Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Casey Balkema.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m excited to share a little more about myself with the community on this platform. I have a very diverse background that has been beneficial throughout my personal and professional life thus far.
Now in my 40s, I’ve lived in and around Atlanta since I was 16 years old. I have been a Board Certified physician in practice for 8+ years. My education includes a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from The University of North Georgia. Prior to medicine, I worked for several years as an engineer for a Fortune 500 company. Additionally, I have over a decade of military service as an Officer in the United States Army and Georgia Army National Guard.
One recent accomplishment I’m proud of is being recognized by my peers and fellow physicians with the honor of election to Fellowship in the American College of Physicians (FACP). This distinction is given to select physicians for their excellence and skill in medical practice, commitment to community and patients, participation in medical graduate education including actively teaching and training of resident physicians as well as medical students, continuing research and scholarship in the field of medicine, and other professional accomplishments. It is truly an honor to be recognized by my peers, patients, fellow physicians and community.
For the first portion of my post-residency medical care, I worked solely in the hospital and emergency room, taking care of and treating anyone who came in the door with any type of illness. Like the rest of the world, I was shocked at the suddenness and the sickness brought on with the arrival of COVID-19 and worked with my other partners on the front lines throughout the pandemic. Most of 2020 and 2021 was spent with long shifts and gowns and masks and face-to-face encounters with scared sick patient’s, always going in and examining them personally when several of the other specialties in the hospital were too scared to even go into the patient rooms. Though I was saving lives and helping others as I’m driven to do, the stress of worrying about taking disease back to my family and friends and the emotional impact of watching otherwise healthy patient’s becoming sick and have long-term disability and sudden death admittedly took more of a toll on me than I initially realized. My wife, Brittany, working at the same time as an administrator for another major Atlanta area health care system found herself now working from home for those two years conducting endless daily meetings over video chat, having no real human interaction and wrecking her back sitting at the dining table all day on her laptop. She seems to have a never-ending schedule filled with mindless emails, meetings, and reports. We’d often discuss at the end of the day how everyone did a lot of talking about things, but what was actually getting done each day?
It was with all this in the back of our minds that my wife and I started looking for ways we could impact our lives and those of the others we came in contact with in a more positive way. We had always ached to spend more time together during the day and also wanted to shift the power of practicing medicine back into our hands. This was the motivation behind creating our business and medical practice together, Balk Aesthetics, where we could focus on personalized patient health and well-being through various and cosmetic and aesthetic procedures. Rather than just opening another membership-driven “med spa” with an assembly line mentality to just “sticking people with Botox”, we wanted to create a practice focused on the “medical” part of “med spa”. We only wanted to offer real, clinically proven products and procedures. Society has forgotten that most of these procedures are medical and need to be completed by a trained licensed professional. Products like neurotoxins and fillers and the like are real prescription medications and need knowledge in choosing and administering the right ones and amounts. A patient should have a place where they can comfortably sit down with a physician or other licensed medical provider who isn’t just staring at a computer or checking their watch, and together creating a treatment plan personalized just for them and their schedules.
This dream led to both of us diving into the depths of creating a small business. Still saving lives during the day at the hospital, my nights for the past 2-3 years were spent finding just the right location around Atlanta, pouring over leases and business plans, projecting and applying for finances, building websites and social media, creating vendor accounts, testing products, interviewing employees, designing and building our site and a million other little things the average consumer doesn’t even think about when visiting someone’s business. As a strictly math and science guy, I was having to learn everything as I was doing it and with that came its own set of stressors and the dreaded not knowing what I don’t know. The famous quote about “blood, sweat, and tears” is now more real to me than I ever could imagine.
In summary, my diverse life experiences together with a constant desire to help and serve others is the inspiration behind Balk Aesthetics, my new business venture together with my amazing wife Brittany Balkema. I have always believed exceptional personalized care is the cornerstone of each patient-physician relationship. I strive to help my patients feel good about themselves by communicating with and helping them choose the right cosmetic or aesthetic treatment that will yield radiant results in a luxurious yet professional medical environment. My goal is to always create natural-appearing enhancements, leading to improvements in patient self-confidence, satisfaction, and well-being.Alright, 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?
It hasn’t always been the smoothest of roads, and I would almost describe it as a whole new road in life. My wife quit her job a year ago to focus on this business venture and I have continued working both at the hospital and at our practice which yields me about two actual days off every month. We personally looked at around 40 sites around Atlanta to find the one we wanted and just the lease negotiations for that site took nine months in itself. During that time we talked to five different banks trying to find the best terms and amounts to help finance our venture and this often meant pages and pages and pages of digging through and submitting financials to then be told “we aren’t interested in helping you start your dream”. One thing we found is that most banks want to give established businesses money and don’t want to risk a bet on a start-up. There’s a catch 22 of wanting to start a business but needing 2+ years of business financial records to get anyone to talk to you.
Instead for us, this meant saving ourselves for 2-3 years, no more vacations, no eating out, no concerts or events, etc. We couldn’t even repair the gutter falling off the house (true story) for fear of not having enough start-up capital and then losing everything. We’ve even gone without A/C for six months during the hot Georgia summer because the business needs that money more than we do! Once we had assurances of a signed lease and some SBA financing options, we found an architect and contractor and starting planning our build. Then, while our contractor was waiting on plans, our architect decided to basically ghost us for three months, not responding to phone calls or emails or any means of contact and when we finally got ahold of him gave us our finished plans and the sheepish excuse of “oh I took on too many projects at once”. We then finally started our build which meant visiting the site every day for 180 days, constantly finding lights and switches and wires and pipes all placed randomly with no one subcontractor really caring about where the other sub would have to run their pipe or conduit. It felt as if we were the only ones that could see or even care about the real vision and that meant constant oversight after long days at the hospital or on days off making sure something wouldn’t end of costing us big. COVID also ran up costs and added shipment delays so that our projected 90-day build ended up taking twice as long.
One thing we still laugh about to this day was the perfect soft grey paint we painstakingly picked out for all our interior walls ended up looking like bright doll house pink under the special LED lights we had in each room. That meant an emergency pick of a new paint color and the walls being entirely redone. Then, once you’re open and new and shiny and you aren’t talking to the banks or contractors or lawyers anymore, you’re left with the awful thought of how do people know we exist and how are you going to get them to come? Now, finally six months later after our grand opening, we are busy and growing and starting to live the life and practice that we want and were suddenly hit with the unfortunate medical leave of one of our main employees. This means picking up the slack while we go back to the job posting sites and interviewing to find someone who fits with our Mission, Vision, and Values. My wife says, “we made this baby, now we have to raise her!”
How do you think about happiness?
I really have a strong desire to do some good in this world and have the people I come in contact with remember our interaction as a positive one. I look forward to working with my wife each day as she’s my business partner, teammate, and best friend. I value time spent with family and friends and wish to have more of that. I love constantly learning new things and testing myself in new and difficult situations.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.balkaesthetics.com
- Instagram: @BALK_AESTHETICS_
- Facebook: @BalkAesthetics
