← Power Hour Optometry
Power Hour Optometry
How Pursuing Passions Outside Optometry Can Grow the Value of Your Practice, with Dr. Gary Gerber
00:59:53
What if scaling your optometry practice isn’t inside the exam lane, but outside it? In this week’s episode of Power Hour, Eugene Shatsman sits down with a legend in the industry — Dr. Gary Gerber, co-founder of Treehouse Eyes, seasoned...
Loading summary
Transcript81 lines
- [00:00]
Gary Gerber
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Eugene Shotsman
Welcome to the Power Hour, Optometry's biggest and longest running show. We're now in our 13th season. I'm your host, Eugene Shotsman, and today's episode is really a unique look through the lens of one of the greats. My guest needs no introduction, Dr. Gary Gerber, someone I'm absolutely honored to host every single time he comes on the show. And while it's fun to catch up and hear what Gary's been up to in his life after optometry, there's the conversation. Today actually makes a very, very profound point. So, sure, Gary talks about how he's having a ball on tour with a band right now, but also he covers how creating a practice that allows you to do whatever it is that's super exciting to you earlier, not after you retire, but earlier, while you still own the practice, that that activity actually increases your enterprise value of your practice in many ways. So this is actually where we spend a lot of time on the episode. We leverage Gary's massive experience in helping thousands of doctors build better practices. We leverage that experience to discuss what actually helps grow your enterprise value. And it's pretty clear that the same recommendations that grow your enterprise value are also the same things that allow you to achieve more in your life outside of optometry while you still own your practice. So whether you're starting out or you're in the thick of it or you're thinking about a sale, it doesn't matter. The advice here is hyper relevant and at every stage of practice, ownership. And we even dig into the biggest mistakes that kill enterprise value, often without business owners realizing it. So this is a great episode. Gary tells some really cool stories, reflects on his own regrets or kind of like the wish I'd known moments. And he also provides a ton of strategic and tactical advice. So whether you're in building mode or you're in growing mode, if you're considering selling or you just want to breathe a little bit easier in your practice, this is a great episode to help put things into perspective. So before we dive in, quick reminder, I always welcome your feedback and ideas. Please reach out to me directly at the show website or@eugene shotsman.com and now let's go to the show. All right. Welcome to the Power Hour. Gary, welcome back to the Power Hour. Excited to have you back on the show.
- [02:18]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, great. Great to be back again, again. And I don't know if the first 400 episodes count that I did, but that's what I'm getting it again and again and again. And again. Right.
- [02:29]
Eugene Shotsman
We could be here for the next hour recounting those. You know, you've been up to some really interesting things and I wanted to pick your brain on two major topics today. And I think that there probably is an interesting connection, is, you know, you've been pursuing your passion, which you got a chance to do somewhat after in the time that I knew you in running the Power Practice and even somewhat before. But really you've gone full time into pursuing passion projects or passion activities after optometry. So today I wanted to talk about two things. Number one is life after optometry and really the second one being how do you get there, which is, you know, maximizing your enterprise value. And we can talk about them in that order or in the reverse order, logically. What do you think, Gary?
- [03:23]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, good, good topics. I actually think they're somewhat related in part of the same story, like not necessarily two separate topics and two separate events. I think they're part of a, they're part of a continuum, but they're interconnected as you kind of go through your career. So I think that may be a good way to frame this up. Good topic.
- [03:52]
Eugene Shotsman
So maybe just fill in the audience for a second. For those that haven't been closely following what is, what are you up to these days and when did you get into it?
- [04:02]
Gary Gerber
Yep. So got a lot of stuff going on. I kind of quick bio if you're just hearing me for the first time, had an optometry practice for years in northern New Jersey. Sold that, started a consulting company called the Power Practice, which is where the Power Hour started, sold that and started a company called Treehouse Eyes. Have not sold that, but I'm not involved with the day to day running as much anymore. Just doing more kind of consulting and advisory work there. And throughout all of that, I've always been a musician, a keyboard player and I, in fact, before optometry school, I went to school in Indiana University, which has a great music school. I was my undergraduate and I really got a taste of really good quality music education there and always had it in the back of my mind that I want to do pursue. At the same time I was an optometrist. I wanted to pursue music more and more intently and I, I played in bands while I was at IU in Indiana. I played in bands when I went to SUNY Optometry. When I got out, I was always playing in bands. So I never kind of stopped playing. Everybody's got different hobbies. Music was, you know, was kind of more than a hobby now. We'll talk about that. But it was a. You know, some. Some doctors play golf on the weekends. I would go play with an 80s hair band on a. On a cruise ship somewhere. It was just a. Just different kind of hobby. But never. Never really got the music bug out of me. I don't. I. For the musicians listening, I think it's something that is. It's just a party. It doesn't leave if you don't play for a couple weeks. You just kind of like riding a bike. You always lose a little bit. You got to get back and get back in the zone. So, yeah, been kind of doing both. And. Yeah, let's leave it at that for now, because I. I want to. I want to get that enterprise thing. I think that's really. I think that's a really important piece, too.
