What is new in 2023

As Acquios Advisors enters our ninth year in business and the Acquios Alliance continues to grow and add more vendors, we are excited to be able to challenge you to review the list of businesses now associated with the Acquios Alliance and see how they can help you to run a better more independent practice.

We have some new vendors to mention; Optical Vantage, an independent lab with an amazing owner/operator, Review Wave and HIPAAmate. Believe it or not, it makes HIPAA fun. Ask us more, we will get you introduced. New frame vendors are coming on soon as well.

From the operations side, not only do we offer you a great option for a team retreat to a great city, Nashville, Tennessee will be host to the second Living your Mission event. We look forward to seeing doctors and staff in person to energize your team to deliver an amazing patient experience while building appreciation of each and every one of your team members and the roles they play! This is a new year, and the past is behind. Please join us in Nashville for this event on April 14th and 15th. It is going to be invaluable.

You spoke, we listened and have acted. We are launching our Leadership workshop in the coming weeks. This program is going to guide managers and owners on how to manage your practices. This multi month program will be interactive, insightful, and full of valuable knowledge. Learn to manage and guide your team to be the best in your business’s history.  Stay tuned on our FB pages for more details to register and join the program.

2023 is going to be filled with success for all. Choose to be successful, write down your goals, track your progress, and be the catalyst you want, and your team needs. We are here to support and drive each and every one of you.

Make it the year you want; utilize the resources you see here within this newsletter. Together we will succeed!

 

Sincerely,

Rick Guinotte, CEO and Co-Founder

 

A Story Goes a Long Way

Times have been interesting for us all. I am not sure there is any business owner or manager today that will not say staffing and HR management have not been a challenge this year. It is important to step back from time to time and reflect on what makes the optometric industry unique and rewarding while offering a secure place for people to work. As I go through each of these items, you will think to yourself, yes, my practice reflects that thought and other times you may say, I don’t see it here, I need to improve on this area or share more with my team to help them see the whole picture.

When I started in this industry many years back, I was in a position to make a difference in a young girl’s life. She was only seven and had never had glasses but needed them badly. When the doctor had completed the exam, he made his recommendations for her first pair of glasses. She had a -2.50 in one eye and a -3.50 in the other with some astigmatism in each eye. I was the optician to assist with her frame selection and lens order. She selected a pink Disney frame with cable temples. A week or so later, the eyeglasses were back from the lab and ready for her to pick them up. She came to the office, so I grabbed her glasses, and we sat down by the window. I placed the glasses on her face and the smile she had was priceless. She looked out the window and asked her mother if those were leaves, followed by, is that a bird? I realized at that moment this industry was amazing. I was hooked. I have been in many offices when an optometrist makes life-saving discoveries or saves a patient’s vision. What starts out as what the patient thought was a “routine” exam, the doctor discovers a retinal detachment, glaucoma, a brain tumor, signs of Multiple Sclerosis, and more.

How many other businesses can help care for patients’ whole-body health with the technology available in your practices today while offering products to improve your patient/customers’ quality of life? Asked a different way, what online service, or commercial owned and operated clinics have the technology you offer?  I can’t think of many. This is a unique industry with opportunities for people to grow and carry forward in it. To make your passion infectious in your office, you need to share your diagnoses and experiences with each and every one of your team members. Make your team proud of the services you deliver patient in and patient out.

The technicians, receptionists, and opticians have numerous patient interactions daily. The receptionist makes it possible for the clinic to have patients to care for. There should be conversations between the receptionist and others in the office about patients coming in and what their needs are. Communication between the team members builds unity on the team and respect for one another. This results in staff retention. Why? The more they share information to make their patient interactions more personable and effective, the more they begin to care for one another.  The same will be said about communication between the optometric technicians to the optical staff. The staff represents you and your brand. The patient experience is not just one area of the practice but the whole. The whole team must be working in unison to make certain your mission and your core values are being represented every minute of every day.

It starts with the doctor, the visionary of the practice. Challenge yourself to share your experiences about those unique patients you have. What was the diagnosis? How did you and your team make a difference in your patients’ lives?  Furthermore, ask your receptionist to share information with the team about the patient she/he has made appointments for. Ask your technicians to share stories about some of their patients and how they adjusted to help a patient to have the best interaction in your practice as possible. Let the opticians share stories about the patients who recently picked up their first pair of glasses. What were the patients’ facial expressions? Were they excited, appreciative, and grateful for the service and the product the team delivered? Every employee needs to share and hear how they all helped your patient in your practice and the care that your team was able to provide. That is the lasting impact that your brand has on the community.

