Category Archives: Meeting people

Meeting people.

Vision therapy presentation at SCCO – though mostly tips on great optometric practice management

Just attended a quick presentation by a elite level vision therapist in the bay area who sees 40-50 VT patients a week. And I wanted to jot down some of the take home messages quickly. In general, most things are common sense but sometimes you don’t think of the common sense stuff.

Most of his points were generalities:

Why do patients leave a practice to go somewhere else? It’s never the doctor’s fault. Optometry school is a great equalizer where by and large every student that graduates is an exceptionally smart, talented, and skilled doctor. They leave because of the person they come into contact with first, the staff member who answers the phone, they feel is incompetent or doesn’t care.

Take home message: either answer phones yourself or have the next BEST trained staff member answer the phones. Don’t delegate to the newby. You want the patient to get the most accurate information possible so they know the staff and office are competent.

You think debt in optometry school is a big deal? Not really, the biggest mistakes are the ones you make AFTER you graduate. Spending an extra 50k partying during optometry school is peanuts versus signing a wrong lease, opening cold in a town that can’t support you, hiring a bad staff member or associate doctor, or paying too much to buy out a practice.

THM: Don’t sweat it in school. But don’t rush into hasty decision after schools. All optometrists will be successful as long as they just avoid the trainwrecks.

Don’t inundate your patients with massloads of information. Don’t have a slew of pamphlets and give them information overload. Assess them quickly, and tailor your patient education to their condition.

The presenter sees patients like an orthodontists does, spending 5-6 minutes of individualized time per patient. Spending a lot of time is not necessary. If you watch TV with your spouse for 4 hours, is that quality time? Or is having a 30 minute conversation in a car ride more time well spent in the relationship than the 4 hours spent watching TV?

THM:  Specialize in knowing your patient and address their needs specifically, do not inundate them with information.

I believe his practice is setup right next to another multi-doctor practice that does general practice optometry. The situation is ideal because he can get referrals from them for VT and they don’t mind because they know he isn’t going to steal any of their patients.

VT is mostly private pay because no insurance covers for his patient base. The pay is thus limitless because no 3rd party sets the fee, you do.

He also talked about the most important thing to success is how you manage your failures. One successful patient might tell 1 or 2 others if you are lucky. But one failure will tell a dozen or more for sure.

THM: Your reputation is priceless. Manage the failed patient cases by quickly refunding their money. Everyone on staff must realize this as well, and the policy should be in writing and displayed proudly for all the patients to see. A patient can’t be mad at you if the therapy didn’t work if you refunded them the entire amount quickly and honestly. A key is to do it quickly and not grudgingly. (example, if your spouse asks you if you like their new haircut, don’t pause and then say you love it. You must say you love it unequivocally and without hesitation).

Take home message for optometric private practice in Southern California

From a presentation two nights ago.

Cheap stuff may be found at dotmed.com

For recall, patients don’t like emails or letters but postcards. Have them write the postcard if you want.

Hire a consultant if you are a inexperienced. The advice given will pay for itself.

Send postcards for Thanksgiving and Valentines day thanking a patient and showing them you care.

Why SCCO optometrists don’t want to do Private Practice

Why don’t future optometrists want to pursue private practice?

Because they realize they’re going to be broke the first few years out of optometry school if they start in private practice. That it’s a big risk, that working 9-5 and then going home sounds sweet after a grueling optometry school curriculum. And then they’re at Costco, or Walmart, or even a big HMO like Kaiser.

Why does this happen?

For the same reason I drove to Subway for lunch today. I’ve got sandwich supplies at home, but I still didn’t make my own sandwich because the thought of cutting up the tomato, getting the lettuce and turkey and mayonnaise to assemble my own sandwich was too great of a barrier to overcome. So instead I spent MORE time and energy driving around to spend more money on a sandwich that isn’t much better than what I could have made with the supplies at home.

I did it because of barriers.

Those that will have the most success in life recognize barriers quickly and ruthlessly tear them down.  Some barriers are obvious like needing a key to open a door, or opening a backpack to get a book. While others are invisible like the fact that not having a pen at my desk is an obstacle when someone calls and I need to jot something down real fast on a scratch piece of paper. Some barriers are helpful like when I want to stop surfing the internet mindlessly instead of studying, I drive to school and study there in the library or lounge.

But the number 1 obstructive barrier for anyone out there is simple. It’s not the local economy, over saturation of optometrists, OMDs, education,  or lack of money. Just look into a mirror.