- [06:20]
Eugene Shotsman
All right, so we're going to go to the Enterprise Value. But I will say that the. We'll call it the legacy lives on. Because at every Power Practice annual retreat meeting, which I think you probably started, this tradition, is that there's a performance by a band made up of the doctors. So all the musicians in the room perform after dinner on one of the nights and one of the big receptions. And so, you know, I've been hearing that I got a chance to speak at the last few Power Practice retreats, and I've been hearing the Power. Power Practice Band, which I imagine you were the headline.
- [06:55]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, yeah, it was the Power Band. And we. It was an interesting idea that kind of came to me because I was having discussions like this, talking to clients, saying, oh, there's stuff after. After optometry life, life goes on. So it should be something you might want to plan for now. And I would talk about some of the planning I was doing, and I would talk about my music. And it turns out there's a lot of doctors who are musicians. And I came up with the idea, you're coming to this meeting anyway. Why don't we put a band together? So I was fortunate because at the time, I was living in North Jersey, about 20 miles from New York City, and I was doing a lot of studio work in New York City, and I knew a lot of studio session guys. So when you have doctors all over the country converging for an event, you can't really get a lot of rehearsal time in, or in our case, really any rehearsal. So I wanted to make sure we sounded really good. So I brought in a couple, like, ringers, if you will. So had myself and three or Four other session guys that I would fly in. And then we had whoever wanted to come up and play, come could play. And some years we had like 12, 13 guys up on the stage. It was awesome. And then we had. Yeah, as the core group, we had. I had Ted Nugent's bass player played with us. So, yeah, it was. We had crazy guys up on stage. And it was great, great for the docs because the doctors got to meet these guys. They're super nice guys. They're not, you know, arrogant, crazy rock star guys or just regular humble guys making a living in this, doing session work. And yeah, it was good, good event for the docs. Lots of fun for me. Power practice tagline, I don't know if you're still using it was power your dreams or let us power your dreams. And I remember after one of the shows, one of the doctors got to sing a Janis Joplin song, and she came up afterwards and she said, not only are you powering my dreams in my office, you're powering, like, my real dream was to always sing that song with a good band.
- [09:05]
Eugene Shotsman
Well, that's so cool. And, you know, it kind of reminds us all that while we're business people for a part of our lives, right, and we're caregivers, caregivers in the chair, but we're also human. And as humans, you know, we're. We've got families, we've got passions, we've got hobbies, we've got things that we want to do. And really, you know, when you run a business, part of the risk you take as a business owner also should have some reward associated with enabling your passion and setting you up for success afterwards. So we'll get more to that. I think the question I have for you is that, you know, the people who are listening to the show, most likely right now, have not moved past optometry. And, you know, we've got people who are in various stages of practice, some that may be retiring in five years, some that may be looking for a. For an offer right now, some that, you know, maybe just started, and they're. They're kind of in the early stage of their career. But the universal truth, and I learned this I think, a little bit too late in my business career, is that you should always be building a business on the principles that if you had to sell it at any moment, you're maximizing the enterprise value. And so maybe there's two components to maximizing the enterprise value. There's the stuff you should be doing operationally, and then there's the stuff you should be doing a couple years before you're ready to sell. So why don't we start with the fundamentals? Because I think that's where, you know, it makes sense to say, okay, am I doing this right now or am I not?
- [10:40]
Gary Gerber
Yeah. So when I was consulting, when I was active consulting full time, if we had a doctor. Let's, let's. With your timeline, let's go to the earliest possible case would be, would be somebody who is in optometry school who would call us up and say, I'm thinking of, I got two years to go, I'm thinking opening a practice. What should I do? And I was going to say one of the first, but probably the first question I would ask those students because not yet doctors is how do you plan to exit the practice? And they would say, well, what practice are we talking about? I said, well, the one that you want to build and that's going to support you. And if you have a family, support your family, like what's the, what's the plan to get out? And they were like, I guess I'm not going to hire this guy. He didn't even understand my question. And then we would go deeper and deeper into it. And I think that you have to build your business if you want to maximize enterprise value. And just for definitions, it's like to me, enterprise values, what's the whole mishmash worth? Yep, your, your everything from the value of your current lease, if you have one. If you don't own your building, the obviously your financials, your how much cash is it throwing off ebitda, the like the likelihood of your staff stick around. Your goodwill, your inventory, your fixtures, your furnishings, it's everything. And if you look at it that way, what you're really selling is the ability of the business to continue performing as it is now after you're not there. So to me, that's kind of really what it's about. So if you think about how am I going to build this from the start so I can sell it later? So functions just as good with me as without me, that's the way to build your practice. And that's not the way a lot of doctors want to hear. It's not what doctors want to hear.
- [12:52]
Eugene Shotsman
And why, why, why not? Why don't.
