It was not the money that motivated me as much as the passion for entrepreneurship. I wanted New Me to be a national and a global brand. So, I tried to learn business, professionally and, academically while getting a degree, and hiring other surgeons to join my practice. There were many problems. For a few years, I could not recruit anyone with sufficient cosmetic surgery experience who wanted to work for me. I could hire new graduates without enough experience, but I was not willing to subject my patients and practice to that. 

Most highly skilled and qualified cosmetic surgeons were in high demand. They did not want to work for the salary I was able to afford to offer. They could earn a whole lot more on their own. So, I would book my patients further out. I was fully booked months in advance.

Never the less, the patients were always my priority and during these years as I was searching for permanent, qualified partners, I increased my work hours to a point where I was only sleeping three to four hours per night. The demand for my time was increasing and I could not slow things down.

The overhead had become massive, I was expected to do all the surgeries myself, and I had to watch every little thing to make sure nothing went wrong. I loved everything that I was doing. Every moment of it. I could not get enough of either. Not enough of cosmetic surgery, and not of entrepreneurship. But unfortunately, it had become way too overwhelming, and no matter how many administrators and managers and topline staff I hired to help take the load off, instead they just added to the overhead! All the responsibility and liability would finally end up on my own shoulders as the medical director, the surgeon, the boss, and the business owner. I am sure you are all familiar with that

In the meanwhile, my pursuit for great, talented cosmetic surgery partners continued. The problem was my patients wanted me; and if someone else did the surgery and something did not go perfectly, as the medical director and the captain of the ship, still I was the one who was responsible to fix the problem. So, it both increased the overhead of the practice because I had to pay the surgeons' salaries and be responsible for their complications and unhappy patients. That was a deal that I had not signed-up for!

This crazy routine continued, it started to reverse things in my life. I was no longer at the "peak of the mountain". I was tired, fatigued, and burned out, "on the way down". When the financial meltdown of 2008 came about, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It became a free-fall. Ultimately, in retrospect, almost all my problems most likely have been caused by my own poor choices. 

If early on in my career I felt like an eagle soaring, I was now on my way down, and it was going to be a crash-landing! It ultimately did not end well. I ended up not on the ground, but it felt like I was under the ground. I lost everything. I felt crushed in every way imaginable.

In the meanwhile, as I explained in the blog article below, "WHY COSMETIC SURGEONS HAVE UNHAPPY PATIENTS?", my mental state started to deteriorate as all the pressures were compounded with the unhappy patients complaining. I needed to calmly educate them, and simply resolve their misunderstandings. But with all the emotional, and mental pressures I was under, I was in no state to do that. Instead, my interactions with others further aggravated them, and created a viscous cycle that ended up involving me into all kinds of additional troubles. Eventually, I found myself in trouble with the Medical Board, legal issues, financial loss and devastation of my great professional reputation. I had also extended credit to many of my patients in good faith which they never paid me despite their great results, causing me hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses, and making me feel betrayed and cheated. I ended up in even deeper depression, and my mental health deteriorated even further. In the meanwhile, a lawyer brought six simultaneous malpractice lawsuits against me. He also hired a TV reporter to unbeknownst to me create a horrible video to make me look like a monster, to help him win his cases. When I learned I was set-up, I was understandably extremely upset, and intentionally they edited the video, in which they only showed the portions of it in which I was upset, and they succeeded in making me look like a monster. Later, several sites on the internet picked up the video and ran with it. It became a nationally devastating embarrassment. You could see Dr. New Me, on the internet misrepresented and defamed, that now had become totally depressed, and because of the antidepressant medications’ side effects had gained a whole lot of weight. I gave up after that. Everything had become a huge, overwhelming mess, and the Medical Board pursued the issues hence my license was suspended and revoked.

 Later, after I got to know the attorney who had brought the six lawsuits against me, he turned out to be a very nice guy. He was just trying to make money representing his clients, and nothing else. It was just that he had advertised in the same place that I advertised so my patients who came from the same source of advertisement called him and he was overenthusiastic in accepting their cases. I learned that he hired the news reporter to make the news clip to get back at me for my angry behavior towards him in the beginning. 

