me, it would be not only a revenue center, but also a referral center for me.

My plans are to be there once a week for the beginning, because That's very lofty plan, but maybe once every other week to begin. It's hard to get out of here, but my plans are to be there at least somewhat for consultation purposes So, that I can make it easy for the community. They can gain my trust and they get to know me a little bit and they don't have to drive out here to do it and then from there, hopefully we'll be able to just have a, an easy, easy system by which when the injectors are working and they see something that they know they can't handle with injections that they know is just not going in the right direction that they can, they can speak to and be sort of like mini coordinators or pre coordinators for a surgical treatment that patients can come here for.

That's our goal.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Well, to get things moving, though, if that NP is that well known in that community, you can live off of her transference of credibility. If everyone loves her, all she has to say is you know, Dr. Torkian's the guy to talk to, and hopefully she's a good referral source for you to get rolling. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: She's already been referring patients. Nice. And what I can see is a few have rolled in but what I can see is that she is Tremendously influential in the community and I knew that going into this It it's part of the goodwill of that business that practice And part of frankly what I'm paying her for and I'm so thankful for her being such an easygoing and just gem of a person she's just made this so easy.

I know she's itching to get out, but that's not a reason to make it easy She's selling her baby.

Catherine Maley, MBA: You know, and you know quite frankly if she happens to need a little facial refresher or maybe a bluff or a little mini lift and you could do that for her. She'd be a walking talking testimonial for you big time that year. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: We haven't crossed that bridge yet but does she need anything? Is she looking good? I think she's really pretty. But I, but I know she can point out a couple of things that she wants corrected. I know that's kind of the way it always goes.

Catherine Maley, MBA: I just want coordinators who have had a facelift done by their surgeon and they've tripled their conversion rates. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

It's just a no brainer because now they're not selling anybody, anything. They're not pushing. They're just telling their story about what they went through and how great they feel. Just so easy. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: You know, the coordinators here. So, I have, I have my coordinator, Martha. We're the user met before. Yes, she's lovely, but before and we have our practice manager Magda and we have our main receptionist, but she's, that's, that's a, not a nice term for her because she's so much more than that.

So, we called her the front desk manager, but she didn't really love that either because she said, you're trying to make me feel better about this. And I said, no, you're just so good at this. She just really handles that front desk amazingly.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Can she be the client concierge or something? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: She can be the client concierge.

I like that term. But I know what she's going to say. She's just going to laugh at me again. Because that's the relationship we have. But all three have had upper blood surplacities with me. And of course, they get injections and stuff too. They've all had upper blepharoplasty with me. And so, that, that helps, that really sells, but they're not old enough yet to need the facelift.

We're getting there, but quite frankly, you know, in our, our industry, and you probably have experienced this seeing other practices that you work with, we have access to a lot of stuff and the non-surgical stuff. As limited as it is, it's good. A lot of the non-certical stuff is very good, but they're limited, but together they add into, add up to something sometimes really good.

So, Martha and Olivia who have both had, you know, when I was playing around with InstaLive threads, and I don't love to do that anymore, I did one yesterday, but kind of reluctant, it was just the right person for the right reasons at the right time. for her. But in general, I don't really love the threads anymore.

I think that you can get a much better result from a surgical lift and it's way more, way more worth the downtime and the money that you spend, but we've done those on them. They've had all therapy. They've had the microneedle needle radiofrequency treatments. We now have virtue RF, which I'm a PR ambassador for.

They they've had reporters come in and we do, we do their PR with them. And I'm very thankful to have that as well, if they're listening. It's Virtue RF by Cartessa. We've done these things on them. And the combination has made Martha look now younger than ten years ago when I started to do this stuff on her.

Like, we did theotherapy treatment on her the first time ten years ago. And her jawline is better now with this combination of things that we've done for her. than it was back then. So, she's, she’s, my age. We just both turned 50. She looks phenomenal. She looks phenomenal. And, and I can't even imagine, you know, cutting on that face.

Not yet. Right. Same with Olivia. She had a lot going on here. She had, we were on the, on the Kybella trial, and she was It's one of their first volunteers volunteer patients. And you know, there was all these, all these other things that we've just, every time we get something, we play around with it with them.