- [12:54]
Gary Gerber
Well, you know, to the doctor to. I can understand it because I went through it and I didn't really. That light bulb didn't go off for me. I didn't know that when I was a Student I didn't know when I was five years into practice, I didn't really click that until maybe seven or ten years I started thinking about it. And you put all this time in school, the investment, the time, the money, the sweat, the emotion, and like you personally want to be rewarded and the linchpin, like the foundation branding of your practice you think should be you. And as soon as you do that, you're gonna have trouble selling practice. I shouldn't say trouble. You won't, you won't sell it for as high a value as it could be if it's not about you specifically. And an example that I use, there's kind of two things you can think about. I could go in front of a group of docs, 50, 60 docs in a room at a local society meeting, giving a lecture, and I would always ask, does anybody here go to a fast food restaurant more than, say once or twice a month? I usually go. One or two guys raise their hand. But Docs, you don't get it that often. We, hopefully we eat a little bit better, but who knows? And every now and then I find somebody who would go once, once or twice a week. So let's say seven to ten times a month. And I would say, do you usually go to the same place? And they would say, yes. So let's use an example of, I go to Burger King. I go seven to ten times a month. Do you usually go to the same one? Yep. I go, It's. It's like 3/4amile from my office. So I go to the same one because it's fast. And I asked them questions like, do they always have napkins? Yes. Do they ever run out of ketchup? No. They always order the same thing. Yes, most of us do in. Most restaurants usually get the same thing. And I said, okay, so in the last year, you've gone, I don't know, 100 times? Yep. They asked a really simple question. Do you know the name of the manager? And 100% of the time they say no. And you're obviously not going back because of the people you're going back for. Let's, let's call it an event, even though it's fast food. But the event kind of culminates with the Whopper. But the fact that you're going to have parking, when you go there, it's going to be open. If it's the middle of the summer, the air conditioning is going to be on. It's a very consistent, predictable, easy to do business, easy to hand Them your money sort of event. And Burger King is, I think, I think it's a franchise. I'm not sure. But they've obviously got multiple locations. And if you go to one and you go to another one, you're probably going to have a similar experience if you do them in the same country. And when you build your practice, if you think of it the same way that I want to build a franchise practice, even if I just do one location, I want to make it in such a way that it offers a very predictable, reliable experience for patients that is not reliant on my ability to be here and tell funny jokes and have people remember my name. You're going to have a higher enterprise value because the next guy that steps in doesn't have to fill your shoes, they just have to run the business. And in fact, in effect, what you're selling is a playbook of how to run this practice. And if you sell it to a younger doc, one of the biggest trepidations that doctors have is they don't know how to run the practice. Well, here's the playbook. Like this is it. Back in the kind of pre Internet, pre cloud document days, we used to advocate that doctors have a book like, here's the book. It's a physical pieces of paper and a loose leaf binder. It tells you, this is how this, I open a practice, is how you close the practice. And the 6,000 pages in between are every single step. When you, when you run out of copy paper, this is where you get it from. And this is the account, like everything step by step by step by step was in there. So if you wanted to go do it again and replicate it in another location, here's, here's the book. Just go do this. And most of us don't think of our practice that way. They think of our private practice owners think of it as our practice. It's all about me. And that is okay. Most practices run that way and they do fine. But those that do not run that way, that run more focused on the experiential side of it for the patients, where it's easy to replicate, will ultimately sell for higher value. And I've been involved in hundreds of practice sale deals in the years I've been doing this. So I can say that with a high degree of confidence that the more codified or reproducible your systems are, the higher your enterprise value is going to be. No question about it.
- [17:59]
Eugene Shotsman
And the thing is, Gary, what you're describing also tends to impact the staff too, because If I run my practice as a talent show, which is, you know, I'm the main talent and then everybody else, you know, the key players in the practice are also a talent show. So you think about the office manager and the front desk person and whatever. And so it's, hey, I ran out of copy paper. What do I do? Ask Kim. You know, she knows because Kim is the keeper of, you know, those particular secrets in the practice. And so you're, then, you know, in many ways, if you're running your practice as a collection of talent or, you know, what I call the talent show, that it may be a very successful practice, but it's also a high risk enterprise because as soon as Kim decides that, you know, she can't work anymore for whatever reason, maybe she got a job across town or maybe her family moved out of the area or maybe she has a health issue or maybe she's just retiring at that point. The ability to transfer knowledge from Kim's head to somebody else's in what may be, you know, one or two weeks is impossible. It's just impossible. And so then the practice has immediate, immediate impact on the patient experience. That creates a, that, that creates trepidation. Other staff have to step up and you know, now they're, now they feel like they're doing one point something jobs, one and a half, 1.5 job, 1.3 jobs, whatever their number is is, you know, at that point now they're feeling like you got to pay them more. And it starts the cycle of, you know, what I would call kind of uncertainty for the practice, which then takes you out of your own talent because you're the doctor who's super talented and you're, you know, you're there doing the show for the patients takes you out of that talent point. And now you're in the weeds managing the nuances of the practice, trying to figure out where you should put the copy paper.