Make time for team meetings and spotlight the highlights of individuals in your practice but most importantly, recognize your team for their contribution to making you and your practice successful. Remember, every person matters. Every employee makes a difference. Every team member represents the whole practice. Each person is a piece of the puzzle and without them, you couldn’t achieve what you set out to do. Acknowledge the positive experiences and learn from the areas the individual and the team need to improve. Tell patients on social media about the great performers in the practice. They need to know they have their best interest in their heart. The result will be increased appreciation for the work the team does, increased collaboration within the team, and increased employee retention. Look at me, one patient about six months into my career, and I still talk about it today.

Sincerely,

Rick Guinotte, CEO and Co-Founder

Draw your line in the concrete

This will not come as a surprise to any of you. Every office we work with has office hours. You have the hours posted on your website, your front door, in your employee handbook, on business cards, and possibly many other places as well.  You have your employees’ hours to be worked on a schedule. The schedule is written to be efficient for your practice. It is also created and produced to make certain you have the right people in the office at the times you need them to deliver amazing service to each and every one of your patients. Whether it is the first appointment in the door in the morning, the person coming in to pick up their new eyeglasses, an adjustment, a repair, or the last appointment of the day, your patients expect the best service on every visit they make to your office.

Remember you have both external customers as well as your internal customers. I have just outlined what you do to care for your external customer. But your internal customer, the people you met, interviewed, and discussed an agreement for them to provide a service to your practice and your patients in return for a product, their paycheck. They agreed in the interview to work with you and your fellow team members to deliver excellent patient care throughout the entire patient production cycle and their visits when necessary. The internal customer made the commitment to work collaboratively with others employed to deliver this patient care during their scheduled hours and when necessary, additional hours.

Over the past few years, because of the pandemic, we had to become extremely relaxed and flexible to accommodate people when not feeling well. If a person they cared for, a relative, their child, or other, wasn’t feeling well, the person needed to be out of the office for an extended period of time to care for themselves and those around them. This left offices short-staffed, and in some cases, they had to close their doors.  We saw high school students, mid-way through their senior years, told to stay home. Proms were canceled, their composite photos were not taken to display in their high schools, graduations canceled or held virtually, and classes were recorded and accessed when it was convenient for them to watch and attend. College students saw much of the same as high school students. Schedules became optional. Study and take your tests when you want but have it done by a specific date and time for your grade. For three years this went on. My daughter who is a junior in college did not have her first in-person college class until the Spring semester of 2022. From midway through her senior year of high school, to the early start of her junior year in college, classes were online and recorded. Imagine those who were in their junior years of college and finished their education in 2022.

These are your future internal customers, your future team members. It is imperative to set the tone and expectations with your current team and future employees and make certain they understand what and who you and your practice is about.  You need to tell the story about what made your practice successful. You need to reignite the fire and culture you had in your practice pre-pandemic. Share the history of your practice, where it was and where it is today! Share with your team the vision you have for your future. Remind them they are the most important asset in the practice. Without them, your practice would not and will not be the success for your patients as it is.  Share with them the fact you need them in the office at their scheduled hours. They need to respect the vacation and PTO policies you have in your practice and not to exceed the planned days off.  We need them in the office to support one another, to care for the patients scheduled, coming to pick up products, adjustments, repairs, or just stopping in to learn about your services to make your practice successful.

It is time to set the tone for the new year, 2023 is here. Now is the time to review all that has been said in this article. Set the tone for 2023. Help them to see you want them here, but we need them here for the hours per year they agreed to work. You don’t want to say these words in 2023, “They’re a great employee when they’re here.”

It is time to draw the line in the concrete. As of January 1, 2023. You must follow through and be accountable to your employee handbook attendance policy. Everyone has been very lenient and patient with each employee through the pandemic. We work in a profession where flex schedules are NOT effective for our patients or fellow team members. They need to be here when scheduled and you must work that schedule to maintain full-time status and retain benefits. Your team is here to care for patients and one another on your team and you cannot continue to have people out of the office for days beyond what we have planned in the employee handbook.  It puts unnecessary stress and work on your team members when people go beyond the days allowed. It is not about the paid or unpaid days off, it is about managing and caring for each one of you to make certain your workload is where it should be. You do not want to burn out or overwork your employees, so enforce the policies. Set a standard. If a person is tardy X times, they are ineligible for a bonus. Coach, counsel, and guide them to improve. Set the standard you want in 2023 now while we are in 2022. Help them to know now the line is drawn and you are going to expect the best from your team. Reteach those that had to be educated during challenging times. Make 2023 the turning point we all want to see. Know not every employee will make the change. The good news is, we are seeing more and more offices collecting more quality resumes over the past 2 months. There are people that want to work. And why not work in what I see as the greatest industry out there. Combine that with your practice and who would not be prouder than to say they work with you and all on your team?

