It seems like yesterday I was grilling up meat at a bbq for the class of 2013, and really it seemed like yesterday (2 years ago) when I was being served BBQ for my class of 2012. But today, there was another annual orientation BBQ. The SCCO class of 2014 was out with their bright eyes and youthful enthusiasm,
It’s fun to watch orientation 3 months after May when the seniors graduated.
Not optometry related as much business related.
Last weekend I went to Las Vegas, and in particular ate at a Restaurant called Bouchon‘s in the Venetian hotel. It was awesome, except pricey, but price isn’t the biggest factor when picking a restaurant in Vegas.
My friend Elaine orders a dish, but she ends up not liking it too much. The waitress notices immediately that she doesn’t like it and without prompting suggests that Elaine pick something else. Elaine doesn’t mind it so much and says no thanks.
Without us even asking, they take the entire dish off the bill. And Elaine gets free dessert.
Also, besides the fact that they had people watching the table nonstop to refill our waters when the glasses were even half empty, get this.
I went up to use the restroom and throw my cloth napkin without even thinking about it on the table. When I come back the waitress apparently had stopped by, and folded it into a neat pretty fan-looking thing! Wow I was impressed.
They say you can only win two of these three categories of price, quality, and service when running a business. Most private optometric practices will never win the price war, so don’t fight it. But if you can “wow” someone in the other 2 categories, they’ll keep coming back.
On campus today at noon, the professional eye care resource co-operative invited students to join them for lunch. This was the second time I joined the group for lunch, and they’ve always been an incredibly friendly group of people. PERC is an optometric co-opt comprised of individual practitioners who all gross over 1 million dollars annually.
Right now there are over 100 optometrists in the group, with the majority of them in Southern California.