- [19:52]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, yeah, 100% the doctors should do doctoring and that's kind of about all they should do. So it kind of begs the question of who's going to run the practice. It's an easy question. Anybody but the doctor. And it should be somebody who really knows how to run a small business. Most practices, office managers were former technicians who got promoted to opticians in a state where you don't need an optician's license. And they did really good at selling glasses. So they got promoted to an office manager. They have the managerial skills. It's a classic example. It's called the Peter Principle. People get elevated their level of highest incompetence and then they no longer get elevated in positions because they can't do the role. So yeah, the, the best offices I've ever worked with invariably have the best coos. Guys who, guys or girls who really know how to manage a small business and how to manage people. And doctors historically were not, I'm. Some of us are just, we're naturally good at it, but for the most part we weren't trained how to do it. And there's a real skill managing a team of people, especially as you get more and more of them, it's harder to do. So I always think that one of the highest or the highest paid person in your office should be your office manager coo, call them what you will. And then the doctor can be the CEO, which is somebody's got to make the strategic decisions. Which direction does the practice go? Do we bring in this new service? Do we jettison this service? Those types of, types of things doesn't mean your hands off. But you're doing what you do best, which is from a purely mercenary financial side. It's generating revenue as a doctor because that's. You're the doc, happens to be your practice, but you're the doctor if you.
- [21:41]
Eugene Shotsman
Look at real people say that you get paid multiple ways as an owner of the practice. You get paid to see patients and you get paid to own the practice. And you know you're successful when your hourly rate to own the practice when you're not seeing patients is higher than your hourly rate to see the patients. Now, you know you talked about the office manager component. I'm curious what you think, but how do you tell if your office is really a well run office and if your coo, as you call them, whatever their actual title in the office is really that good and how much of that is dependent on that person's ability to create process that's replicable in the practice to drive that enterprise value?
- [22:26]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, well, the, the process doesn't have to be created by one person. I mean that can be a. Somebody needs to be in charge of it and get it done. So the doctor can be involved with that and the getting it done and the overseeing it, but doesn't have to do the actual work. I like doing training videos and back in the stone age we actually used video cameras to do it. It's really tough to edit them, but now there's no excuse not to do it. What you can do with a phone age. Yeah, well, you can do with a phone now and it's certainly easily editable and changeable.
- [23:01]
Eugene Shotsman
You just write the script and you give it to AI and AI can write the script for you.
- [23:05]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, so now phones are old school, but there's no excuse not to have that now. And it doesn't have to be one person. It could be collaborative, but somebody has to be the editor, if you will. Somebody's got to be the Steven Spielberg of this thing to make sure it all works and all comes together and makes sense. And that could be the doctor slash office manager coo. You got to get somebody who can really do this. You got to pay them a lot of money, pay them more money, they think they're worse. If this is a new concert for your practice, you're going to take a hit on your profitability when you first do this, because the fruits of the labor of doing this are not going to be readily apparent for a while. Sometimes it can take six months to a year. So the year you pull the trigger on this, you may go home with a little bit less money. After that you'll go home with more money and markedly less work. And then relates to your question of how do you know if it's kind of working? I talk to doctors who say, which this really hurts. But they say things like, you know, I haven't had a, I either haven't had a vacation in 10 years, I've had no vacation or I've never taken more than like four or five days off. And, and they're self employed. So you sit down, you have a heart to heart and you say, why, why did you decide to become self employed? When you were in school you could have worked in a thousand other places, could have worked for the DO doctors, other big corporate places. There's a lot, a lot of things you can do. Why you decide to open up your own practice. I want to be my own boss. Okay, what's one of the benefits of being your own boss? I get to take time off when I want to take time off. Okay, but you're not doing that. You're not taking time off, so you're not hitting that initial fundamental goal you set out for yourself 15 years ago. You think it's time to do it. You got to get somebody who can help run a practice for you and it should run when you're not there. Well, I don't have a doctor to fill in, so I can't do that. So there's two easy answers for that. One is when you did take a vacation 10 years ago and you got for four days. Did you have a practice to come back to? Absolutely. So if you're gone, you know what? Doesn't matter. Your patients will wait. They'll wait four days to see it. And if they don't and they go someplace else, if you lock the door for four days and didn't see any patients and you never recoup that revenue, how much of a disaster is that going to be to your life? It's like it's not, you know, it's just not going to make a difference. So if you can't find a doc to fill in, because some doctors in, like, super remote areas, it is really tough to get a doc. If you're one of those docs, this is even more of a reason to do that. So the office can still run. They can't get an eye exam, but everything else is still up and running. People are picking up classes, they're booking appointments, they're getting the contact lenses. And the other thing, if you're in an area where there are a lot of doctors available but you don't have one, well, that should be part of your system. What is the system for when the doctor owner wants to take a vacation? Well, the first thing is he has to alert the office manager and say, eight months from now, I'm going to be gone for two weeks. So we need to plan for that today. Let's start. Okay? We got to get an associate. Okay, we have, you know what? We got eight months to figure this out. Let's make sure we get somebody. And if you approach it that way, where it's a significant project, you should be able to get somebody. And again, if. If you don't, you know, think, think, think about. To me, the ultimate test of this, of this whole concept is. Is Covid, when we had no choice but to close the. Shut the door, lock the door, nobody's in the office. A lot of cases, nobody was picking up the phones. And we're fine. Right? It was incredible angst. And I hope we never, ever go anything remotely like that again related to that again. I was still at the power practice at the time. That was the most stressful month I had as a business owner of the power practice of my life, because I felt this responsibility for hundreds of practices to make sure those guys stayed open. And it was brand new to me. How do you deal with something like that? And I will say, yeah, we did not have a system in the power practice that had to deal with a mass closure of earth. That was not our playbook.
