Dr. Chris Wolfe: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to Chriswell podcast on I code media today, I’m have a great conversation with Dr. TA may, uh, and he practices in Southern California and he’s sort of. Created this niche of, of his practice related to myopia management and scleral lenses and binocular vision. And he really did it in a way where he had this foundational belief about the profession of optometry, about himself as an optometrist and his opportunity in the future of the profession.

So I had a really great time talking to, to Dr. May today, please enjoy our conversation as always be sure to subscribe to the podcast, write a review, share it with your friends and support those who support. So today I wanna talk about the, my day multifocal for just a second. It has been a really great thing in our practice for our patients who are presbyopes of all areas, but you know, those tricky presbyopes are always the ones that are kind of emerging, where they don’t want to give up any of their far away.[00:01:00] 

Vision, but they’re having some struggles up close. And so what, uh, the mighty multifocal has been able to do for us is to allow those patients to transition into a multifocal more easily. And then as we have those patients progress into other levels where they need more ad powers, It’s been a nice, smooth transition.

So the ultimate hurdle that we’ve seen in our practice before the, my day multifocal was that we’d have patients who would resist any transition to a multifocal lens because of that distance blur. We just haven’t seen that. So if you haven’t started using my day multifocal in your practice, I would encourage you to start check it out.

Uh, contact, reach out to your Cooper reps for those trial lenses, uh, and commit to MyDay multifocal for your patients. I think they’re gonna like it. If you haven’t checked out Macia health yet for your patients in category one through category four, I think there’s a lot of evidence that you should be considering.

The first is if we just look at a reds two and what they, they talk about, MACI health is a, so for patients in category three and category four, [00:02:00] um, AMD Macia health is a great option for them that follows that entire, um, that entire protocol. And it also add. Meso Z is Anine to the mix, which if you look at some of the evidence, I believe shows me that it’s going to thicken the macular pigment better than without meso Zanine.

It also uses the, a correct, a reds two dose of zinc, uh, at 25 milligrams. And so you don’t have to worry so much about the potential side effects of zinc. The other thing to, to think about. And it’s beyond the scope of this, although you’ve probably heard me talk on other podcasts, is that in patients in category one and two, there may be some additional benefit, uh, to supplementing them with something that may be a little bit less than the, a reds two.

So you don’t have to add as much to it. And that’s where I use the Mac health LMC. And so I think if you haven’t done this yet, I’d consider Mai health in your practice and for your patients. And it’s been great for my patients. And, um, and we really feel like we can have the ability to, uh, help those patients in all categories of macular degeneration.[00:03:00] 

All right, Dr. Tom, I, yes. Thanks so much for doing this. Absolutely. My pleasure. Um, so we were trying to do this a, a couple times before and the technology didn’t work very well. So thanks for being flexible. Mm-hmm um, you know, there’s a couple things I wanted to talk to you about the first one was the idea of myopia management, but actually I think that’s probably a secondary conversation.

You know, one of the things you and I have been talking a little bit about is the idea of, um, what’s going on with private equity. It’s not gone. Yeah. What are you seeing? Maybe not so much with private equity, but what are you seeing doctors who are my age kind of in their, their forties, late thirties, forties, uh, that sort of makes you think about what the future of things are gonna hold.

Yeah. Good question. And I’ve been seeing this a lot. I teach at the college. I consult and talk to so many doctors. And one of the big things that I’m seeing these days is of course the staff turn [00:04:00] problems. But what I’m seeing is a lot of doctors want out more so than ever, or at least they are having those conversations now earlier than I think they should.

And what happens is I’m going to my colleagues, they’re in their forties and they’re saying time, you know, it’s, it’s been hard since. And I’m thinking about selling my practice and they’ve got, they should be practicing for a couple more decades. Yeah. And so they got outta school. Yeah. They cold started practice.

Yep. They put all this sweat equity in yeah. Maybe 14 fif you know, 12 to 14 years later, they’re deciding I want out and largely it’s because you think staff is, is hard, you know, the grind of owning the practices becoming, uh, not what they had idealized when they started. Exactly. I feel like it’s more unique now than before.