And so, for now they don't need anything, but we need to get into that. We need to find someone, maybe I should do my mom's lift and just have her sit here. Yes.

Catherine Maley, MBA: At least get her in a video, you know, a video talking about her journey, how much, how much better she feels now. Just if she can't be there in person, at least video is your next best bet. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Right. Right. Right. So, so regarding business, last question what's been the biggest challenge? Cause now, you know, business almost as well as the surgery, cause you you've been in a few scenarios. What's the biggest challenge in today's world of running the practice? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: I think it's, It's always the same. I think it's staff management, communication with the staff.

When, when you as the surgeon are, are the COO, CFO, and CEO, as we mostly all start out, and for the most part, most businesses like ours, practices like ours, stay that way. Most people don't hire CFOs And I don't expect that I will either, as much as we may be expanding and growing. But when you're all of those things, and you're the primary revenue, revenue generator, means you have your hands in some kind of a patient treatment most of the time.

And so, having the time to touch base again with the staff, to make sure everybody's on this, on the same page, moving in the same direction, saying the same things to patients. And, and maintaining the same decorum with the, with the patients and with the way that we present ourselves and the practice and so on.

It's just so difficult. So, you know, I, I always tell, I told Magda, if I can listen to every phone call, I would, but I can't. So, when I call you guys from the office, And you don't know that it's me calling, and I hear you answer in a certain way, then I'm going to call you out on it, because that's the only time it happens.

That's the only time I hear it. And I have to presume that that's happening throughout the day. So, every once in a while, on my way in, I'll pick up my cell phone from the car and I'll just call. And if it's 8. 30 and the phones are still on, on voicemail, I go berserk. I tell, we open at 8. 30. Why are the phones still on voicemail?

Or if they answer the phone and they say thanks for calling Dr. Torkian's office, how can I help you? And they don't say their name, I go berserk. I say, wait, we have this conversation ten times. A week when I call into the office and still it's happening. And so, I think staff management is the hardest thing because you just can't be everywhere all the time and I’m really thankful for Magda because she's like my extension to me I think if there's anybody that I could give a C title two with three letters and a c in front of it the chief something it would be Magda She could just be the chief and the reason we hired her was for that because I felt I need the help Martha needs the help we need we need Someone to help us steer the yacht.

Yeah, she's, she's wonderful. And so, I think that that's been the hardest thing is just, is that the other thing that's been hard in my perspective, when we. When I started out in two, it was around 2008, actually, 2006, I finished my fellowship. And, you know, I came out and, and one of my, my esteemed and, and wonderful professors at UC Irvine, who was, who is still a mentor, although he doesn't see himself that way with me because we're friends.

He says, You are the LeBron James of rhinoplasty. So, that was, that was back when LeBron James was a rookie, you're going to be this, you're going to, you're that person. And I said, wow, this is amazing. And at that time, when I came out, I started to do mostly noses. And it built up because it was easy to market the noses, at that time we didn't have social media.

Facebook was just kind of beginning and it wasn't really that visual. And so, we had, it was kind of like a Twitter'esque kind of a situation with Facebook. So, we had basically just the web. And we had print ads still and I didn't take out many print ads because they were very hard. They were hit or miss And so, I made my own website.

This was how easy it was back then You could get a website generator called front page by Microsoft And I sat next to my friend at a surgery center God rest his soul. Dr. Peyman Simone, who I think you may have known love him and he's since passed away, unfortunately for covet during covet I don't know what the circumstances were but he and I sat next to each other and I shared my DVD ROM of front page with him and I said, “Check it out! I'm making my website. You want to do it too?”; and so, he puts it in his Laptop and we sat next to each other and we basically like passed ideas around on how to like make our websites did the SEO ourselves.

It was that easy, got a Google Analytics and ad account and started to do pay per click. And my other colleagues, Babak Azizadeh and these, these people that were in practice before us say, How did you guys, how did you get your name up here so quickly? I said, I don't know. I just did it. And we put it up and it's like you put a bunch of meta tags in there and it's like having a big billboard on your website and it worked.

And, and that was how I kind of got my boost and the rhinoplasty thing just happened and then revision rhinoplasty happened and I got better at them and word got around in the community. But what became really challenging was when social media then came in and I started to do social media early. I put a couple of videos on Facebook.