- [27:40]
Eugene Shotsman
I will also say that looking at the data, your response during that period of time, those were some of the most listened to Power Hour episodes of all time. And the reality is that you were hosting conversations to try to get people, to help people figure it out. And I think you creating a channel, a medium for that was awesome. And I also think it speaks to this whole concept of you need to have a system in your practice. It's not just process, it's the system. And the system is, I think, the collection of people in process in order to be able to execute on whatever you're trying to accomplish in that practice.
- [28:18]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, yeah. There's a book that I've heard of. It's by Michael Gerber. He's not related to me. It's called the E. Myth Revisited. And he's got a line everybody talks about. You got any practice management lecture to talk about this guy? And it says you got to work on the practice, not in your practice. You have to do both. And we tend to not work on the practice. We don't put the time in to get those systems in place that are reproducible and can run without us. We just don't, as a, as a majority docs, we don't put the effort and the time in to do that.
- [28:57]
Eugene Shotsman
So let me ask you a couple questions on this concept. So first of all, you know, I think buying the concept that the practice needs to run without the owner totally, you know, that that increases enterprise value. What if your practice is named Smith Optometry and you are Dr. Smith? You know, should you be, you know, should you be listening to this episode and thinking, when am I going to rename that to something else?
- [29:20]
Gary Gerber
No, it doesn't matter. Did you ever hear of Stanley Pearl? He did pretty good for himself, right? Now, the pro version. Have you ever walked into a KFC and met the Colonel? Colonel doesn't make the chicken. Right. So, yeah, it doesn't matter. I think it doesn't hurt if you do it, but it does involve the whole. A whole rebranding. So if you're Dr. Smith, you can certainly set up a practice such that it doesn't really matter who the doctor is. It's Dr. Smith's optometry practice. Doesn't mean Dr. Smith is in the practice. So you can nuance it. It's been done in a million different businesses. Steinway, right? You know, Steinway pianos. I've never met Mr. Steinway, but I love his, his pianos and I would buy another one. Right? Yeah, it, you know, it's a, it's a whole nother show that you should probably do just on naming businesses. Yeah. To me, like the name and the brand is a. It's like an empty box that you start with and there's a, there's a box and on the outside of says Dr. Smith. And anything can go inside that box. And the things that go in start to create the personality of the practice and that becomes the brand of Dr. Smith's practice, not the name per se. And there's a million examples. Like if I would, if I. If we had this discussion 40 years ago and said, eugene, I want to start a company called Apple, what do you think I'm going to sell? I don't think you would say computers. And if I said I'm going to start a company called Google, what kind of stupid word is that? You making kids toys? What's Google?
- [31:06]
Eugene Shotsman
Hey, do you know the first name of Google?
- [31:08]
Gary Gerber
No idea.
- [31:10]
Eugene Shotsman
Backrub. That was the name of the company. And the reason why is because Google, one of the major, one of the major metrics for whether a website should show up first when you looked for a keyword or it should show up second or third or whatever was because you would know based off of the number of backlinks that that site got, which is links from other websites on the Internet. So If I had 10 backlinks and you had one, my website would show up higher than yours for like if we were trying to compete for the same keyword. So in the early days of Google, thank God they renamed it, the company was called Backrub.
- [31:50]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, but you know, they probably could have done just fine. May not have been as easy, but they would have been fine. The name kind of doesn't matter. It really. Yeah. So in the topic of building value and everything else. Yeah, I, I don't think it matters the system.
- [32:11]
Eugene Shotsman
Let's talk about like five maybe. Let's go three.
- [32:15]
Gary Gerber
Three.
- [32:15]
Eugene Shotsman
Three big mistakes that people make when they erode enterprise value in their practice. So we already talked about how like you do everything yourself. You're the talent show, whatever. So we already got that one. So let's go to the other three that you've seen. And especially if you've been involved in hundreds of transactions, where have people been sucker punched the most?
- [32:37]
Gary Gerber
Too much inventory is a big one. Walked into practices that have literally 2,3000 frames. Some of them are stuck away in boxes and drawers and the backs in place that they've already paid for. I think of frame inventory as when you look at your Frame is sitting up on a wall. Substitute that for money. So there's a $100 bill sitting up on a wall. You can't spend it for something else. And then the other mistake is not if. If you're gonna use this model and you want to have a system that works, it means you can. And people are gonna think I'm sound pretty mercenary about this, but you want to be able to plug and play employees into your system once it's set up. So if you have somebody that you've plugged in who is not performing, you got to get rid of them and you got to plug in somebody else. There is Disney would say ask them to find their happiness elsewhere. That's a plague of fire. Even Disney can be nice when they fire people.