It’s YOU.

Just as soon as you dream a dream, you start thinking of all the things that could go wrong.

“I can’t make it in Southern California because it’s so saturated.” When you should be saying “what are the things I need to do to overcome this barrier?”

“I can’t afford to go to optometry school.” instead of “how can I afford to go to optometry school?” (wait a minute, I think I read that somewhere in a Kiyosaki book…)

It’s why when I asked my friend about getting into private practice, she doesn’t ask me about where to find one, how to market and sustain it, or how feasible it is in certain locations. She asks “how the heck am I supposed to get a loan to buy one when I have no credit?”

Some people are afraid because they aren’t aggressive enough for private practice, that they have a hard time commanding people. But who says you need to have these traits? In the words of Dr. Paugh in lecture today, “it’s fine to be an introvert!”

How do you know you need to be aggressive to make a sale? Because you see salespeople on TV do it, or at a car dealership?

It’s more important to follow one rule. Really, just one rule.

Do what is best for the patient. If what is best for the patient happens to be more expensive, so be it, but always advocate for this and you will never go wrong when you advocate for what is best for them. If wearing polarized sunglasses while driving in the morning makes it easier to see, I’m recommending it. If wearing AR coating lets more light reach pass the lenses, I’m recommending it.

In the end, if you want to get from A to Z, don’t keep creating all these mental barriers that stop you from doing something even before you’ve started. If you want something, set a goal and go for it. I know I will, so good luck to the both of us.

Advice for new optometry grads (esp. @ SCCO)

I read articles on optometric management regularly and came across 2 good articles by Dr. Neil Gailmard.

http://www.optometric.com/mtotw/tip.asp?tip=412

Here is another one about finding job opportunities.

http://www.optometric.com/mtotw/tip.asp?tip=413

In this economic climate, and if you are an optometry student in California, it is never too early to start the wheels turning.

Board Certification for Optometrist

There’s a lot of hoopla over at ODWIRE.org about board certification. Seems like the majority of them hate the idea of it.They don’t want to spend the time and money to take the test, especially the older docs. Are they just the vocal minority, or are they representative of what many practicing doctors believe?

Then at SCCO, our president Dr. Alexander, is a huge proponent of BC and so are many of the faculty. Are they the academics who just don’t understand the “real world” from their ivory tower view?

Regardless of whether it’s necessary or not, if not being board certified leads to optometrists being discriminated by insurance companies, what would the ramifications be? Would some docs retire early? Or is this just putting another hoop for us to jump through needlessly?

The MD student, the DDS student, and then me, the OD student.

Spent a lot of time yesterday with 2 of my friends who are who I describe in the title.

I would say 85% of our conversations throughout the day, seriously, were about medicine, dentistry, and optometry. They talked about how they couldn’t wait to work for Kaiser or some other corporate. I broached the idea of private practice and they said “no way” basically.

Strange how their mentality is so different from many opt students. Most of my classmates want their own practice.

Optometry students are weird when it comes to the “Real World”

SCCO students are weird in their prioritites. I’ll explain why.

There’s a practice management symposium coming up this Saturday at SCCO.  It features professional consultants who are generally paid thousands of dollars to speak. They are going to talk about real world stuff, not the ivory tower stuff you often hear at the schools. Like how to set up a practice, how to buyout a practice, negotiating contracts etc. All practical stuff, how to interview, how to communicate. Things they don’t teach at school but should like financial literacy.

The 5-hour event is free, plus, there’s free food.

You’d think out of the 300+ students on campus that most of them would show up. I mean, the vast majority of them show up to lectures about inanely esoteric subjects like how rabbits have a higher percentage of arginine in their aqueous humor than humans do. They furiously highlight and make note of such things. Quiz each other during lunch about it and burn the night cramming these facts into memory.

So far about 30 people want to come. Did I mention there’s free food?

It’s crazy. That students  spend 95% or more of their time learning about things that won’t matter when the real determinants of success – dealing with people, communicating effectively, and financial literacy are, in my humble opinion, incredibly more practically useful.

Hiring the “Right” people so that Life is awesome

Now hiring

For the record I have no qualifications and very little experience but here comes my super non-expert hiring guide for all optometrists! Don’t judge me too harshly because I make these recommendations lightly =). I got the idea for writing this post after reading some article by a more established doctor who mentioned “hiring people who are committed to excellence.” Umm… I’m sure it’s nice to hire people who are committed to excellence but can you be a little more specific? So I figured I’d come up with some of my own.