I did a couple of videos on YouTube, but I wasn't great at it. I was never really good at being a showy, what I thought was a showy person. I, I can't. boast about myself ever. I'm just not programmed that way. Maybe I wasn't brought up that way. I don't know. I feel like my grandmother used to show off about me a lot, but still my wife thinks she can get her on Instagram.

Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's a grandma's place anyway. Right?

Catherine Maley, MBA: Yeah. Well, someone's got to do it. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Someone's got to, someone's got to do, someone's got to be on face Facebook and Instagram. And so, it was hard for me to push that too much. You know, I, I couldn't be the person to come on Facebook and say the best plastic surgeon in town, the best rhinoplasty in town, it wasn't me.

And so, I didn't do a ton of it, but I put stuff out and it worked, but I quickly, very, very quickly got surpassed. As you know, that was like a boom of an, an explosion of growth for a lot of people. And I quickly got surpassed in that avenue. And so, now I see younger colleagues of mine and I look at them, how I know.

Some of my older colleagues back in 2006 through 8 were looking at me like, how did you get your name up here on this search engine so quick? I'm thinking, how did you get all these followers on Instagram so quick, you know? So, that's been a real challenge for me. It's been using that medium as a means of promoting myself.

Thankfully, I still have a lot of community referrals coming in, a lot of patient referrals and community referrals. I have some people that I work with who are estheticians and many spas who refer as well, and they trust me, they know my work and, and, you know, in the end, it's not just the work, it's not just the results and, and how people look after it's They're buying a feeling from you, and if they can come in and, and they can have a conversation with me that's friendly, and somehow builds their happy feelings inside of them up, somehow makes them feel warm about themselves, and they feel like they look good in the mirror, then they're going to send patients back to me.

They're going to send friends back to me. So, it's not about the picture on the, on the Instagram. It's not about how many followers there are in my practice at this time, although we are pushing that avenue a little bit more too, because we know we have to. It's, it's been, the challenge has been that, but the, the bonus to me has been that I always have people come in and they just say, you know, I've heard the nicest things about you as a person.

And then they talk about what they want surgically. And that's, that's really, to me, golden. That just makes me happy.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Well, if you weren't in Beverly Hills, if you were anywhere else, your social media would be solid. The problem is, is you're surrounded by these heavy hitters. And by the way, those who have 500 plus thousand followers, they're spending hours and hours doing that. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

They also have usually a full media team behind them. They're meeting with them. two or three times a week trying to map out what are we going to do? How are we going to, how are we going to do this using as least of the doctor's time as possible? But there's a whole bunch of strategy and money and effort and time that goes into that. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

So, anyone who makes it look easy, they're spending time or money on it, quite frankly. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: It's, it's difficult. You know, I know my colleagues I know a lot of them, how hard they work on that and how much time they, they put into it. You know, my focus has always been, I'm a very family centric person. You can tell how many times I've mentioned my wife, my grandmother, my parents, whatever.

Yeah. And some kids in there too. My, my goal has always been. I, I work, I do what I do because I really love it, and I love helping people in the way that I do. And I really love the surgery of it too, and the results and the instant gratification that we all get. But I always want to be home for din I want to be home for dinner.

This is the reason that I'm not doing head and neck reconstructions. We all get into this wanting to do that, you know, that's part of that, that story that we all have, but doing head and neck reconstructions would mean you're the second shift and you're not going to be home for dinner because someone else is sick.

Spent all day taking the cancer out, you know, so you're filling in a hole on someone's face. You're going to be second shift and No dinner tonight for the for you and the kids, but that's my goal and I've and I pride myself in that It's what I want to be known for. I want to be known as That amazing dad that amazing husband and son who's a great surgeon and treats people nicely, you know It's not about having the biggest Instagram and Facebook presence, but I have to tell you in and this is all new topic that we could discuss forever and on different social media platforms, but we're on different podcasts anybody who uses social media, even if you're using it just for advertising is susceptible to The effects of social media that the effects that they have on you as a person There is always the looking at what other people have.