Dr. Thanh Mai: COVID I think pre COVID, those conversations were not happening with this type of doctors. They’re like, yeah, I’m gonna keep going for the next 20 years. And it’s something that’s changed the last couple years where they’re starting to just feel like burned out basically. And they’re [00:05:00] having, you know, they’ve got nice practice.

1.5, 2 million practice. Let’s say they’ve built it up over the last 15 years. And now the, the, the, the, the carrot that’s dangling in front of them from private equity is like, here, I can give you a lump. Amount of money, you know, you can put away in the, in the low cost index fund afterwards, if you want to, and just live off the fat land.

Right. And it’s very enticing. And these doctors are asking me and asking for my opinion, like, should I do. Hmm. And, uh, my opinion and my strong opinion is they should not. Yeah. And they should try to find things in optometry that they love. Um, and to me, that’s the bigger issue. Um, I think they’re running, but once they run, uh, where do they run too?

I think optometry is a great profession. And I think if they were to, you know, lose their practices, they. a great asset that they own. There’s a reason why private equit are trying to pay you off to buy your practice, cuz they know that they can do better owning your practice and be more profitable than, uh, even putting the money in the stock market.

We were talking about that before we even started this thing. And [00:06:00] so to me, the reason why it’s a big topic is it’s. There’s opportunity here too, at the same time, for those that are listening to this podcast. Yeah. And the listeners of this podcast are some of the smartest docs in the country. I agree if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re smart, cuz you’re interested in learning more and getting better.

So here’s the opportunity for a lot of you guys, is that know that in the next five, 10 years, a lot of doctors are gonna want. I think more so than before, even earlier than before, maybe 5, 10, 15, 20 years earlier than we thought they should. And the conversations I have with private equity, I’ve talked to them.

They, they wanna buy my practice, but I’m um, I’m nowhere. I’m now nowhere close . Yeah. So they’re wasting their time on me, but they see my practice. We’ve got like a staff of 20. They, they they’d love to take me over. Um, but, uh, What I see is that there’s offices that are, um, you know, have, have the bigger offices, if you can keep your office and just do the things that you enjoy doing a [00:07:00] specialty, like might be a management dry eye.

Um, Okta diseases, scleral lenses. If you can find that type of love again, it’s way better if you own it yourself. Um, and so that’s what I’m seeing these days. Also a big opportunity though, if you’re listening this podcast as well, is that these obviously I’m looking to sell earlier. You could be the guy to buy it right.

it doesn’t have to go to private equity. Exactly. Yeah. You could be, you know, uh, as long as you’re structured and organized and have a team underneath you and you build a management structure underneath you, for instance, one of my patients, uh, he’s a dentist. He owns like 84 practices. Holy cow. 84 dental offices.

Oh my God. And he walks into my exam and he says a ton. Well, you know, Dr. May like you’re you’re I you’re so smart. I can see you’re really, you you’re. And I I’ve seen many other doctors. I, I am myself a dentist and he’s like, you’re crazy. Just be here and just see patients like, and spitting your wheels.

Like if I, you, of course he thinks this way could sure got for practice. That’s yeah. That’s what he does. He’s like, you need to, [00:08:00] um, he says, if you, if I mentored you, I, I would retire you in three years. You need to start buying these practices out. He says now more so than ever in his experience, he had 40.

two years ago. Geez. And now he’s got 80 and he says COVID helped him. Yep. The reason why is cuz you know, if I would do like a SWOT analysis of optometry strengths, weaknesses opportunities, and threats, the weakness and op and the weaknesses allow optometrists are just kind of getting burdened by the administrative side of things.

Yeah. The reimbursement rates are stagnant. Uh, but the opportunity is that a lot of. One out. Yeah. And so the opportunity for a, a doc that’s energetic is to be like this dentist that has went from 40 to 80 locations, you could be, you can think like a shark, you can think like private equity and start buying these practices and start creating the team infrastructure around them that you don’t have to be there running it.

And so I think that’s a big opportunity as well. I think that’s, uh, I think that’s an interesting way to look at it and I. So, so the idea of saying, look, there are these practices. [00:09:00] Now there’s two, two challenges there. The first challenge is that the, uh, the practices that are selling are looking at what you can offer as an individual compared to what private equity can offer as, as a big conglomerate.

