Creating your business of distinction

INTRODUCTION PART 1: OUR ECONOMY NOW AND IN THE FUTURE AND WHAT IT MEANS TO OUR PRACTICE Imagine yourself in your business in 5 years. You walk in and feel happy and at peace, even proud as you enter your building or look at your website and recall all the peoples lives you have been able to change for the better. Now go a step further and imagine your business being one that people say they cannot live without. In his book “Create Distinction” Scott McKain says that Distinction is “Businesses so uncommonly excellent, or their differentiation strategies are executed to such an extraordinary level of precision, that these distinct examples become clear market leaders”. I graduated from Optometry school in 1995 from Nova Southeastern University College of Optometry in Miami, Florida. I am the oldest of three girls born to parents from Corning, New York. My dream since 10 years of age had been to be a missionary doctor and help people in whatever country I was needed to be able to change their lives for the better and give them hope for an amazing future. I wanted my patients to know not only that I loved them and cared about them but that they have a higher purpose for being here on earth. Being a doctor to me was just a way to show patients and customers how I cared but ultimately what would change their lives was the knowledge that there was a higher purpose for their life. My parents always taught us what I have since seen said by Peter Drucker “Our mission in life should be to make a positive difference, not to prove how smart or right we are.” The important thing is not what our profession is but what we do within our profession to make a positive difference. Our profession is just the path we take to get there. I worked hard in school with the never-ending encouragement of my mother and father to get good grades so that I could make it into medical school someday. I always knew what I wanted, and it was just a matter of learning and preparing my mind and heart for the future. I grew up with very little in material things however I didn’t know that for a long time. I was simply happy. My dad was a teacher and then a school principal with a passion for helping students achieve their goals in life. He wrote his own book “Championship Education” in 2000 to help other schools and teachers create distinction in education. My mom was his assistant and school administrator and never let us (my sisters and I) be complacent with our education. I had no idea how I would pay for my higher education however it never crossed my mind that it could or would be an obstacle. I knew it was my purpose in life and that if I worked hard, I would always find a way to overcome the roadblocks that came my way. I had an “I can” attitude and was determined to make it happen. One of my first obstacles came in middle school when I went to the doctor for treatment of one of many viral induced asthma attacks. I didn’t have the best immune system and had a tendency toward Asthma every time I was sick. As he finished his examination, he sat down to talk to me and told me that I should find another specialty in the health care profession other than primary care or pediatrics. He told me my own immune system being what it was would not be able to handle exposure to multiple sick patients in a day. I left his office slightly discouraged yet knew I would find my path in medicine. It was at the end of my third year of undergraduate school that I felt God’s direction for my specific path in health care. I had a friend come up to me and ask me if I had ever thought of optometry school and if I would be willing to go tour the new optometry school in Miami, Florida. I hadn’t ever really considered optometry however I gave it some thought and realized that to be able to make people see had more potential than anything I could imagine changing people’s lives and I was all in. I went for a tour of the facility, took my entrance exam, went through the interview process, and was granted early acceptance into the program and started the next year. 4 grueling years of in-depth study of the human eye and how to diagnose and treat eye disease and prescribe glasses and contact lenses specifically designed for each patient to correct their unique refractive issues resulted in graduation with a degree in Optometry. One year of hospital-based residency solidified my knowledge of the treatment of eye disease and how it relates to other diseases of the body, and I was ready for my own practice. It was in 2002 that I finally purchased my own optometry practice. I purchased the practice that belonged to my family optometrist, and he had purchased it from another before him. The practice had been in existence since 1941 in West Palm Beach, Florida. The practice had seen many changes over time however little did I know at the time the biggest changes were still to come. In optometry school as in most schools of medicine students are taught their profession well. We graduate very capable of treating patients and yet have very little if any training on how to run a business. We then graduate, join, or buy a private practice in many cases and hope to learn how to turn a profit so that we can continue to care for our patients while putting food on the table for our families. After I bought my practice, I learned quickly that there was much I didn’t know about business and yet I knew I was up for the challenge. Thankfully my husband had his business/finance degree and decided to join the family business. Within 5 years we had tripled the size and income of my practice which of course enabled us to change many patients’ lives in the process. Making people see is life changing enough however saving people’s lives by detecting life-threatening conditions during an eye exam is a blessing I was given on a regular basis. The first 5 years of business growth required a lot of hard work but not too much long-term planning. In other words, initial growth was easiest. We were raising two children by this time and two dogs and life was a little chaotic, but it was good chaos because it was our chaos, and we were able to see the positive of the hard work and teach our children our why. I am confident that even in the early days our kiddos would have been able to tell you that our family is in the business of bringing value to others at first through eye care and then later through consulting. In 2008 business started to get more challenging. Growth was not as easy to achieve, and patients seemed to be distracted by and concerned with the changes in the economy. More concerned about the economy than it seemed their vision and eye health. I knew though that didn’t make sense. As we moved into 2009 the economists started to tell us that we were in a recession and people weren’t going to spend money. Home values started to drop, food prices increased, and people stopped taking care of themselves and started to hold on to their money many times at the expense of their health. I watched this phenomenon and refused to accept that this was the “new normal”. As I looked around, I observed businesses that continued to do well despite the changes in the economy. I knew that my business was as important if not more so than theirs and so started down the path of understanding why people chose to spend money in and on the things and places they did. I found a few resources and authors on this topic that made me think. One was Steven Covey and his co-authors of the book “Predictable Results in Unpredictable Times”. In this book the authors emphasize that we are from here on out going to be in unpredictable times and they go on to say that those leaders who ground themselves in certain and consistent principles will continue to succeed.