Easier Is Not Always Better

Easier Is Not Always Better

It is amazing to see that August is already here and the fourth quarter is coming fast. Owning and managing a business in these past couple of years has been anything but boring. We have all faced challenges with staffing levels, availability, illness, changes in the industry, making investments to better grow your business, and of course managing the processes within the office to make certain the patient care is at a level we all want, and they expect. When speaking with many of our clients, discussing appointment book management, inventory management, vision plans, cash flow, and more, one thing we try to find is the easiest solution to the challenges we face.

For example, appointment book management has been a conversation with many. We need to make certain we have the right number of comprehensive exams with the balance of the medical encounters along with understating the ROI of the various vision plans accepted in offices. It is easier to sign up with many vision plans to fill your books but is easier better? Reducing the dependency on the vision plans will require work, time, and marketing efforts. Will it be better for your practice? The short answer is yes. Is it worth the time and work you need to put forth? The short answer, again, is yes.

Eliminating some or all of your vision plans will increase your receipts per patient. You will work more efficiently and increase your net profits. Most all vision plans have changed their direction from what they once were to what they have become today. Their policies have evolved to benefit them while keeping reimbursements to you at statis quo. They have evolved. Should you and your practice evolve?  Acquios Advisors has tools to help you with this.

Your lease, I am certain you have recently reviewed and began to plan for negotiating better terms for the next 5 or so years. Have you explored other options? It is easier to delay or even ignore this important exercise because it is expensive, scary, and unknown. Plan and review your current lease for the renewals now. It is easier to delay and put it off and sign what the landlord presents. But it may not be best for you and your practice. Easier is not always better.

Many offices have been enticed by various labs and their inventory services. There are some optometrists out there who have managed optical departments and know how to do it properly. That number is far fewer than the number of Optometrists that own their own practice. Various labs now suggest specific branded product for optical to make it easier to manage the frame expenses and order the job complete through the lab while reducing the distraction of frame representatives. The labs also say the turnaround time will be shorter. Is a shorter turnaround time important to your patients? Survey them. You will find most patients will say, I just want them done right so I can see properly.

We have some offices that have committed over 70% of their inventory to the brands the labs carry. This removes your opticians voice, your team’s input, what excites them, and what ownership they have in the operations of your optical. As a past frame representative, opticians sell the product they select, the styles they love and support the representatives they build a business relationship with. Yes, there are processes to reduce reps time with your team in the office, but there should be an evaluation of your frame inventory completed by you and your team to identify what is turning and what is not. Decisions need to be made to sell some product down and bring in other new brands. Your optical should represent you and the culture you have developed in your office. If the opticians have no voice in the product they offer, what makes your optical better than a chain location? Your inventory should be different. It should tell about the type of practice you are and will be for years to come. Limiting your selection of the brands you inventory and offer your patients to shop, does that meet your practice mission statement? Is easier better?

Is one frame vendor able to satisfy your patient wants and needs? The answer is no. Why do we focus on only one lab? There are labs that may offer better pricing on better lenses for one lens style or another. One lab may do better than your lab on specific types of prescriptions. We tend to focus on all work going to the same lab as much as possible. Is the product they turn out best for your patient? You have patients with different needs and diffident lifestyles. You have patients with vision plans and some without. Can an independent lab offer you better pricing because like private practice they try to serve too many plans that pay less?  Is there another lab that will represent your mission more closely and prove your office to be better than the other competition? The answer is yes. To only use one lab because you only pay one bill, have one box to send each day is easier. But is easier always better?

Automated answering services, press one for the receptionist, press two for the optical, press three for billing, sounds easier, doesn’t it? Unless you are the one calling in. Do people love those systems? I for one do not, are they easier? Some might say yes, are they best for your practice? In today’s world, people in general want great customer service. They want to hear a voice on the phone, saying “please” and “thank you” and “you’re welcome”. Can this be achieved by a robot? What makes your practice different, better, or unique? It is your team and the personality of your employees that make your practice. Embrace them, teach them, guide them to better. Any company can automate their phones, not everyone values the voice, but your patients will. Is easier better?

Contrary to many people’s beliefs, there are systems to be adapted to all practices to address the items mentioned above. We have shown people the way and improve the overall performance of their practices. Imagine if Ritz Carlton replaced their receptionists with kiosks, their cleaning staff with Rumbas and automated cleaning systems, their chefs and kitchen staff with vending machines. They would lose what has made them one of the brands with the highest of expectations. Review your mission statement and your core values, remind yourself of what you set out to accomplish when you became the owning doctor. Stay true why you became an optometrist and why you wanted to own your own location. I am certain it was to deliver the best service and care while offering the best products available in the industry to improve my patient’s quality of life. Do it with a team that is more like family.  Easier is not always better.

 

Sincerely

Rick Guinotte

President/CEO

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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