I co-founded an aesthetic medicine clinic and we grew it by selling online what everyone said could not be sold online.
I know the beauty and wellness customer from the inside, and I know what makes her buy online.
I was born into a family from the art world. My parents have run their own gallery all their lives. Both are entrepreneurs, and so is one of my sisters. There are four of us siblings, and the family dinner table was also where we talked about clients, exhibitions and accounts.
From an early age I knew marketing and sales were my thing. I studied Social Communication at UCAB and, while studying, spent two and a half years at Grupo Li, a Caracas gallery with more than forty years of history. That is where I learned to deal with premium clients, people who need to trust whoever is showing them the piece before they buy.
I arrived alone, with little savings and no job. My family supported me a lot, but I built everything else step by step, in a country where I knew no one.
I did the Digital Advertising master’s at IAB Spain, then Big Data and Strategic Marketing, and joined Philip Morris. There I saw how a large company works from the inside. You work as a team, and every department matters.
My business partner and I spotted a gap in aesthetic medicine that nobody was taking advantage of. I left the corporate world to set up and run Clínica Trevi.
We opened at the end of February 2020. This is what happened next, told from the inside.
Fifteen days after opening, the mandatory COVID lockdown hit. A brand-new clinic with no income, no support and bills that kept coming.
Sell the treatments through the website. Everyone told us it was a bad idea, that nobody would buy a medical treatment online. I always believed they would.
I built online sales from scratch: the website, payments and go-to-market. We were among the first in the sector to do it, and that is what saved us. Today many clinics do the same.
The customer was buying a medical treatment without ever setting foot in the clinic. So the website had to do the job of a first visit.
Every treatment was explained in detail, with its side effects, its FAQs and a fixed price, with no small print. If she had questions, she could book an appointment or message us on WhatsApp. A person from the team replied, not a bot.
And there was one guarantee we made crystal clear. If the medical assessment showed she was not a suitable candidate, we refunded her money.
It is the same thing I learned at the gallery in Caracas. Before buying, people need to trust whoever is showing them the piece.
In the first year we spent heavily on ads to launch the channel, and the return didn’t justify it. We cut back, kept only what converted, and the website kept selling.
I learned that advertising accelerates what already works, but it doesn’t fix what doesn’t.
With far less ad spend, the website kept selling. What sustained it was the customers themselves. Online customers came back, and they returned more times a year than those who walked straight into the clinic. And many new customers arrived on someone else’s recommendation.
It wasn’t by chance. After every treatment we followed up on WhatsApp to see how she was doing. We reminded her when the next session was due and offered multi-session packages. With the CRM we offered her the next treatment at the right moment. We rewarded repeat business a lot.
I coordinated an in-house team and several external partners: a paid media agency, design, community management, filmmakers and press.
I asked agencies for sales, not clicks. Every week we reviewed the cost per sale and the revenue each campaign generated. Every month we decided where to increase budget and where to cut it.
Once the channel worked, the hardest decision came. Open more clinics quickly, or consolidate the one we had. We chose to consolidate one location first and expand afterwards. It was the right call, and on that foundation we built the network.
An online channel isn’t sustained by ads. It’s sustained by trust.
“What drives me is sleeping soundly knowing the goals are being met.”
Luis Muci
If it doesn’t leave a margin, it doesn’t scale. I cut ad spend sharply and the website kept improving its numbers.
In the middle of COVID we sold medical treatments online, when everyone said it couldn’t be done.
When we had to choose between opening more clinics or strengthening the one we had, we consolidated one location and then expanded the network.
No CRM on the market covered everything we really needed at once, so I built one. Patients, scheduling, medical records, digital consent forms, treatment plans, billing and stock on a single platform. Today it is a standalone product.
What I learned. Building your own tools forces you to understand your business in detail.
We designed the network’s expansion model so that every clinic worked the same way without depending on us.
What I learned. To grow without losing quality, you scale processes, not people.
I designed and delivered it for our own teams and those of the partner clinics. I taught them to move from informing to closing. Listen to what the patient wants, recommend the right treatment with its price upfront, and handle objections.
What changed. The team learned to really sell.
I led the go-to-market for two restaurant brands in Spain and prepared their franchise expansion: brand, launch, and sales in store and on delivery marketplaces.
What I learned. Every delivery marketplace is a channel with its own rules. Commissions, photos and pricing completely change profitability.
I designed lead generation funnels and automations for service SMEs.
I worked in the sales department, running email, push and SMS campaigns on Salesforce Marketing Cloud for points of sale across Spain.
What I learned. How a large company works from the inside. You work as a team, and every department matters.
Trevi helped me grow, but I’m closing that chapter.
I’m looking for a company with its own product and the ambition to grow, in ecommerce or DTC, ideally in beauty, wellness or health. A place where I’m accountable for sales and profitability, with a team behind me.