Some of these tips are good and some are just half-jokes. =)

1. Hire really good-looking people

Good looking people are money in the bank. Seriously. People will come to an office with better good looking people than the office across town with people who wear torn jeans and don’t brush their teeth. So when you interview them, take one good look at them first. If they aren’t very good-looking then show them the door. JUST KIDDING. Don’t do that, that is superficial and wrong but all I am saying is that all things being equal between two applicants, you might as well hire the better looking one who can attract more patients =). I overheard one of my friends say once “Yeah, I’ve been going to see Dr. Matthews for a long time,  he’s so good-looking too bad he’s married.”

But make sure to avoid the hot ones. I’ll leave that distinction to your discretion. Hot ones can have that snooty “I’m better than you” demeanor which is a deal-breaker. Hire one of those people who are good looking in a quiet and wholesome way, not great looking in a flamboyant way. Great looking people will attract more patients to your business and help your bottom line in the long run. Hopefully it doesn’t backfire though and you start getting all the creeps in your office!

Tip #1 will get me in trouble someday I just feel it.

2. Diversify your peeps!

Everywhere you see you’ll notice that “likes attract”. When I go to the mall, I see groups and many of them are dominated with a certain commonality. Certain people of a culture stick together. People who skateboard hang out with other people that skateboard.  Ever notice that? Likes attract more often than opposites ( in interests, hobbies, ethnicities, height, what have you), I don’t care what Disney might tell you.

So hire people that match your community’s demographics! Do you have a large population of elderly people, surfers, and hispanic people? Hire one of each! That way your staff can relate to your community better. The key is to diversity your peeps so that people in your community more closely identify with your office. Especially when it comes to hiring people who can speak different languages. So don’t hire similar people, diversify!

Diversity is key

3. Avoid the crazies by creating small barriers

Times are getting tough. If you post an ad that you’re hiring for a position that gets paid relatively well in a comfortable environment, you might get a boatload of applications. “Great! That’s what I wanted!” you might say. But then you realize when you’re looking through 300 applications and that 95% of them are garbage. Now you just spent 4 hours reading resume’s, or worst, interviewed some of them and want to tear your hair out because none of them are good. So how do you save yourself time and stop from being bald?

Make small barriers! If they can apply via email,write that they HAVE to send their application from a certain address like gmail, yahoo, hotmail etc. This will filter out all the automatic applications from online services who simply forward resumes automatically to job listings that have “doctor receptionist” in the wording or “medical.” You can delete those who are just spamming everywhere they can because unless the application is from XYZ@hotmail.com you can just delete it immediately because they obviously didn’t read your ad carefully. You want to hire people that are detail-oriented anyway right? Well if they aren’t going to read your job listing in full and follow your rules before applying to a place they might spend thousands of hours at, why would you want someone like that?

Better yet, make them print out the completed job application and mail it to your office. It just takes a few more minutes to print the form and put a stamp on it, but most people are incredibly lazy and just this small barrier will reduce the number “non-serious” applications dramatically. Also, after the interview even, ask them to send you an email with 3 cool things every office should have  (no wrong answer). I bet most will never do it but the ones that do are awesome.

Save yourself time, the applicants you’ll get now will definitely be higher quality even if it’s just as trivial as asking them to take 30 seconds to create a hotmail account.  You’ll want to work with these people because they are willing to not let small barriers get in their way.

Setup small barriers to protect yourself

4. During the interview, record their voice.

Do you have a friend with a sweet voice that when you hear it, it makes you smile and like that person immediately? It’s like the Geico gecko, he’s even more adorable because he’s got that awesome Australian accent. Obviously you’ll want to hire good looking people, but some good looking people have some real snarky nasally voices.

Close your eyes and listen to their voice. Give them a script to read that they might say when answering the phone and have them read it aloud and record it. Play it back to your other staff, your spouse, whoever without them knowing what the person looks like and have them grade the voice on friendliness and clarity. Can’t have a mumbler. You want someone who smiles as they speak even if they are on the phone and the other person can’t see their smile.

Hello how can I help you?

