Many practices do not effectively employ an office manager and do not delegate to or emplower them well enough to fully lead within the practice. Valerie Manso shares key strategies for employing an effective office manager. 

Key Takeaways:

1. A great office manager has have leadership and management skills and have the ability to make key decisions within the practice.
2. The role of an office manager really should encompass - leading and managing - everything outside the four walls of the exam room.
   1. Control costs and expenses
   2. Buying right
   3. Inventorying well
   4. Managing the day to day operations
   5. Hiring individuals and onboarding them well
   6. Making each team member feel valued and a part of the practice
3. The best office manager is an extension of you, the owner, not someone to whom you give up control. 
4. If you cannot spend the time to hire a good office manager, outsource it. One they're hired, slow down patient care to onboard them EXACTLY how you want to them to be. Train them the way you want them to be trained and teach them to make decisions they way you would. 

What Valerie is reading:

• Terminal List by Jack Carr
• Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Joseph Griffith
• Nightwork by Nora Roberts

On today's episode, culture expert and Millennial Whisperer Chris Tuff walks us through what is most important for millennial workers today, the majority of your office team members. With the right culture and leadership, your millennial team members will be fully bought in, not just for the short term but the long run, as well.

Key Takeaways:

1. The most important factor for millennials, especially post-pandemic, is flexibility. Flexibility in practice doesn't have to mean work from home. Work with them to create schedules that work for them AND your practice.
2. Leadership is critical to success with millennials. The three key features of leadership they need: inspiration, transparency, and autonomy.
3. Allow your millennial employees to make key decisions when it make sense. Giving them autonomy makes your life easier and empowers them.
4. Transparency does not have to be 100% financial transparency or sheer emotional vulnerability. At the core of transparency is context. What is the context behind key decisions that are being made?
5. Master the art of the fly-by

What Chris is reading:

• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgensen

Chris's books:

• The Millennial Whisperer
• Save Your Asks

In this episode, disruption strategist Shawn Kanungo shares both experience and wisdom so we can disrupt our own businesses, growing our practices based on the needs and demands of the patient.

Key Takeaways:

1. Disruption happens when someone or some company, often outside of the industry, challenges the status quo.
2. Disruption is often seen as a joke. Be careful when technologies seem like a joke as they may not end up to be one. This is where the opportunity lies within your practice.
3. Schedule disruption time for yourself - 30 minutes a week. Take the time look at your processes, operations, and more. Find ways to disrupt it and improve.
4. Innovation is not just a flash in the plan, great idea. Innovation is driven by both logic and rational and creativity. It's a process, and leveraging the Innovation Brain can help you innovate more. 

Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn and get a copy of the Innovation Brain! Being a part of PECAA Max can help you innovate and grow your practice to the places you want to take it. Learn more now!

Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool within customer experience that you can use to map out your own patient journey. Our very own Dr. Manning dives into using this practice building tool. 

Key Takeaways:

1. The individual you are taking of in your practice is a patient customer or patient consumer. They are both a patient, receiving health care they need and value, AND a customer, making decisions like a consumer, both coming to you and purchasing from you.
2. Start with a high level journey map. Take time to identify what are the individual steps the patient takes from the very beginning of their journey with you through your ongoing communication.
3. Once you've confirmed your high level journey map, dive deeper into what the individual experiences at each what.
   1. What actions do they take?
   2. How are they feeling? What are their emotions?
   3. What means of communication or technology are they using?
   4. What do you want them to feel during and after that step with your practice?
4. Engage your team throughout the entire journey mapping process!

We want to hear from you! Let Dr. Manning know about your own customer journey mapping experience and what insights you uncover!

Gaining and retaining patients is critical for the success of an eye care business. Kevin Wilhelm, Jill Harder, and Shelby Wade share valuable tips for growing your practice.

Key Takeaways:

1. Retaining
   1. Deploy strategic marketing strategies
   2. Display strong patient reviews
   3. Provide anywhere, anytime scheduling
   4. Are you engaging your patients effectively?
2. Gaining
   1. Website reflects who you are
   2. Google search advertising
   3. Social media to generate leads

Learn more about how PECAA Max can benefit your practice today! Call 800.959.2020, Option 3. 

President and CEO of De Rigo Rem, Alessandro Baronti shares tips and strategies for managing KPI's within your practice and setting goals for growth. 