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Sincerely,

Rick Guinotte, CEO and Co-Founder

20/20 Vision for the New Year

Reflection and Goals: Those are two things that come to mind when approaching the end of one year, and the beginning of another. They seem to have even more importance when entering the new decade. This is a chance to examine what has brought you success and what has brought challenges either within the last year or the last couple years. Reviewing your short and long-term goals can help decide the targets for the new year. Additionally, this is a time to examine how you want to grow your practice in the long term. You can set benchmarks for your practice to help drive growth into the new decade.

When looking at the objectives created for your practice, it is time to ask yourself whether they were met. By turning to your financial statements, you will be able to get a better image of the overall health of your practice, and these will help you determine where you are with your goals. They can demonstrate where there is strong growth in the office and where there is room for improvement. By identifying these areas, you will be able to more accurately establish short- and long-term targets. This will help to drive your practice and employees to newer and greater heights when you can see a clear picture of how the office is performing.

One of the most important tools available to help you and your practice is your business advisor, accountant or financial advisor. These professionals help you understand the financial statements. This allows you to more clearly and accurately establish targets for the new year and decade. A business advisor, accountant or financial advisor can help create an action plan so that these goals being set are achievable. This may include setting up a budget or cash flow document or having an accountability system set up. Meeting with the professional you set financial goals with, more than once a year besides just around tax time, will help you to stay on track to achieve, and plan accordingly to exceed your, objectives.

Taking the time to reflect on your previous goals and understanding which did well, and identify the areas of improvement, can help guide you to your 2020 goals. These targets and objectives can be broad or narrow. For example, they could be wanting to add another practice sometime within the next couple years or increase the number of multiple pairs sold this next year. These goals can be as simple as wanting to replace or improve office furniture or as complicated as figuring out the best manner to increase patient retention, when to add a full-time associate, or plan your exit strategy. All your goals do not have to be related to the practice’s financial health. They can relate back to the employees or patient care. Having goals that improve employee satisfaction and the culture of the office as well as patient satisfaction, will also affect the financial growth of a practice. Employees will want to stay, and patients will happily come back and refer their friends.

By reflecting on your previous goals to identify those you exceeded, and which are still a work in progress, you can set up objectives for the new year to help your practice move forward in a positive direction. As the new year approaches, these are some thoughts to keep in mind to start the new decade off strong!

For more information on preparing for the new year, check out our webinars on Planning for Year End and 20/20 Vision for 2020!

The Cost of Online Shopping

Online shopping has exploded. More and more people have moved from shopping in a physical store, to shopping through their phone or computer. Whether you are shopping for technology, clothes, beauty products, or even food, it can be found online. With the click of a couple buttons, the item that you have been looking for can arrive at your doorstep in a matter of just days. While this is convenient, many people don’t understand the power behind their online purchases. We as online shoppers need to cut down on the amount of online shopping that we do.

Many stores are now closing doors due to the inability to compete with growing e-commerce. According to CNN, store closing announcements more than tripled to 7,000 in 2017. This count continues to rise as time goes on. A large portion of these are due to online shopping. For example, Radio Shack was put out of business as a result of online shopping. A year before they closed, they made a joke at themselves stating that their store was from the 80s. It simply could not keep up. Sears is another large chain store that has closed 123 of their locations. According to the Chicago Tribune, this put over 50,000 workers out of business. In an interview with Greater Boston News (WGBH), Nancy Koehn, a historian, Harvard Business School professor and entrepreneurial leadership expert explained “Sears is a store that lived through the Great Depression and world wars, but it can’t survive the age of online shoppers”.

The closing of all these stores is taking its toll on employees. As I previously stated, Sears alone caused 50,000 workers to lose their jobs. This does not take into account other stores that have closed their doors for good. Brian Schaitkin, a Senior Economist at The Conference Board, writes that retail has the potential to lose over five million jobs by 2040. These are people that have families to care for and children to feed. According to the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan forum for values-based leadership and the exchange of ideas, over 80 percent of workers in the retail industry do not have college degrees, and over half lack any post-secondary education. When these workers lose their retail jobs, not having further education makes finding another job even harder. For some of these people, the money that they make from this job is what enables them to have a home, food and to be able to support their families. These job losses are leading to poverty and homelessness due to a lack of income.