5. Check out their ride. Is it nicer than yours or is it too nice?

You have to check out what kind of car they drive. It’s sort of a good thing when they ride a car nicer than yours. Because they can’t hate on you for making the big bucks when you drive an old Toyota Corolla, and they’ve got something much nicer. But be careful when they are riding a $100,000 car and park it in front of your office. Patients can be haters too (hater is a super technical term widely accepted in the optometric dictionary =) ) and will resent the fact that you’re making the big bucks off of their money.

So their car can be nicer than yours, but not that much nicer than your patients. While your at it, watch what type of bling they’ve got going on. In urban slang: You dun want the haters to diss your practice cuz you fools are all frontin’ mad jewelry.

So... why do you want to work for me?

6. Gotta have a high likability index. >80% of success if based on how well you deal with people.

A practice management professor once mentioned that she is often guilty of scoping out the local Denny’s for potential employees. If you can find someone at Denny’s who works their butts off, deals with dissatisfied customers all day long, and does it all for a meager paycheck but still manages to keep a genuine and sincere smile on their face all day long, that person is money in the bank if you hire them.

80% or more of your success will come from how well you deal with people, not how smart you are or how much you know or the fancy education you have. Before you hire that expert optician or even associate optometrist, the main thing you have to consider is how likable they are. You should like them a LOT and your staff should like them tons before even considering hiring them. That is really the number #1 criteria for hiring PERIOD, you have to honestly ask yourself “Do I like this person?”

Sounds funny and obvious but I bet you there are people who hire people in a hurry just because they are qualified and rush through the interview. More important than their technical skills sometimes are the seemingly harmless questions like “what do you like to do for fun?” You want a person who can carry a conversation.

The answer shouldn’t be just “yeah… I like to hang out and stuff… that’s it.”

Sorry miss your answer just got you DENIED.

7. Check them out

In a non-creepy way. If your practice is higher end and has many designer frames, hire someone who you can tell right off the bat is fashion conscious. You don’t want a guy in jeans and an “Obey Andre the Giant” T-shirt selling your anti-reflective coating and a Fendi frame. You’d rather have the stylish optician give the recommendations who is well kept and professional.

Tell them to NOT dress up for the interview in formal interview attire but more business casual. That way you can have more of a taste of how they will present themselves everyday, not just on interview day.

8. Friends, relatives = generally BAD IDEA.

Not always, just generally. Don’t hire someone who can make it a pain in the ass to fire if you have too.

9. Hire Sales people

This is very important if you have an optical. As you’re looking through the resume’s, look out for people with past experience in sales (Nordstroms, wherever). Some people are nice but are too meek to make strong sales recommendations. This doesn’t just pertain to selling goods, they must be comfortable selling your practice too. They have to have the ability to genuinely sell things like the value of an annual eye exam without the sidenotes of a “yeah, I don’t get my checkups either!” Being comfortable with selling is not something everyone can do well, so hunt for those that can.

10. Ultimately, hiring is like dating.

It might be hard at the start. Then you’ll feel great because you’re getting a lot of interest and flattering letters like a pretty girl at the bar. But then once you in the middle of it, it can get frustrating as heck because none of the applicants are “right”. You interview some and none of them work out and you want to tear your hair out because now you’re staying up until 11pm grinding lens at night all alone.

But don’t lower your standards and get desperate. Like dating that might just put you in a bad relationship you might have just caved into that might even last a long time just because you didn’t have the moxy or psychological inertia to dump them (aka fire them). You knew early on that it wasn’t perfect but decided to go ahead with it because you were desperate or got talked into it by your friends or even yourself because it was “good enough”. Don’t do it! You’re just wasting time.

But like relationships, it only takes one person for it all to come together. And when that one person finally walks through the door, life is AWESOME. If you hire the right people, life will certainly be awesome.

Finding the one amongst a pile of failed dating attempts = priceless

Open Sesame!

Open Sesame!

I think Ali Baba said that when he was opening a secret cave with hidden treasures in 1001 Arabian nights. In a way, starting up this blog is much the same in that who knows what hidden treasures a personal internet pressence on the web can uncover for me. Of course there’s no cave and no real tangible treasures, and I’m not in the middle of the desert but in Fullerton, CA. And I’ve never wielded a scimitar before and don’t know how to ride a camel. But besides that, think of the two scenarios as identical. =)

Anyhoo, I’m glad and flattered you’re reading this right now. Hopefully you’ll get something useful out of this website if not just mere entertainment. If you can read these words, consider us friends. Because my default status for any new person I meet is that they are my friend until they prove otherwise!