Yep. Uh, and they’re saying, well, if you can’t pay me this, then I’m not gonna, you know, I’m not gonna sell you my, my practice for less. Yep. Um, and I think that’s one challenge. The other challenge is if you do that, do you become. Private equity yourself. Right, right, right. Not technically private equity, but functionally, you know, the, the one thing that I, I think that, uh, there are opportunities for different modes of practice for sure.

And, and I don’t think there’s one mode that, that, uh, is, is bad per se by the nature of it. But I think ultimately if you, if you want to. The, um, the best opportunity to serve your patient’s needs and have control of all of it. That’s private practice. And that’s why I think private practice is so important.

It doesn’t mean that you can’t do that outside of it. Yeah. It just means that private practice allows for the, the best [00:10:00] control over that doctor, patient relationship and the experience that patient has. And so if you want, if you want to maximize that, the easiest way, the most effective way in my opinion is, is, uh, is through private practice.

But then if you own too many practice, Then when do you become, when does that private practice just become a big yeah. Corporate practice? What’s your thoughts on that? Yeah, no different. Right. And so I, I can go back to the conversation that I have with my dentist. Yeah. Uh, a patient who owns 84 practice, his model is this, um, he’ll own 50% of that practice, but then an independent, you know yep.

Like a, a doctor owner owns at least 50% or some of the, some of his, uh, Circumstances are that he owns only 25% and the doctor owns 75%. So in that scenario, it’s still very much independent, right? He helps. He helps out with their marketing mission. Each practice has its own feel. Exactly. Yeah. Each, each practice is not, it’s not, it’s not under his name.

Right. It has actually a [00:11:00] unique name that the doctor that’s working there comes up with the doctor that owns it. Um, with him hires, the staff creates the. You know, all the branding and all that. So it’s very independent. Yeah. He happens to just be there to help facilitate it and help grow up. But at the same time, he doesn’t own a hundred percent of all of ’em and they’re under his corporate name and they want all his systems.

He’s just there to help them. And ideally give him the systems that are very unique. It’s very similar to vision source, vision source doesn’t own all these practices. Vision source is very good. I’m in video source. So I’ve got commercial bias for vision source. Um, but, um, so do I exactly am same and I love vision source because they don’t.

You can brand yourself as vision source. Sure. Yep. You could be vision source and look very corporate in a way, right? Yep. But at the same time, vision source is very good about saying, you know what? I wanna keep independent optometry, independent optometry. You are, you can do whatever you want. We give you tools and resources, but at the same time, you’re the doctor owner.

And it’s still very much a private practice. Well, that’s, I think the, the, that is the, the good advantage with vision source. I think it’s a [00:12:00] misnomer. Uh, but, but the reality is, is that in your practice and in my practice, we could. There’s all these things that we have access to with envision source. Yeah.

And we could decide, well, I want all of it, or I want this piece and this piece and this piece, or I want none of it. Yep. And I just want all the, the idea sharing and I’m gonna figure out still how to do it on my own, but I’m gonna pick everybody else’s brain and use their insight. And then to kind of customize these things.

I don’t like that wouldn’t be to my benefit. Probably mm-hmm as much, but, um, but I could do that. Uh, and so I think I like that, that idea of. Keeping ownership local or at least a component of that ownership local. Yeah. Was it, does it wind up being that the, the doctors that sold are still the owner doctors, the partners, or most of them sold, and then he brought in a new doctor and gave them some opportunity for ownership.

Yeah. Most of the time. So his he’s very propri practice for dentistry. Yep. As they, as you know, they’re going very corporate and PE is actually very bigger. Yes. It’s bigger than, than it is in optometry. Yes. Right now, actually a good [00:13:00] thing to. Is the best ideas and always outside our industry. Right, right.

And so they’ve got their DSO models and all this stuff. And I think dentistry is a little bit in orthodontist. It’s a little bit before optometry for a lot of these type of things in terms of how they educate patients and how they structure their businesses. Yeah. They’re a live before us actually. And so you can kind of watch these models happening in other industries first and know that it’s gonna come here then, you know, uh, just like we’ve got from, with online glasses, they’ve got online braces now.