 I learned another lesson that in a bad situation, my own poor behavior would only make the situation worse. It has been eleven years since that time. I have come a long way. It takes moment to moment awareness.

 When we eventually went to court to defend my practice against each of the six malpractice cases, and presented our defense, thanks to the evidence, the truth, the before and after pictures, documentations, and the expert witness testimonies, nothing came of those malpractice lawsuits, and with God's grace they were all resolved. They all went away but too little too late. The mental, emotional, and financial devastation that they caused me will be forever a part of my every fiber and memory. That video did something to me, and my self-esteem, self-confidence, my reputation, my ability to earn a living, my social life, and even my relationship with my children that I can't even describe with any words. As I write this at this given moment, I am in a state of disbelief and awe. 

One thing I learned is that there are amazing people who have great intentions, but when they hear something, without adequate investigation, or objective knowledge, they jump into conclusion and spread the information. This can become cyber assassination. The internet world has become such a double-edged sword. I love the side of the internet that can help us grow as individuals  by learning, sharing our ideas and opinions, and teach each other. It can also help humanity, be impactful in a positive manner and make our world a much better place. I watch YouTube, educational channels, and videos all the time. On the other hand, there are all these toxic social media and dark sites. All these destructive sites that have been designed with no good intention, accountability nor consideration for the best interest of our human family. Sometimes even media intentionally participates in these kinds of spreading of fake news behaviors. When the reporters are allowed to be paid privately and the segments are allowed to be edited with an intended angle regardless of the truth, that is fake news. On the other hand, a competitor cosmetic surgeon in Beverly Hills used his own Yelp account to write defamatory claims that were founded on misrepresentations and untrue statements to hurt me and my reputation, in a public forum, then using that in his own advertisements, to associate decades of my notariaty to his own name for the purpose of personal gain, truly caused me deep anguish, as did when I learned of his demise of COVID-19 during the same time I was hospitalized in the same ICU as he was. An anesthesiologist, Dr. Nosrat K. who defrauded me out of about $400,000 by selling me a bankrupt medical facility by faslsifying documents in 2004 wrote a horrible Google review under his own name making malicious false claims and hurtful defamatory remarks, whose outrageous reviews were allowed by Google to remain. Interestingly enough, his horrible behaviors, I heard, backfired on him and his life is totally destroyed.  So many misrepresentations and false claims have been spread all over disguised as "Reviews" and are protected by the First Amendment which leaves room to wonder how much freedom does one possess to say whatever one pleases about someone in an open forum, with impunity? When we say dishonest things about others, spread hatred, try to hurt someone intentionally by spreading information that we know is not true, knowing it will truly devastate their life, we intent to assassinate their character and destroy their reputation, all with the excuse that this is America, and we have the right to Freedom of Speech; that is not exercising our rights, it is something else! 

At the end, the lessons I learned from all these experiences are still being processed. Working on myself and trying to overcome my anger, reactive hatred, and resentment, I have decided to turn this around. I have accepted that I was the cause of it in some ways. I prefer to not be a victim. When I see myself as a victim, I give my power away. There is no power in being a victim. As a victim, I can do nothing to change something that has happened to me. But as a person who accepts that he was responsible for what happened, I have all sorts of power. I can change all types of things, do all types of things, and learn all types of things. Suddenly I am in a position of power.

I have shifted my position from a victim to a proactive cause, victor, and source. By starting this blog, educating my previous patients, writing articles on the internet, communicating with Yelp, Google and Fox News who allowed this "Fake News" to be aired and disguised as real news, and the other internet sites that used this “news video” to increase their traffic, and all the other things that I intend to do, I will do all the things I need to do to take my power back.

After all the previously mentioned devastating experiences, from 2008 financial melt-down to the 2013 video fake news, and its demoralizing, devastating irreversibly destructive effect on me in every way, and the six lawsuits, which made the loss of my medical license inevitable and all its aftermaths, I felt as if I had had a free-fall crash-landing that drove me proverbially six-feet-under.