- [33:44]
Eugene Shotsman
That's interesting, though, because it automatically implies there's so much behind that statement, because it automatically implies that you can measure whether or not somebody is performing, which means that when you have that opening that you're plugging someone else into or someone into, you got to have a way to tell where they should be three months after they've been deployed into that thing. Six months, 12 months. And when I say a way to tell, it's not just objective, like, oh, hey, you know, there's no. There's no garbage on the desk type of thing. It's a. What. What are the KPIs, what are. What are the metrics of success for that particular person? Right.
- [34:20]
Gary Gerber
Yeah. And that's something that's in your process. Right. And that's part of that process is when you hire that new plugin that sounds really mean, that new person that you're gonna hire, you tell them when they get hired, this is how your performance is going to be measured. Like, that's only fair. You can't tell them three months from now. You didn't hit these metrics. I don't know. It was supposed to. And like now everything, it's. It's easier to measure all the online tools that are out there, even this, the soft skill. Soft pieces are important, like the patient interaction side. And we're all your questions answered. And we have pretty good access to our patients now between your cell phones and their email. So there's no excuse you can't get 10 or 15% of the responses. You'll be able to get them back. You put a little bit of effort into it and that if you send out enough, the absolute number is going to be high enough you can make some real decisions based on real numbers. So, yeah, that's a. That's a good point. Yeah. Just talking about inventory. You would. You would tell who's ever running your inventory, presumably your optician. I never want to have more than 400 frames on a board. Like, that's. And if I happen to do a random count one day or one of me be the COO does more than a random count. Does a random count as more than 400? That's a problem. Like, 400 is the max.
- [35:39]
Eugene Shotsman
Is that the right number, by the way, for any practice? Or how'd you get.
- [35:43]
Gary Gerber
I think it depends. But I think we can make a universal statement that most practices have way too many frames. What happens is a little off topic, but it's important because the optical is still, as you know, and doctors don't like to fess up to it. It's still a huge profit center. The biggest profit center for almost every practice out there is their optical. Even those guys that say, I don't care about glasses. I do a lot of medical billing. Oh, okay, good for you. Keep doing it. But you're still making more money selling glasses. There's no question about that. So you want to manage that part of your practice really effectively, which means you want to keep as many of your patients in your office getting glasses from you instead of someplace else. And it's really simple retail. If they have too many choices and they can't decide because they feel like I'm putting on this frame and I like it. I think it works well. But there's like, 60 others I didn't even try yet, and it's almost, like, overwhelming. So my decision is to decide not to buy anything is to delay and to not buy, because I just can't decide. I'm just overwhelmed. So I think minimalistic inventories work well. You need good salespeople to be able to do it. You walk into. I spoke about Apple. Walk into the Apple Store. Talk about minimalistic inventory. And they have actually been criticized by Wall street since, I don't know, the last couple of years. There's just too many products in the Apple Store. It's hard to decide. It's getting confusing. I was just looking at an Apple watch, and I think they're right. There's too many permutations. I think if they would have said to me, you can get these two watches with these three bands, like, that's it. It was like, too many choices. Let the aftermarket guys have the other stuff, but at least get me to get the basic watch. And I walked out with my old watch. I didn't get anything. And that was one of the reasons. It was just too much going on here.
- [37:39]
Eugene Shotsman
Well, yeah, there's lots of psychology, consumer psychology, that supports that the more choices you give a consumer, the less likely they are to make a choice. And so your sales process needs to be finely tuned. I think the perception of inventory needs to be there. Like, you know, I'm gonna find my solution here. But I think also the. The reality is that your salespeople need to be good enough to narrow that inventory down quickly and not to be like, go browse the board and pick the 60 you like. Right. Like, that's not. You know.
- [38:10]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, that doesn't work. Yeah. If.
- [38:13]
Eugene Shotsman
If you're. Whether you're curating whatever experience you're trying to curate, whether you're picking frames off the board or walking the board with your. With your patient, I agree with you. I think it can't be overwhelming. It needs to be something that's. You know, we've narrowed it down to three. Let's pick the. Let. Let's talk about these. Which two of these three you're getting.
- [38:34]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Which are your sunglasses, which are everyday glasses. And when you come back to pick them up, we'll get you the third one right there. When you could. Yeah, absolutely. That's kind of basic retailing. Let's talk a little bit about. Because I want to. I want to connect the dots before time runs out between enterprise value and life after optometry.
- [38:52]
Eugene Shotsman
So why don't you connect those two topics, then we'll take a break, and then I actually want to hear exactly what you're doing with the life after optometry.