Right? You, you can get small direct club and that’s like that. That’s like a multi billion dollar company, I think now. Yeah. And so anyways, um, when it comes to these ideas from other industries in dentistry, it’s already happening with the. With these corporations that he is pro profi practice and by making so that, and I, I do believe that the best best models, the best patient care happens in a private practice.

I believe that. Yep. Um, in fact, I, I feel like when a private equity company knocks off an optometry practice, I would think that codes start nearby. I. Well, I, I, there’s some [00:14:00] people that I know that have done that. Yeah. And they, and they just they’re like, this is gonna be a, it’s gonna be a windfall because the P patients in this community are used to having great care.

and, uh, for whatever reason, those doctors either can’t keep, continue to provide that great care or decide they’re gonna leave because their contract gets up. And so those patients want something else to go to. That’s something that feels similar to why they started going there in the first place.

Exactly. And now it feels like this entity that they didn’t start with. So they want that. And I agree. I think that, that there’s all those opportunities as. Right across the street. Exactly. And, and you’re asking a quick question. What happens to the selling doctor? Yeah. To, to this guy that owns 84 practices?

Uh, most of the time the selling doctor, uh, wants out yep. That’s why they’re selling. And so they’ll stick on for like a year. And then he usually has a young dentist fresh outta school. Yeah. And, and he says, I asked him, is it hard to find these people? He goes, no, there’s so many dentists right now that work in corporate change that they.

They want their own private practice. [00:15:00] Yeah. They wanna make their decisions. They wanna hire their own, but they can’t afford it or they don’t think they know how to do it. They’re scared. The number one thing is fair. Yeah. They just, they don’t have the tools. They’re just scared of making the leap. Yeah.

And so his big, uh, proposition to them is I will remove the fear from you. I’ve done this 84 times. All of them are multimillion dollars. Now, if you just like take, join me, basically, I’ll take you under my wing and, and you’ll be. You, you you’ll be the majority of owner a lot of the times. Yeah. A lot of them own 75%.

And for them that’s like, yes, that’s what I’m looking out. I’m trying to get out of corporate. I want into private practice. And so, um, does he ever want to sell the whole thing to those doctors? Like, is that ever an opportunity? So where he. He would own 50% for say 10 years. And now that new doctor’s like, look, I, I want to have the rest of this and I wanna, I wanna buy you out.

And he gets to, to reap the benefits of that. That’s part of the model or not really good question. I’m not sure. Yeah. But my conversation with other, I, I, I talked to another optometrist in the UK who owns 150 [00:16:00] locations. Oh. So over a hundred in the UK. And I, I, I don’t think that is in place. I think. I’m just gonna own it forever.

Right, right. Uh, I I’m sure though, in the contract, there’s some sort of buyout between the two there’s. Uh, I know talking to, I had a conversation with someone that works underneath that guy and they were saying how, um, they, they actually don’t want, um, so in this, my dentist, he suffer that’s own 25% only, but they say that’s actually very dangerous in their opinion.

I was asking them about that. Right. Because they say this, if it’s not 50 50, let’s say the optometrist that you partner. Shows it to work drunk. Yeah. Like dead drunk, lie on the ground. Like just something’s really going wrong. Right. And they own same 5%. Yeah. You can never get rid of that person. Right. So they, they say in their model, you always wanna have a way for both people to get rid of each other.

Yeah. And so the 50 50 is what they recommended and that’s what they do with interesting. They’re a hundred plus locations and they’re very profi practice too. And so they say, cuz because you want the ability for each side to be, to equally negotiate [00:17:00] when they want the other person gone. Yeah. Oh yeah. So I would think that, yes.

Uh, there’s probably, maybe not. Stipulation it’s gonna happen in 10 years, but there’s always stipulation of if we want out, we gotta be able to do it, right. Yeah. Yeah. So then, so I wanna round this out because the, uh, other thought I, I had is maybe you’re maybe you don’t want to own a whole bunch of practices.