Key Takeaways:

1. 60% of the revenue in a n independent practice still comes from retail. Given the retail experience a patient has, patients must be seen as both patients and consumers - a patient consumer.
2. It is not enough to be a great healthcare provider and medical doctor. You have to run a successful business and if that's not you, hire a great office manager to run the business.
3. Important KPI's
   1. Capture Rate
   2. Revenue per refraction
   3. Average frame sale price
   4. Multiple pair sales
   5. Plano and Rx sunwear
4. Create a benchmark and then a realistic goal to achieve and manage that success.

Are you missing out on the PECAA Annual Meeting in Palm Springs, CA? Make sure you're a PECAA Max Member and join us next year in Nashville! Call 800.959.2020, Option 3 to learn more. 

Natalie Nixon, PhD, founder of Figure8Thinking is a creativity expert. We all have the capability to be creative and to be successful, creativity is no longer a nice-to-have. It's a need-to-have. Dr. Nixon shares strategies for expanding our creativity. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Creativity is our ability to toggle between Wonder and Rigor to solve problems. 
2. Innovation is an invention created into scalable value.
3. Wonder is the ability to be in awe, ask blue sky questions, dream, and be super audacious
   1. Who is your wonder mentor?
4. Rigor is structure, order
   1. Who is your rigor mentor?

Improve your creativity:

• The Creative Leap by Natalie Nixon, PhD

Are you missing out on the PECAA Annual Meeting in Palm Springs, CA? Make sure you're a PECAA Max Member and join us next year in Nashville!

Cold Start practices have unique opportunities and challenges to face when it comes to marketing to new patients. PECAA's Marketing Business Advisor, Shelby Wade, helps us address these opportunities and challenges. 

Key Takeaways:

1. As a cold start, you have more time to focus on your business and your marketing. Don't be afraid to try new things and learn from the successes and failures.
2. Make the most of your budget. Start your marketing plan with low-cost options - social media, your website, and word of mouth marketing. Post as many updates throughout your opening process to your website and social media, well before you open. In adding, form partnerships with your business neighbors and attend community events!
3. The Five "T's" of Word of Mouth Marketing
   1. Talkers - Find the people who will talk about you
   2. Topics - Five people a reason to talk about you, your differentiator
   3. Tools - Help the message spread through your community
   4. Taking Part - Join in the conversation
   5. Track - Understand whether or not a strategy was effective. Track what they're saying and what they want. 
4. Key Marketing Milestones
   1. Designing your logo
   2. Website creation - this is where your patient experience begins
   3. Start your social media and build your Google business page
   4. Host a grand opening
5. Don't focus too much on the ROI. A lot of Cold Start marketing focuses on planting the seed for future patients. You want them talking at the beginning and to remember you when they need eye care. 

Shelby's book recommendation:

• Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz

For the eyecare industry to grow, it relies on a strong independent network of ECPs. This is why PECAA exists and why we've created the PECAA Max program. Dr. Lance Anderson helps us understand this further. 

Key Takeaways:

1. One out of every 4 eye exams occurs within a PECAA practice and 1 of every $5 spent on optical goods happens in a PECAA practice. 
2. At PECAA, we are passionate more than anything about supporting the power of independence. 
3. Great clinical patient care is great business and great, profitable business is great patient care. 
4. PECAA Max is the industry's only, monthly membership fee model that allows access to a comprehensive buying group, consolidated billing, deep alliance vendor deals, and business services and advising that helps our members grow and thrive. Consolidated billing saves at least one team member and at least 2-3 days of time at the end of each month to reconciling each vendor bill. 
5. Success goes well beyond discounts and savings. You cannot save your way to prosperity. 

On this episode, I sit down with one of the foremost experts on sales in eyecare, Robert Bell, founder of EyeCoach. In this episode, we discuss how we really should look at sales and strategies for improving the sales experience within your practice. 

Key Takeaways:

1. True sales is not persuading or convincing someone else to buy your product or service. Sales really should be seen as the process of helping someone get what they want and/or need.
2. "No" is not a bad word to hear in the sales process. The faster you can get to the "no", the easier and faster it will be to get to the solution that creates a win-win for the patient and practice. Don't let the word "no" be taken personally.
3. Stop using the word "recommend." Start using "I'm prescribing."
4. Only educate patients on the features and benefits after you've received the patient's permission and only share the features and benefits that directly connect to the patient's problems and needs.

What Robert is reading:

• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely 
• On The Road by Jack Kerouac