- [38:59]
Gary Gerber
Yeah. So think of it this way. Right before the break, a little tease is. What if you started your practice with. And I. I did not do this. I don't really have too many regrets as an optometrist, but I kind of regret this because I could have been doing music more and sooner, but I'm doing okay. Which we'll talk about. What if I started to practice saying, I'm building this practice with. With the intent to get out as soon as I can and go play with a rock band? Like, that's. That's why I'm doing it. That's. That's my goal in this practice. That would mean that I would have to build it in such a way that I don't have to be there. That's the first part we just talked about. And then the second part is, while I'm there, I also have to cultivate the music part of my career at the same time.
- [39:54]
Eugene Shotsman
All right, we'll be right back on the Power Hour. We're back on the Power Hour with the legendary Dr. Gary Gerber, and we're talking about life after optometry. And if you heard the tease before the break, the interesting part, as Gary is saying, live work in your practice or run your practice, as if you're thinking about, how quickly can I get out and do the thing that I really want to do afterwards? And also while I'm doing it, how can I do more of that thing that I love so that, you know, work and life are really actually balanced, which is that elusive, you know, I guess, corporate nonsense that, you know, all of us hear all the time. Work, life, balance.
- [40:38]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, yeah, I agree. That's a ridiculous phrase. Whoever came up with that is an idiot. That's. That needs to go away. There's. There's no such thing. It's. It's just. Just life. It's just life, right? So in my case, my outlet for optometry was music, as I mentioned briefly. And once I kind of got into this business zone of having to practice run more by itself, I made a concerted effort to really put more time in with my music. So I'll give you. I'll give you a example that, man, when I say this now, it's so hard to believe that I did this, but I was a, when I was growing up, 80s kind of hair band, rock, progressive music. There was a couple bands. I always thought, wow, like, that's the band I want to play with. Because keyboard players were always like the kind of nerdy guy in the back of the band. Like, keyboards were never cool. I'm not a guitar player. I'm not a drummer. Like, keyboard players, a nerd in the back. But there were a couple bands where keyboards were prominent. I thought, wow, wouldn't it be cool to play with one of those? So one of the bands, turns out that the lead singer from the band actually lived in North Jersey. I didn't know exactly where, but I just knew he lived there. Actually, a lot of musicians lived in North Jersey, Long island, southern Connecticut, just because of going to New York City to record there. So I was doing some. Some recording in some local Jersey studios for years, Not. Not a lot, because I didn't have the time because of. Of practice. And I just kind of made it my mission to find out, where is this guy recording? Like, where is he doing his work? It's probably going to be New York City. Turns out. And this is kind of what happens when you put your mind to it turns out I was actually doing a lot of recording in a studio that I didn't even know existed. That was about five minutes from my practice. True, True story, right? Really pro grade studio. Then it turns out the engineer who was in his practice was a guitar player I used to play with years ago when I was a kid, like, in college. I played a band with this guy, and I know he built it, like this totally killer studio. Called him up. I said, you got any sessions with this singer dude? And he goes, yeah, it comes in two or three times a year. I said, do me a favor. Next time he comes in, let me know. I want to be here. I just want to meet the guy. So he did. He called me up and I was there, and I got to meet the singer. And the engineer said, why don't you meet some. Is my friend Gary. He's a. He's a. Turns out he's a doctor right down the street. And the guy kind of looks at me. I've looked like I look like this for a long time. He goes, this guy's a doctor. I said, almost a keyboard player. Do you need one? Do you need one in your band? And he goes, maybe. So I think he was. I thought he was just being polite, right? Two or three months later, I get a phone call. He's got a very recognizable voice. He goes, my band's going on tour in about two months. Do you want to play with us? So without giving her a second thought, I said, yes. And I wasn't ready. Technically, I wasn't ready. Involved like, a ton of work the same time this is all going on. We're just about to start to open our first Treehouse Eye Center. Talk about, like, stress and pressure. So first two centers are opening up in Washington, D.C. i'm living in North Jersey at the time, driving back and forth to D.C. so I said, you know, there's only one way I'm going to do this. I'm going to. I already told them yes. I got the set list. I got to learn these songs. And this stuff was pretty tough to play. We were. Matt, my partner, Matt, who you know, we were staying in a hotel in D.C. like, I would drive down on Monday, come home Friday, and I started driving down with my keyboards in the back of my car. I would set them up in a hotel room, and at the end of a long, really long work day with Treehouse eyes and be back to the hotel at 10:11 o' clock at night, until 2, 3 in. I was practicing.
- [45:05]
Eugene Shotsman
I bet your neighbors love that at the hotel.
- [45:07]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, well, that's. Yeah. You have headphones, right? But yeah, just a lot of, A lot of pressure to go, to get ready to go do the shows. And then I.
- [45:21]
Eugene Shotsman
But it sounds like the thing that drove that was that you said yes to a dream opportunity. If I'm kind of connecting the dots. And that dream opportunity had a timeline that forced you into action in a way that wouldn't have that. That wouldn't have. If that dream opportunity wasn't around. Right.