Yeah. You’re happy. You’ve built a $2 million practice or a 1.5 million practice or a $1 million practice. And you’re saying, look, yeah, I’m I’m netting 30%. And I’m super happy with this. I don’t need to own that. I don’t want the headache of doing all this other stuff, but I’m tired of the grind. Yep. I’m tired of the, seeing the same patients over and over and over again.

So that’s where we, we talk about adding a pillar to your practice, whether it’s ocular surface disease or other ocular disease or anterior segment, sort of specialty contacts or ortho tology myopia management. Yep. . Why do you think when you think there, uh, the, the burden of saying I’m gonna sell this thing that I’ve worked [00:18:00] so hard for the last 15 years to grow?

Yeah. Or. I can just work on this little, I can tinker here mm-hmm and do a little bit better and get kind of excited about this other thing. Yep. Why do you think that seems to be a harder challenge than to abandon this asset that you’ve gotten mm-hmm and, and offload it to somebody else than to say, let me tinker in my practice and spend a little bit more time doing something that I think could excite me.

Yeah. Uh, when you work with, with practices specifically on myopia management. Yeah. Why do you think it’s hard for doctors to make that change, make that adjustment, to add something else as opposed to saying, I really just want out. Yep. Yeah. I think doctors, they they’re they’re um, they’re kind of like too lazy to be lazy in a way.

So lemme tell, lemme tell you what that means. Like, uh, I don’t mean as in a mean way, but basically if you wanted to be really lazy, you would get into your special. And put in the work because ultimately that would get you there. Like there’s this great principle that I love called PTOs principle. You, [00:19:00] I heard Frito’s principle POTOs principle.

POTOs I haven’t heard of it. Oh, let’s talk about it right now. Yeah. So this guy, let’s say you are planting peace, right? He knows that you’re planting peas and you’re trying to do farm a big pea farm. That 20% of the crops were actually. 80% of the output. Yeah. And the other 80% of the peas, he could just burn them and they only give him like 20%.

And what happens though, is that unless you weed out that 80%, then you’re constantly grinding away and trying to grow peas and busting your butt in optometry. That’s what’s happening. Optometry. Most doctors, if you look at your patient base in any five practice, it probably follows. These genetic roles that nature has given us like we, and what that means is that probably 20% of your patients give you 80% of your revenue.

I bet you, if you looked at your, your break breakdown of all your patients, like camp, your th the last thousand patients, yeah. Probably 20 or maybe 30% of them give you 70 to 80% of your revenue. Yeah. So it ends up happening is you [00:20:00] you’re literally spitting your wheels on the other 70, 80% of your patients and going nowhere.

Yeah. And. In my open. Imagine that’s where that ties in. Those are definitely, probably the 20%. Yeah. Like in our office we could, um, we decided, and the reason why I love privacy optometry is that I’m getting away from the grind. Yeah. Is that, uh, we dropped actually, um, all medical insurances. We only take two vision plans right now.

Wow. We can eventually drop. We could actually drop all primary care. if we wanted to like, and shut down the obstacle and I’d be fine. Yeah. I’d be fine. I I’d be completely happy. you know, and the reason why is, cause we focus on the, especially like my management. Yep. Both the cardiology. Uh, we do a lot of, I do a lot of scleral lenses as well, personally.

And then, and then also my, my partner does vision therapy. If you go to a conference. If you go these conferences like C O V D. Oh yeah. Uh, if you go to the vision by design conference for orthe dermatology and myopia, those doctors are the most happy doctors they’re on fire. Those guys are like, if, if you go to a C O V D conference, everyone’s like, literally like, yes.

Yeah. Like [00:21:00] optometry. Yeah. And it’s so unique. You don’t get that at a vision expo. You don’t get that by conference. Interesting. And the reason why is cuz they’re the, the entire practice is the 20%. Yeah. And. Everything else they’ve dropped and it’s not a grind. Yeah. Those patients are showing up. They’re happy.

They’re paying you privately. You don’t have to have an army of staff. Like if I got rid of 80% of your patients. Yeah. Uh, and you only lost 20% revenue, guess what? Not that you’d want to, but now you don’t need 80% as much staffing for instance. Yeah. And that’s a no one problem in optometry right now that I talked to is staffing all of a sudden doing a special.