The biggest contributor to the online shopping trend is Amazon. As Mrinalini Krishna, former television arm of the Economic Times with a Bachelors of Arts with Honors in economics contends, “Amazon has disrupted traditional retail and accelerated the demise of struggling players”. Amazon is slowly suffocating the retail market. It has gotten to be such a large company that lawsuits don’t have the ability to harm them. They have been caught selling counterfeit Mercedes Benz parts, copyright of other companies’ products and forging fake reviews of products. Most of their customers aren’t even aware of these problems. A person may argue that while Amazon reduces jobs in the traditional retail market, they create jobs within their company. However, the amount of jobs created by Amazon does not in any way contend with the amount of jobs that the retail market produces.

Another side of e-commerce that is becoming increasingly more prominent is the world of online optometry. According to the Vision Council, a non-profit trade association for manufacturers and suppliers for the optical industry in the United States, consumers bought nearly $600 million worth of prescription glasses online last year alone. With the growth in purchases of glasses online, there are consequences that many people are not aware of. The American Optometric Association, warns “when glasses are bought online, accuracy, lens durability and fit become questionable”. This is a similar situation to what happened with Amazon and other online stores not having enough product quality control. It is one thing to risk product quality when purchasing a new jacket or pair of shoes, but compromising your health and vision is not worth saving a few dollars. Wearing glasses that have the wrong prescription in them or have false measurements, which has happened many times using online companies, can cause headaches and damage your eyesight over time.

I have to admit, online shopping is palpably easier. You don’t have to take the time to leave the comfort of your own home to go to the store. Instead you can simply pull out your phone, click a few buttons and you are done. However, there is a factor about in-store shopping that simply cannot be replaced by online purchases. When shopping in a physical store, you have the ability to try on clothes to see whether or not they fit or if they are, in fact, of good quality. As projected by Retail Dive, a digital publication reaching over 599,000 industry decision makers, the ability to see, touch and feel products as well as take items home immediately rank highest among the reasons consumers choose to shop in stores versus online. Along with online shopping comes the hassle of return policies in which you are not guaranteed all of your money back. This is due to added on shipping and handling fees. Sometimes, it’s easier to just keep the product than having to go through repackaging it, taking it to the post office and paying money to have a company take back the product that didn’t meet your standards. Instead of having to go through this long and expensive process, shopping in-stores is the best solution.

Overall, the world of online shopping can become dangerous if we continue to abuse it’s usage. Cutting out e-commerce as a whole is simply unrealistic. Instead, consumers need to become aware of the impact that our actions have on others as well as ourselves. Continuing on the path that we are on, (increasing our amount of online shopping) will lead to huge problems down the road for ourselves and for others. So next time you feel as though you need to purchase something online, remember to think about the impact that it has on the people of your community such as the hard workers and small business owners. Make the decision to support stores and put forth the effort shop in store more often than online.

Time and Task Management: What’s the Secret? (spoiler alert, there isn’t one)

Let me begin this post on Time Management by mentioning that this has been on my long list of ‘to dos’ for over a month. Am I really the right person to be writing something on Time Management? Sure I am. Being effective at Time Management does not mean that everything I am given to do is done right away. It means that a person is able to take their tasks, outline which tasks are highest priority, and tackle the highest priorities first; doing their best to not let things fall through the cracks, and saying, “no” when the task load doesn’t allow for anything else.

See, I can be the type of person who looks at my never-ending list of projects and can be paralyzed by the sheer volume of things that are expected of me. When that happens, my urge is to do anything EXCEPT the tasks on my lists. My urge is to check social media, address that email that JUST came into my inbox, start an unrelated conversation with a coworker… anything that will distract from the work at hand. Having processes in place to fight that side of me is how I have become successful.

To get started when I’m feeling overwhelmed, I borrow from the idea behind Dave Ramsey’s budget snowball here, in that, I take the SMALLEST higher priority tasks and knock them out first. Getting SOMEthing done makes me feel accomplished and gets the motivation flowing to take on my next, bigger, high priority tasks.

One of the most important parts of being successful at Time Management, is making sure there is a record of every task that I need to get done. One sure way to forget something is to not write it down, not schedule it into the calendar. If someone makes a request of me, I will let them know that yes, I can do that, but please make sure to send me an email so I have record of this request. A paper trail is so important.

