Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Kotas.
Lisa, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am a board-certified ob/GYN who has practiced for the last 20 years. Graduated from UT Southwestern Medical School. I was in private practice for a few years, until the birth of my third son (who is now 12) at which time I became an obstetrical hospitalist at Presby Dallas–shift work that allowed me to be with my kids more. We get high-risk pregnancy transfers from outlying areas and pregnant women who present for heart attacks, strokes, traumas (like gunshot wounds and car accidents).
As I’ve gotten older this job has become a little more taxing with the nights and acuity. I was looking for another outlet. Also with getting older, I began using aesthetic services. I found them really fascinating and began learning, informally, how to inject. They were particularly fascinating to me because I draw and paint, mostly portraits. It was a natural progression from that point to became more involved in injecting–perfecting techniques and learning more advanced techniques.
With more investment in the aesthetics realm, I noticed that there was a lot of variation in the services patients received. I noticed that there was no real consistency in safe practices and protocols. I noticed that these procedures required a lot of maintenance (every three months for Botox), and while fairly quick to receive, the travel and wait time for these procedures frequently more than tripled the time spent for an appointment.
I decided to start a practice that put safety, high-quality, consistent, natural-looking outcomes as a priority and offer in-home/in-office services as well. We have a stationary location now but originally started strictly as an in-home service. This also helped to reduce startup costs and overhead as we grew.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Overall, it’s been a fairly smooth road. We’ve had a few snags, like trying to procure property/general liability insurance. I was told by one company that this was new and they did not cover this. I asked if they covered home health care companies, which carry more expensive and dangerous equipment, like oxygen tanks. They did but refused to cover us. But Traveler’s came through.
Really the biggest challenge has been that this feels more like a business venture with the direct to consumer marketing than starting a medical practice. I try to make conservative, smart decisions, but I do not have a business background. It’s like being in a foreign country and not speaking the language: I can experience things and see the sights and I know better than to walk down an isolated alley and pull out my money.
Youth Secret – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
Our company specializes in medical aesthetics. Our services include botox, fillers, chemical peels, micro-needling, platelet-rich plasma injections, PDO threads and injectable supplements.
The things I am most proud of as a company is a culture that my team and I have created. I have the most wonderful and talented staff. I have never seen anything like it elsewhere. We all have the same goals of safety, beautiful outcomes and excellent customer service. They are all very skilled injectors. When we first started working together and I saw the high quality of these individuals, I invested in them with training and soliciting input, working with their schedules.
As a result, they started investing me, but the moment I knew we were different was when I saw them investing in each other. They would invite each other to learn new techniques or call each other with questions if I wasn’t available. Because of the open communication that we have, we have a safe place to learn from each other. The truth that no one wants to admit is that if you have been in this industry long enough, you will experience complications. Knowing this, we are prepared. We travel with all of the equipment to keep our patients safe. But when we have a concern we open up a dialogue with the whole team. This has so many benefits:
– We get all of the input possible to help our patients and give them the best possible outcome.
– We all learn new management plans and things for which to watch.
– We feel supported by the team.
The thing that really sets us apart from others is our safety and accessibility. We have protocols for every procedure. We travel with crash carts. I am always immediately available. Every patient is evaluated by me before being treated. As far as accessibility, we come to the patient and make it easy. Additionally, because we are a medical practice, I am an additional resource for our patients for minor primary care.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dfwyouthsecret.com
- Phone: (214)432-4008
- Email: contact@dfwyouthsecret.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dfwyouthsecret/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dfwyouthsecret/
Image Credit:
For the individual photos of Stephen Strecansky RN, Nesha Burrows RN and Claudette Fresquez RN, as well as the one of Nesha Burrows and Lisa Kotas dancing, the photographer is Sheryl Lanzel.
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