Helps alleviate that staffing problem, because you can actually trim back on some of those wheels you’re spinning. And so, you know, if you don’t have to see 35 patients a day to make it, you can see five. Yeah. Like, you know, you know, let’s say a, my way manage patient or a scleral lens patient. Yeah. Or, uh, vision therapy patient gives you $3,000 an average.

So my practice, our average [00:22:00] revenue probation is over a thousand dollars, right. Average. And because all we care about is a specialty. So we decided at the very beginning, I’m only caring about the 20. Basically the specialties. Yep. For another office that 20% is our entire office. Yep. And we opened cold six years ago and we didn’t care at all about setting a pair of glasses.

We, we sold them because you know, patient comes in, they wanna get some, right. But we, all of our marketing, all our networking, creating the relationships in the community, talking to therapists, other optometrists, ophthalmologists, get referrals. We said, I’m not gonna spin my wheels. Trying to see a lot of patients today.

I’m gonna go out in the community. I’m gonna meet. and that that’s so uncomfortable for most people. Exactly. But that was it uncomfortable for you? It was at first. Yes. But it gets easier at time. Yes. Everything does. Exactly. Yeah. But the hour you spend with. Ophthalmologist. So I’ll give you an example. My entire, my entire schedule.

I, my myopia has grown so much that my associate do a lot of it and my partner, my most of my schedule, 80% of it’s just scleral lenses. [00:23:00] Yeah. It’s just scleral, scleral, scleral, sclero, scleral after follow up, dispense consult all day long now. Yeah. How did I do that in six years? Um, all I did was just take corn specials out to lunch.

Yep. That was it. Yep. Literally that was it. And that one hour lunch is, uh, worth more than. Like six months worth of patients. Yeah. That one hour of lunch, cuz that corner special starts just dumping all their patients onto my schedule. Yep. And so the optomest that does that and to me I’m surprised cause I’m in Southern California, I’m in a.

Density popul, metros. Saturated. Yeah. With so many optometrists. I figured someone else had to have done this before I met these corn specialists. But the answer was no yep. They were like, oh, I’m glad to meet someone that fits sclero. Yeah. I’m like, you’ve been here for like 30 years. How yeah. How come me?

I I’ve just graduated. You know, for a few years opened this practice cold is, is like one of the first lunches you’ve had it’s cuz most opt times are scared of lunch. Yeah. With someone else they’re just scared. But if you do that type of work, it’s it’s you. Uh, you know, don’t [00:24:00] that, that little bit is just a huge lever and the creating relationships is how you create a tighter way of new patients in those specialties.

Uh, for my management, 65% of our patients are referred by another optometrist. Yeah. . And so, um, a lot of times they’re working in corporate, they’re working. They don’t have time for my brain manage. It takes a lot of time. Yeah. I create those relationships with them. They start referring as a bunch of patients.

They don’t think they have a lot of time. Exactly. But they could create it. They could create it. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Right. Cuz it’s so sad if they like one of the things that we have envisioned sources is the myopia management protocol. Yeah. And one of the things that you will be really big about is talking about the fee structure.

Yeah. And calculating that as compared to how much you’d make. Fireman care and pricing it accordingly so that you’re, you’re not spinning your wheels, right? Yeah. You’re agnostic. You can, you can take the time it takes to do that. And you’re still, and, and yeah. And it’s worth it. It’s worth your time.

You’re not, you’re eliminating the idea of cuz the, the, the NA and I think it’s subconscious, but the NA in the back of the brain, when you haven’t thought about the value of the [00:25:00] services you’re providing and pricing those services appropriately exactly. Then in the back of your brain, when things go, don’t go wrong.

When your process has a speed bump mm-hmm, , you’re think. Ugh. I could have just seen this patient and sold him a pair of glasses. Yes. And, and you gotta eliminate that from your thinking. Absolutely. The way you eliminate it is to, to, uh, on the front end, calculate all of the time that you’re gonna spend.

Yep. Calculate all of the, and make it worth that time. And then when it, when it, when it doesn’t go the way you, you wanted it to, and you have to learn more, you have to yeah. Think about how am I gonna improve this specific situation and learn how to do this better. You don’t care because you’ve already calculated the time it’s gonna take to do that.