There is always the person who's on a yacht somewhere on vacation when you're not, or, you know, is constantly showing you pictures of where they're traveling to, or what kind of car they're driving or how many followers they have or so on. And it's, and we're all susceptible to that as humans, and it's very hard to separate from that, which is why I strongly believe that children should just not be on social media until they are very old.

We thankfully have been successful in that with our youngest one. Our two others are responsible, but I, I know that they're affected by it. Everybody is. And if you're a parent out there listening and you just one day you're home and your teenagers are down. Yeah, kids can get like down sometimes and they don't want to talk about it, especially when they're teenagers.

But I would guarantee that that in this day and age in our current cultural environment, 90 percent of the time, that's because of some you. Thank you. Thing not positive that happened on social media or something that just got them down that's on social media, and it's to me such a dangerous thing. So, as a business person, we are also susceptible to that.

And one of the best things that someone ever told me as a coach to practice and business was. You need to mind your own business and don't worry about theirs. It's okay to look at it. You consume it a little bit to know what's out there, to know what other people are doing. You may copy it a little bit.

Don't feel bad about copying, looking and seeing what ideas you can get from it. But mind your business. Don't worry about there so much.

Catherine Maley, MBA: I couldn't agree more. I have to ask you out of curiosity because in Beverly Hills, everyone has spent a lot of money on PR. And I don't know if it's, I mean, you got a really good piece on the doctors. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

And so, I just want to ask, cause I still get phone calls shouldn't I hire a PR agency? And frankly, in today's world, I don't think you need one. I, I, I'd rather just, if you want to go that route, then just go ahead and, you know, open up your phone and start doing videos yourself. Cause that would be more authentic. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Just tell me, did the doctors, did that piece help you? a lot, a little. It was just a nice ego boost. Like, what do you think about PR nowadays? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: It was all three of those things. Okay. There's a lot of different kinds of PR. And, and we got a little bit of all, I've worked with two different PR firms in the past.

One early, early in my practice. Got me on a couple of and we don't even have Good clips of them because they happened at a time where it was harder to get the digital clips They were in like 2008 literally so getting digital clips were a little bit more difficult But I did the under eye filler injection on Fox 11 As my first like big one There was a couple others where we talked about medical tourism with some other news outlets and so on and then you get quoted in magazines as Having been asked a certain question and so on and they help they add up They definitely can get you some cloud back then.

I think it was way more important than now I think now there's so much video content out there that if you're just doing your own video content and don't have a reporter involved It's more authentic. It's more meaningful more valuable if you can get the word out on your YouTube, which I, again, I'm not good at, but one of my good friends in San Diego is excellent at it.

And it's, it's working out really well for him because he has the time to put into it. He can put in that time and make these videos and they make them look really good because he's got a production team behind him, the right thumbnail on there and it's just golden. But the doctors, there were three visits there.

I had three different shows with them. One was. Was not with a PR agent. They called me one was with a PR agent and one was us calling them. So, we had, we did it all three ways and all three were great for a short period of time. Then they were just okay. Then they were ego boosters. And still to this day, they're, they're all three of those things because they just give you a little bit more clout having them posted on the website or every once in a while reviving one and of course now my hairline looks different, not very different because of the drops I'm using, of course, but, but, you know, like you look different, but now all of a sudden there's like this video of me from six years ago, seven years ago, doing the facelift for the weight loss patient on, on the doctor's show.

So, so the first one. And they called me and they had a trauma patient, they had a trauma person, and I don't know how they got to me, but somehow, they had called other people and they said, well, we don't want to handle this, maybe, maybe Torkian can handle it. And so, it was a patient who had been run over by a car.

And she had tremendous facial trauma, and she still, she was reconstructed beautifully and wonderfully in the desert area near Palm Desert. And she just needed some cleaning up of some of the reconstructions, and she couldn't breathe. So, she needed a little nasal, nasal overhaul, a complete nasal overhaul.

That was one. The second was... My PR group at that time, I was working with Arlene Howard. I think she's still in practice now, but slowly starting to phase out. Wonderful, big name in the industry. She was charging a lot, but it was at that time we considered it definitely worthwhile because it just kept on building the clout.

It was nice to have that. It's hard to be available for them enough though. That's the hard thing about working with PR people. If any of the listeners out there are thinking about it. Is that they want you sometimes to just drop everything and answer a phone call so that they can tell you about a reporter who wants to talk to you tomorrow while you're supposed to be in surgery.

