EYE OWN A BUSINESS

How do you define success? Would your definition of business success and personal success conflict with each other? Sometimes it feels like they are aligned when they are not. Business success often requires long hours and hefty sacrifices that come at the expense of family and personal joy. In optometry school, did you set a personal goal to spend less time with your kids, take fewer vacations, and watch a savings account grow with money you didn’t get to enjoy?  

In this episode with Adam Cmejla, we take a look at this topic and discuss how important it is to work to live, not live to work. Even if you love your job, your practice can and should be in service of not only your business goals but also your personal goals. From a financial planning standpoint, how can you set yourself up for success on both fronts? 

In this episode I sit down with Dr, Candace Hoff to talk about something she’s doing that a lot of ODs ask about, but very few successfully execute. That “something” is an in-house discount plan.  

In Dr. Hoff’s case, this allowed her practice to drop a few vision plans while retaining a healthy percentage of those patients. The feedback from patients has been mostly positive, and the feedback from staff has been even better. The success of this discount plan has Dr. Hoff targeting additional plans to drop. 

Take a listen to learn how she did it, how she communicated this option to patients, and much more! 

“Leadership is not about title or positions, it is about one life influencing another.” These are the words of world-renowned leadership expert John Maxwell. In this episode, I had the opportunity to interview Chris Goede, Vice President of Client Success for The John Maxwell Company. Chris is one of our keynote speakers for our upcoming national convention, The Connection, in Orlando on February 16 -19. In this episode, Chris takes us through the foundational principles from John Maxwell’s best-seller, The 5 Levels of Leadership.  

As you’re listening, try to determine what level you are currently at, and what needs to change to advance to the next level. Don’t get stuck at a low level! Developing and growing your leadership attributes will pay huge dividends in managing your team and growing a successful practice. 

Patient education and effective communication are not the same thing. Patient education only guarantees people will hear what you say. Effective communication increases the odds people will do what you say. So, how do we become better communicators? 

Fortunately, we don’t have to guess at that, we just have to make some small but powerful changes in how we communicate with patients. There is a mountain of research demonstrating how to be more effective and influential when communicating with others, and this can be easily applied to patient care. In this podcast, I present some of these concepts and share an audio lesson from a course I created designed to help doctors become more effective communicators. If you’re an IDOC member, email me at [email protected] for a link to download the entire course for free. 

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Have you set annual goals for your practice in the past that required you and your staff to perform or produce at a higher level to reach the goal? Did you succeed, or did you find yourself coming up short at the end of the year?  

There are many flaws and weaknesses in traditional goal setting, this is especially prevalent with annual goals and bonuses. Leaning on research in workplace behavior, I discuss 3 common reasons practices fail to reach their annual goals, and how to devise a system that increases your chances of success. 

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Interested in an optometry specialty? Join our community FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/idocspecialty  

What should I look for in a resume? How do I prepare for an interview? What questions should I ask? These are good questions to answer, but many employers just “wing it” when it comes to interviewing job candidates. There is an art to asking the right questions, knowing what to listen for, and identifying the right qualities in a candidate that will not only increase your odds of finding the ideal candidate but also avoid the hassles and headaches of hiring the wrong person. 

Employers must also consider that the job candidate is interviewing them! They want some assurance before accepting the position that this will be a great fit for them. The job interview can serve to showcase your office culture, a defining factor in candidate’s choosing your practice over another. 

There are times when an OD feels it’s in the best interest of a patient to modify their contact lenses. This often involves making a change, such as changing the brand or modality. This can be a challenge with a patient who is not experiencing any problems with their habitual contact lenses. It can be even more challenging when the lenses you’re prescribing will cost the patient more money than their current lenses.  

In this episode, Dr. Moscow shares his strategies for presenting daily disposable, handling objections, and getting the patient’s “buy-in.” These strategies have led to 80% of his contact lens patients being fit with daily disposables! 

Follow us on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/idocnet/  

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/IDOC.OptometricAlliance  

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Interested in an optometry specialty? Join our community FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/idocspecialty  

Let’s dig into a topic many ODs lack knowledge and expertise about… optical and inventory management. They didn’t teach us that in school!

Dr. Neil Patel is a young OD who purchased a practice one year ago. His first thought was “How hard can this be?” Not long after he confided to an IDOC Optical Consultant, “I have no idea what I’m doing!” That self-realization led to his quest to work with our Inventory Management team and learn more about how to successfully manage his optical and inventory. In this interview, Dr. Patel shares what he’s learned over the past year and how the IDOC Inventory Management service has allowed him to run a successful optical with fewer demands on him and his staff.

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Interested in an optometry specialty? Join our community FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/idocspecialty

Change in the eyecare industry is nothing new, but the past few years have seen more change than normal. Having a solid understanding of your practice financials is important to help you navigate changes and strategize for the road ahead. 

IDOC’s Associate Director of Financial Services, Nathan Hayes, shines a light on what metrics are most important and how to use those metrics in your business planning and decision-making. We also discuss IDOC’s Books and Benchmarks service that takes the burden of bookkeeping off your plate… and makes sure it’s done right! 

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Interested in an optometry specialty? Join our community FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/idocspecialty  

Dr. Kris May operates his practices in a region with some of the lowest per capita family income in the country. This isn’t the typical market that comes to mind when we think success with daily disposables, and yet Dr. May’s current daily rate is 55 percent.  

There was a time when Dr. May prescribed mostly 2-week disposables and felt that dailies were not an option with his patient base, until he did some research on patient compliance, safety, and practice profitability. This caused him to take another look at dailies and make some big changes. Dr. May shares his best practices and lessons learned in this interview.