Exactly. The reason why I love practicing is if a patient wants to spend an hour with me, I’m like, cool. Yeah, let’s do it. And I’ll, let’s say they ask for it. I’ll I’ll do it because my prices are so high well, I mean, not in a bad way, but I’m saying like, not, not they’re high enough so that you can be comfortable spending an hour with them.

I can be like, if they say, Hey, [00:26:00] uh, Dr. May I had a. I’m like, oh, you know, my, my, some, some dogs are just too fast. They’re like, okay, you’re bad day, whatever. I’m gonna keep going my eyes up. I go, whoa, I stop every why. And they’ll say, oh, you know, my, uh, my mother just passed away. Mm something’s sad. And I’ll be like, oh my gosh.

That’s, that’s horrible. And we’ll have a conversation about that. Yeah. We’ll develop a poor, um, we’ll send flowers to their house. Yeah. You know, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, uh, you know, when kid graduates from, uh, you know, kindergarten yeah. We high school. We we’ll send a box of chocolates. We like do things like that.

We have a prize can where we, we have like Chuck and cheese prizes and things like that. Like, we make it, we’re building relationships. We’re building relationships like that. And because the reason. It’s cuz we spent time with the patient. The reason why we could spend time with the patient is cuz we set our fees, right?

If you don’t set your fees, right? You can’t do all those things cuz you gotta, you gotta, you gotta pay your rent. You gotta pay your staff. You can’t spend an hour on every patient, but you set your fees, right. You can create such a great environment in your practice where the relationships are great. The staff is not [00:27:00] overworked.

Cuz I could see five patients a day and, and pay all the bills. Yep. And uh, and I don’t need an army of staff if that. Uh, and then they’re not rushed as well. And when you create that practice where you’re looking, you’re doing Preto principle in your practice, you’re ignoring the 80%. You’re gonna dive into myopia, dry eye, um, scleral lenses, vision therapy.

That’s where you can love optometry. And that’s where we kind got sidetracked in a way with the private equity stuff. Yeah. Because, uh, we want to talk about myopia first. Yeah. But the reason why, uh, we talked about that is. that’s what’s to me, that’s, what’s opt the best thing. Optometry is the future of optometry and it’s getting better every day, in my opinion.

Yeah. And the, the fact that we can do these things like myopia, wasn’t a big deal. Five years ago. We weren’t talking about it as much. Right. Right. But to me, it’s, it’s a game changer. It’s it’s a tighter wave. There’s unfortunately myopia is just going P from C. Yeah. And if you PISE accordingly, if you spend the time with those patients, no one in healthcare is doing it.

So when we talk about other industries, right? No one in, he. Spends [00:28:00] time with patients anymore. Yeah. Because of managed care and a lot of reasons when you are that weird. Um, there’s a good book by Seth golden called purple cow. And he’s a great at Kimbo. Yep. Yeah. At Kimbo Cal. Yeah, exactly. He’s got a great podcast.

I listen to as well. And um, he’s like in all of healthcare, let’s say you’re that purple cow setting your, your patients flowers when. Their mothers passed away, donating to cancer societies in the, on behalf of patients when you know things go wrong like that. Yeah. When you’re that weird purple cow doctor that does that and sponsoring the local baseball team and things like that, they’re like this place is so different.

Yeah. The word of mouth goes P so at all, practice. All online views looks like we’re looks like we’re cheating. We have hundreds and hundreds of online views from Google, Yelp. All, all of them are five stars. Yeah. Like literally all except for like one crazy guy. but we all have that. Exactly. But it looks like we’re cheating.

Um, because, but how did we cheat? All I did was I spent time with patience. I only cared about the 20% Dr. TA. Yeah, thanks so much for, [00:29:00] for doing this. This is an awesome conversation. Thanks for having it. Uh, I, I think that you’ve inspired a lot of us to kind of rethink about the way we practice and figure out how we can kind of focus on that 20%.

Yeah. Focus on 20% and then, you know, then slowly look at your schedule and, uh, you know, uh, yeah. Spend time with those patients. You’ll never wanna leave optometry. Yeah.

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