And it's, it's hard. You know, you're doing all this so you can be in surgery, but then if you are, then you can't really take the time to do what they want you to do. For me, that became the hard thing.

Catherine Maley, MBA: I would say it's great if you can get it, but I, I wouldn't put a bunch of trouble in today's world. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Although it does look good on the website, as long as you don't look aged too much. It does give you a lot of credibility. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: It's totally true. I really, I really loved doing it, especially with the doctor's show. I love their staff. I love Dr. Orden. I even got to know some of the producers and occasionally would see them even outside of, outside of there and, and just, you know, just hang with them because they were just nice people and it was nice to know them.

So, the third one, we actually got on ourselves. I had seen a patient who really blew my mind with what she had come in with, but I saw her like five years prior to her real surgical treatment. And when I saw her, she was telling me that her nose is swelling and she's pregnant. And I was like, well, I can't do anything about this now you're pregnant.

Like there's doesn't make sense, but yeah, nose is swell when you're pregnant. And she says, no, it's really swelling a lot. And I reassured her. I said, it's not that bad. It's just swelling. It just happens. It's hormonal. And like five years later, she came in with a five-year-old. And sat at my office and said, so I have this thing on my nose.

And I said, how'd you acquire that? And I didn't even put two and two together. I don't remember it was her. The name sounded familiar, but I didn't remember. But she had this thing that looked like it was traumatically cut straight down the middle of the tip of her nose. And it turned out she had had what I thought, I suspected and confirmed later after surgery was a granuloma, a subcutaneous granuloma of pregnancy in her, the tip of her nose.

They normally happen inside the nose on the mucous membrane that cause bleeding, but this one is, it's kind of like a vascular tumor, but it happens to be so hormone responsive that it only grows during pregnancy while that hormonal environment is, is surging. And so, we confirmed it with a biopsy during her surgery, but I, I operated on her to correct this issue.

It was a rhinoplasty plus reconstruction of the tip skin. And I, and I thought, if I'm going to do this, I want to do it pro bono. I don't want to charge her because I really like connect with this situation Now that I know who this is and how we this conversation started five years ago And I said what if I can get you on a tv show?

Then we can do it for free. Would that be cool with you? She said anything you want doc So; I called the doctor's show and I said this is the deal. We have this patient I think it's a wonderful thing for people to learn about it's probably not going to happen to anybody out there because it's, it's only been reported like once or twice in the literature, but this is something that we could put out there and teach people about what kind of things can happen to noses during pregnancy.

And so, they took it and we did that one. That was, that was, I think, the most gratifying one to me. And I really loved working with them. It was fun to be, you can tell I like to talk, so it was kind of fun to be there. Hanging out in that environment.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Okay, that's good. So, just to wrap it up, what would be any advice you have for any up-and-coming surgeon? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

What, what advice would you give them to enter this marketplace or to survive in this marketplace? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Oh, it's so tough. I feel like I still need the advice myself. Because no matter how long you've been in practice and how far you get, you're always going to still feel like you're not where you want to be.

And you always have some growth to do. I think what resonates most with me, having your basic human values in place in your practice are always, should always be your priority. You should always be the kindest that you can be to people, and that also, of interest, will help you, as a side note, to help, kind of filter out some of the undesirables that come into your practice.

Sometimes, as a nicer person, you want to help everybody, and you end up getting some of that. You get wrapped into some of the narcissism that exists within the plastic surgery community, the patients. Sometimes, because... They're interested in their appearance. Some are interested way too much. And they're really wrapped up in it.

And they get everyone in the office wrapped up in it. And we are like that, because we're so nice to them. But still, a priority should be just treating people like people. That's the most important thing. And then, in your own life, treat yourself as a person too. You don't have to be a work horse.

You are the work horse of your practice. But you don't have to be Thank you. working that way. You should have a life outside your practice. You should have a gratifying, satisfying home life. And that, that is what will lead you. That's the drive for you to do better and better all the time. That's the whole point of it.

