Today we’d like to introduce you to Swapna Shastri
Hi Swapna, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I am an internal medicine physician, born and raised in Chicago. I did all of my schooling there, and thought I would be a Chicagoan forever! But due to covid, my family and I decided to move to Miami in 2020. In Chicago, I was working for hospitals – primarily outpatient internal medicine, treating general medicine patients, but I was trained early on right after I graduated residency in 2013 in aesthetics. I’ve always had an artistic side to me, and have been passionate about healthy, beauty and fashion. It was the perfect way to integrate the science geek in me with the creative side.
Covid was a tough time for the world, and I saw what it was doing firsthand at the hospital I was working for in Chicago. I was helping operate an outpatient Covid clinic, where I saw sickness that I couldn’t treat. After that, we decided it would be good for my two boys to move to Miami. When I moved down here, I decided that I would stop practicing internal medicine completely and focus my sights on aesthetics. I didn’t know anybody, and didn’t know how to navigate the city. There has always been a hustling side to me, and I knew that I wanted to build my business to represent me completely. So I started doing concierge visits for aesthetic injectables (neurotoxins such as botox and disport, filler, plasma, etc.). I started a social media, and hired a SM manager to help me grow online presence. While I did this, I also contacted a local med spa owner who let me work as in independent contractor in their space, so I could bring patients there who didn’t want the concierge service. I took patients no matter how far and what time, I found a way to make it work to build my patient base. I finally had enough patients to open my own office in 2022. After opening my office in Brickell, I expanded my presence with developing a website with online booking as well as starting to teach to aesthetics.
Treating my aesthetic patients brings me a world of joy – I see each one of them who may have something that they are self conscious about physically but it much larger than that. When I see each one of my patients leave looking refreshed and enhanced, it brings about a self confidence to face the world and their life challenges. My aesthetic treatments are focused around natural enhancements, I never want the patient to look different than themselves – I want them to look more like themselves but more refreshed and natural. I achieve results like this by constantly studying and teaching anatomy, learning the effect aging has on the face at each stage of life, and gravitating towards more natural treatments that are regenerative to correct aging.
Teaching aesthetics also brings me a world of joy – there are a lot practitioners who get trained in the US in a day, and then are sent off on their own to start injecting. This, actually, is how I myself was trained over 10 years ago. I never felt confident until I found mentors who showed me where to train and didn’t gate-keep. Right then and there, I knew that I would never want to hold any person back who wanted to learn aesthetics, and I would go out of my way to teach them the most safe and optimal way to inject. There were a lot of practitioners who definitely thought that I was out of my niche being internal medicine and advancing in the aesthetic field, and I have never forgotten how that made me feel. After teaching for various companies, I found a company with the same view as me. I teamed up with Derma Medical, who is the largest teaching company in the UK to teach their more cumulative approach to the US.
My work is my passion, and being a business owner is not easy but the challenges are mine to solve just as the fruits of my labor are mine to enjoy!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It hasn’t been a smooth road! Building a business has many challenges. My very first struggle was finding patients. I worked relentlessly, and started to put myself out there via social media or events to find them. It was at first awkward for me to speak on camera and post little tidbits about myself and my skills – but eventually I found I liked to be in front of the camera. My SM manager would ask me a question, and I would go off the top of my head speaking about the subject. I hustled to get a good patient base, and from there the opportunities that came along with it.
I also found it very difficult to balance family life, and building a business. Working at a hospital with a set schedule is very different than working all hours for yourself. I obviously can’t inject all the time, but non-working hours my brain is flooded with how to keep going, how to fix any problems, which step to take next. Balancing this with being the mother of my very active two boys has been very challenging, but I try to make sure that I am there for them at every Important event. I love that they get to see me working hard to set an example for what females are capable of, and also being the person they can depend on the most.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Made In Miami MD?
My business is all me – it is my personality wrapped up in a clinic. What sets me apart is that I am a physician performing safe and natural injections which is hard to find in Miami. I focus on patient safety, natural refreshed results, and am always learning the most advanced and newest techniques. I am most proud of how I developed my clinic to represent me, from logo to decor to the ambiance I create. Each patient visit is personal as well as personalized. I don’t schedule patients in 15 minute time slots, I take time with each of my patients to discuss a personalized treatment plan that will result in the most optimal outcome. Even though getting poked is not fun, coming to see me is!
What were you like growing up?
I was more of a shy kid, growing up. I was more quiet, but always had an interest in performing well at school. I always had an interest in dancing, music as well as science. I loved my family and friends – my mom was and still is my best friend. We walked together, went shopping together, and she always took me to India with her to visit her family once a year. My dad and brother were loving male influences in my life – I was very lucky!
Pricing:
- Botox – $15/unit, Dysport $6.5/unit
- Fillers – $899/syringe
- Morpheus 8 – $1000 per treatment
- Plasma/Polynucleotide $400-$800/treatment
- Hydrafacials – $150-$275 per treatment
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.drmiamimd.com
- Instagram: @madeinmiami.md
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swapna-shastri-md-7b5938a1
