Today we’d like to introduce you to Mira Kaga.
Hi Mira, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m a board-certified internal medicine physician, which is not the traditional starting point for someone who now spends a lot of her week injecting and running laser platforms. But the path actually makes sense if you look at it the right way.
I trained in internal medicine because I wanted to understand how the body actually works – metabolism, hormones, inflammation, the whole system. When I started seeing patients in primary care, I kept noticing the same thing: people would come in worried about their skin, their weight, their energy, the way they were aging and the conventional medical system had almost nothing to offer them beyond a prescription pad. Meanwhile the aesthetics industry was booming, but a lot of it was being done by people who didn’t have the medical background to treat the patient as a whole person.
That gap is what TKI was built to fill. We opened almost 10 years ago, and from the beginning the idea was to combine real internal medicine, advanced aesthetics, and dental care under one roof – science-backed, technology-forward, and education-first. I didn’t want to be another medspa that runs whatever filler is trending on TikTok. I wanted a place where a patient could come in for skin tightening and walk out understanding that their skin laxity might actually be tied to their thyroid – and get that checked too. Most practices aren’t built to make those connections. We are.
Today we operate out of two locations in New Jersey, I’m a Key Opinion Leader and trainer for several injectable and laser companies, and we’ve built TKI into a brand that has a real point of view in a very crowded market. None of it happened in a straight line, but the through-line has always been the same: treat patients like family, teach them what’s actually going on, and use the best tools available.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, and I’d be suspicious of anyone in this industry who tells you it has been.
Running a hybrid medical practice means you’re essentially operating three businesses at once – internal medicine, aesthetics, and dental – each with its own regulations, staffing realities, and patient expectations. Hiring has probably been the hardest part, and the way we’ve solved it is a little unusual.
Most practices in this space hire fast, train light, and pay on commission. We do the opposite. Our providers spend years training directly with me before they’re working independently, because it’s easier to teach someone the right way the first time than to undo habits they picked up somewhere else. Most injectors in this industry are trained to sell, to upsell, and to give patients what they want. Ours are trained to teach, to deliver a full consultation instead of just the treatment a patient walked in asking for, and to explain the difference between what someone wants and what they actually need. They’re trained to say no before they say yes.
Nobody at TKI is on commission. Nobody has a financial incentive to upsell. Providers are rewarded on retention and results – not on what they bring in – which is genuinely unheard of in this industry, and it’s the single biggest reason our patients trust us.
The other thing we do differently is cross-training. Our aestheticians are phlebotomy trained, because so many of our patients see us for both concierge medicine and aesthetics – if someone comes in for a facial and needs bloodwork checked, we can do it in the same visit. That kind of overlap only works if your team is built for it from day one.
All of that takes time. We’ve had to make hard calls, rebuild teams, and rewrite playbooks more than once to protect that standard.
The other real challenge has been branding in a space that gets noisier every year. A few years ago we had to do a significant rebrand and reposition the practice – that kind of work is not a weekend project. You’re rebuilding signage, marketing, search, social, patient touchpoints, everything. And you have to keep the doors open while you do it.
The other real challenge has been branding in a space that gets noisier every year. A few years ago we had to do a significant rebrand and reposition the practice – that kind of work is not a weekend project. You’re rebuilding signage, marketing, search, social, patient touchpoints, everything. And you have to keep the doors open while you do it.
What helped is that the actual offering at TKI is hard to mistake for anything else in the state. We run more than 20 lasers across our two locations, spanning a wide range of wavelengths and modalities – there isn’t another practice in New Jersey with a larger facility or anywhere near the depth of technology we operate. We’re also heavily invested in regenerative medicine, which is still a relatively small and specialized corner of this field. So while the aesthetic category as a whole keeps getting more crowded, the specific category we operate in is narrow, and we’re the most equipped practice in it. The rebrand was really about making sure our marketing finally matched what was already true inside the building.
What’s gotten me through is honestly the patients and the team. When someone tells you that something you did changed how they feel walking into a room, you remember why you built the thing in the first place.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
TKI is built around a simple idea: aesthetic care and internal health are the same conversation, and the patient is better off when one practice can handle both. That’s the lens behind everything we do.
On the aesthetic side, our signature is laser stacking – layering multiple modalities in a single visit to produce results that no single device can deliver on its own. It’s a protocol-driven approach, not a menu, and it’s the reason patients travel to us from outside our immediate market. Every device setting and treatment protocol is personally reviewed and approved by me, and our providers think through cases together rather than in silos. When you walk in for a treatment plan at TKI, you’re getting four or five clinicians thinking about your face – not one.
On the injectable side, we work anatomically. We’re not chasing wrinkles, we’re thinking about facial structure, muscle dynamics, and how a face ages over a decade rather than a season. And on the regenerative and metabolic side – peptides, hormones, body composition, longevity – we’ve built out a program that most aesthetic practices simply don’t offer, because most aesthetic practices aren’t physician-led.
The dental piece is the part that surprises people. Smile and face are anatomically and aesthetically inseparable, and treating them in isolation is a missed opportunity. Patients who come to us for one almost always end up benefiting from the other.
The role I take most seriously, though, is the educational one. As a KOL for Cutera, Sofwave, Galderma and Merz, I train other physicians and providers on the platforms and protocols we use every day. That role keeps us accountable. You cannot credibly teach something you don’t practice at a high level, and being the practice that other clinicians learn from forces a standard on us that we wouldn’t necessarily impose on ourselves.
What I’m most proud of is the team. We have providers, injectors, dental, and support staff who genuinely care about doing the work the right way. That culture is the hardest thing to build and the easiest thing to lose, and I think we’ve protected it well.
What’s next?
A few things, all moving at once.
On the practice side, we’re continuing to expand the metabolic health and longevity side of TKI – peptide protocols, body contouring, advanced hormone and lipid work – because patients are increasingly looking for an integrated approach, not separate visits to five different providers. I want TKI to be the place that connects the dots.
On the education side, we’re building out training programs and content for other clinicians. There’s a real appetite for high-quality, evidence-based education in this space, and I’d rather we be one of the voices shaping it than watch it get shaped poorly. There’s also some interesting work happening internationally – I’ve been working with Cutera contacts in Australia and there’s real interest in the APAC market in the protocols we’ve developed.
Long term, the vision is a scalable, education-forward brand ecosystem – training programs, media, and a practice model that other physicians can learn from. We just turned nine. The next chapter is about taking what we’ve built and letting it reach more people.
Pricing:
- Pricing varies significantly by treatment and is best discussed during a consultation, but a few useful reference points: • Consultations are complimentary and include a full skin and goals assessment. • We offer membership tiers – Functional Concierge and Medicine – designed for patients who want ongoing care rather than one-off treatments. There are also options for patients to work in aesthetic treatments into their concierge medicine tiers. • We honor a verified healthcare professional discount for eligible clinical staff. • Seasonal and combination treatment packages are available throughout the year – our laser stacking protocols in particular are designed as multi-modality packages.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://drkaga.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DrKaga/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mirakaga
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mirakaga
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@KagaInstitute
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@drkaga_tki