Catherine Maley, MBA: I think that's such great advice and I would say, also make sure your staff and any of your other partners, they have the same kind of values you do because it's tough to be in a practice where you do have home life balance and the guy next to you is just the lion in the jungle who's trying to crush it. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

It doesn't make for a, you know, a positive environment. So, last question before we wrap it up. Tell us something that we don't know about you. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Wow. There's probably so much, but a lot of people probably know this already. I am a do it yourself er.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Okay. I thought so with the radio. Yeah. You turned in into the cell phone. How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: I think to some extent, probably all surgeons are right. We are manual. We like to do things. We like to see the results of the things that we do. So, I like to copycat stuff. I paint. But when I paint, I'm usually very heavily inspired by something else. So, I begin as a copy and I change it to me to make what I want it to look like.

So, I cook and I do the same thing. I will go to a restaurant; I'll taste something and my wife can see it in my eyes. She says, Oh God, he's thinking again. And then I go home and then the next day I've made that meal and I try to copy and emulate this really difficult, all the flavors that come out of it.

How close do you get? Sometimes very, very close. Oh, good for you. One of my favorite things to make is the artichoke, the artichoke from the Hillstone group. I don't know if you have a Hillstone where you are in Northern California. It used to be called Houston's. They're all over. Their first one was in Nashville.

But Houston's, which Hillstone group, they make the best artichoke and I've got that down. It's. You can find it probably in my TikTok account because I made a video of it. My daughter edited an amazing video, and I like to bake sourdough bread. It's a hobby of mine, so everybody comes over, they always want the bread.

Now we're experimenting with pizza as well, but it's, it's kind of an interesting thing. I, I just like to copy and emulate everything that I love. That's around me.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Well, well, you have some skills to fall back on if surgery doesn't work out for you, right? How does, or did this impact or relate to your decision on buying your mentor’s building?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Yeah, everybody, everybody who comes over our house says, man, you should have a bakery.

I said, no, no, no. Love that. I don't want any part of that.

Catherine Maley, MBA: Dr. Torkian, if somebody wanted to get in touch with you, I do know your website is drtorkian.com. Is there any other way you would want them to get ahold of you in case they've got some questions for you?

Behrooz A. Torkian, MD: Right. Our email on the website actually gets copied to my direct email.

It is hello@drtorkian.com. That gets directed to me, and if anybody has any questions. wants to bring up any points or even maybe use our surgery center. We'd love that.

Catherine Maley, MBA: No, good plug. Yeah. I mean, it's really in a killer place. Everyone who lives in around that area, like I'm in Northern California, but even I've heard of the Lasky clinic in Southern California.

It's a pretty big deal down there.

And I wanted to add one more thing. Another little plug. If you're really interested in the marketing and the business side of plastic surgery, I did put together this incredible learning center full of training vaults.

If you can't get enough of me, there's a plenty of me in there for you. And it's called CosmeticPracticeVault.Com. You can also get it on my website at CatherineMaley.Com. But it just gives you a lot of insights into how the heck you do this in today's world.

Everybody that’s going to wrap it up for us today, a Beauty and the Biz and this episode on “Buying Your Mentor’s Building”.

If you’ve got any questions or feedback for Dr. Torkian you can reach out to his website at, DrTorkian.com.

A big thanks to Dr. Torkian for sharing his experiences on the topic of, “buying your mentor’s building”.

And if you have any questions or feedback for me, you can go ahead and leave them at my website at www.CatherineMaley.com, or you can certainly DM me on Instagram @CatherineMaleyMBA.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode on Beauty and the Biz, please head over to Apple Podcasts and give me a review and subscribe to Beauty and the Biz so, you don’t miss any episodes. And of course, please share this with your staff and colleagues.

And we will talk to you again soon. Take care.

The fastest way to success is to model other successful surgeons who have what you want, but you can only see their results, not the path they took to get there.

So, you continue to jump from one thing to another, hoping to find something that will work for you too, but it rarely does. So, try this shortcut instead. It’s guaranteed to move you forward. I compiled my intellectual property to grow cosmetic revenues, everything I’ve gleaned over the years into one playbook of the most successful practices and what they do to win.

Go to www.CosmeticPracticeVault.com and let’s grow your cosmetic revenue.

-End transcript for “Buying Your Mentor’s Building — with Behrooz A. Torkian, MD”.

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