I will also plug tasks into my calendar at random times the next day, or when it fits, before its due date, so I am reminded of the task. This does not mean I necessarily do it at 10:30am on Wednesday, 8/14, when I plugged it in, but if it ends up working at that time, I get it done. If not, it’s recorded in my calendar and I can move it to a day/time that better fits. Bottom line, I try very hard to not let things slip through the cracks. I do it, but I always know when it happens that it did not have to happen.

Taking the calendar a step further: I plan out my day. I take that list of things and those random projects I’ve plugged into my calendar and I reorganize my calendar for the day with the tasks at hand. I adjust as necessary for things that come up, or if an urgent request comes through, I move things around from day to day, but I have a plan; and as I have found is the case in ALL areas of my life, having a plan is one sure way to ensure success. If you don’t use an electronic calendar, a physical planner can work just as well. I often find, in fact, that sometimes I need to make a handwritten list to first layout all I have to do, and then I will plug tasks into the appropriate day/time in my calendar from that handwritten list.

One earth shattering thing I’ve learned about time management is realizing you CAN say, “no.” Sometimes, our task loads are just TOO full. We simply cannot take another thing at this moment. Of course, we want to use this ‘tool’ sparingly, and really consider if the thing being asked of us is too much. I often am asked to do something, and I look at my day and first instinct is to think, “No way. I can’t fit it in.” But usually with a little bit of rearranging (remember, prioritizing) I am able to add it to my schedule with no issues.

I think where we really run into problems is when we expect ourselves to complete everything immediately, and that is just not realistic. When tasks are handed to us, it’s important to ask the person the turnaround time they expect. You can then decide from there if that turnaround time is realistic for you, and if it is, pencil it in at that moment. If it doesn’t, tell the requestor that it just doesn’t fit right now, see if they can wait another day or two, OR ask if the task may be something another team member could handle. Remember, you can always ask for help from others on your team. Saying “no” or asking for help are options that we often forget about or don’t feel comfortable doing, but most people actually will highly respect you for understanding what you can and can’t handle, your limits, and for knowing how to say “no” or “I need help.”

Ultimately, we need to remember that we are only human. Tasks are going to fall through the cracks, we will need to say no and ask for help. But with a little extra effort, more often than not, your tasks will be completed thoroughly and efficiently by tackling small, higher priority items first, planning ahead, making lists, scheduling things immediately (even if they end up being rescheduled), and having open communication with everyone on your team; ensuring you are keeping everyone in the loop on how your tasks are coming and being sure that you know what is expected of you.

Communication & Education is Key! Getting to YES with Case Acceptance

“How much is that going to cost?” I remember hearing those words all too often during my time working at a successful Dental office as their Office Manager. Following the inquiry from the patient, I would hear a team member reluctantly uttering the treatment amount, as if they were ashamed, almost implying the amount was too much…. does this ring a bell in your practice?

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Hiring Outside of The Box… Thinking beyond the ‘We’re Hiring’ Sign and Newspaper Ad

It’s a beautiful Monday morning, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the schedule is full, no one has called in sick, and I got through the drive-thru at Starbucks in less than five minutes…life is good! At this point, what could possibly go wrong? Quickly our sunny skies turn gray and the birds stop chirping as you are approached by your Rockstar employee, Cindy, the minute you walk through the clinic door; that can’t be good! As they say, if a picture was worth a thousand words, you should have seen her face. Cindy lowers her voice and tells you she needs to talk. At this point you have a feeling that you know what she is going to say; please let your gut be wrong. Sure enough, Cindy tells you that she has decided to accept a position elsewhere. You are totally caught off guard and quickly go into panic mode. Your mind starts racing and you begin wondering just where the heck you are going to find someone to replace her – there couldn’t possibly be another Cindy out there? The good news is there are plenty of ‘Cindys’ in the world, we just have to know where to look!

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To Post or Not to Post… What’s all the hype about social media?

Everyone seems to be posting, tweeting, instagramming, or watching the latest cute cat video on YouTube. We live in an extremely connected world these days and it seems no matter where you go if you look around everyone is most likely going be looking at some sort of social media site. The amount of time spent on social media continues to increase. At this day and age, roughly 80% of the population is engaging in one or more social media platforms. So, the question keeps coming up by offices…. should I be posting, tweeting, instagramming, or creating YouTube videos for my practice?

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