- [45:38]
Gary Gerber
Yeah. The first step before that was I committed. There was definitely a lot of luck here, but I committed to doing something. And I think if this didn't show up, the fact of my point here, with enterprise value and everything else, part of my process when I made this decision, my process is I'm gonna go play in a band. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna take the steps necessary to play in a band. Let me, let me give you an example. Like, if you have a project in the office, let's bring it back to the office for a second. You have a project in the office, you want to, you want to recall patients who have not been in a practice, say, for two years. You keep hearing it's a good idea, get these people to come back in. So you need to put a stake in the ground and work backwards. So let's say, let's make up a day. So let's say August 5th is the important day that you're going to launch this campaign. And we're starting now. It's the end of June. Ish. So we've got six or seven weeks to get this done. So if you say August 5th, how many patients have been in two years? Make the numbers easy. Let's say it's 100 patients. I know it's going to be more. Let's start to work backwards. I have a goal. I want to get 30 of those to come back between August 5th and the next year, next August 5th, to reactivate those patients. So you start working backwards and you're going to say, how are we going to communicate with them? Well, we have a hundred. So let's send 10 of them an email, 10 of them a text. Let's see which one does better. And then the rest of them get, get that. I mean, this is all marketing 101 for you, right? This is easy stuff. My point is we're making a commitment to do this and then we're working backwards to be able to pull it off. So when I decide like any goal, right?
- [47:23]
Eugene Shotsman
Like any, any goal. And I, I like to think about it quarterly. It's that every quarter. I don't care if you do it on the quarter or somewhere midpoint of the quarter. In our company, we do it in the first two weeks of the last month of the quarter is you assess and then you recommit and you say the next 90 days. What absolutely needs to be done in the next 90 days. And then let's work backwards and figure out who needs to be involved and how is it going to get, you know, and then we draw a line in the sand and you know, in EOS terminal or I guess in Franklin Covey terminology, that's rocks, right? Like just build your rocks.
- [48:02]
Gary Gerber
But I think wigs, whatever.
- [48:04]
Eugene Shotsman
Yeah, that's, that's the thing. You gotta.
- [48:06]
Gary Gerber
Yeah.
- [48:07]
Eugene Shotsman
You have to be able to commit.
- [48:08]
Gary Gerber
Yeah. So with, with connecting the docs enterprise value of life. After optometry, I made a commitment that, you know what? I'm gonna. I'm going to play when I finally get out of optometry, I'm going to be a musician, I'm going to play in a band. Like that's what I'm going to do. So now I have to pick a date. When am I getting out? And I knew when I was going to sell my practice, right. So I said to be able to do that. I got a couple things. I got to get my chops back, I got to start playing a lot, I started practicing a lot. I got to go find a band. And that's kind of where I said I got lucky with this guy being right down the street. But the point is, if it wasn't him, I was now actively looking to go do something. And if I want to up my golf game, I'm not a golfer, so this might not make sense, but if I want to up my golf game, I guess first of all, I have to maybe get golf lessons from somebody. So I got to find like a really good golf teacher. And if I don't have one, I got to start that process. And if I want to be a respectable golfer, let's say one year from now, I'm going to start to work back. And one of the first things I'm going to have to do probably is find somebody to teach me. Then I'm going to have to work into my optometry schedule that X hours per week I have to not be here because I go practice golf and I can't do that till I get a system in place. I can't do that till I get a coo. So you kind of. You kind of work them backwards, but you have the goal. I want to get out of practice. And my goal is I want to be in a tour bus with a bunch of, like, great musicians.
- [49:34]
Eugene Shotsman
And it's interesting because I just want to make one because I love your point and I want to make one addition, is that you really have to define that goal in a crystal clear way. So, you know, when you said I want to, you know, I want to play in a band with this guy. Right. That's a really compelling, clear articulation of that goal. I worry that people say, well, I want to play more golf, is the answer. Well, okay, but what does that mean? I guess, you know, you played one more time this year than you did last year. Is that more. Is that. Is that good for you or. I want to spend X amount of time, you know, for me, I love to be on the water, on the boat. And so I'm thinking about what you're saying. I'm thinking, like, I got to write down a number of days a month that I want to be out on the water. And, you know, in the same way, I want to be a respectable golfer. Well, is it like a score that you want to hit or the number of times that you get to play or you want to play with a particular person? You know, those are the things that. Making that goal super specific and then working backwards from it. I love that mentality, and I'm kind of thinking about the things I. I'm passionate about and how I potentially work that into my life.
- [50:44]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, it's. It. It works in your practice. Yeah. If you pick something, admittedly, like I said, I got lucky. If you pick something super lofty, you know, like, I want to. I want to play in the NFL. Right. It's probably not going to happen. But if. Pick something that you love to do with. Life after optometry could be whatever. It doesn't have to be a sport. Doesn't mean I. Vacation could just be one time with your family. Yeah, yeah. You want to heard a guy in.
- [51:14]
Eugene Shotsman
Our industry talk about the number of. It was extremely depressing to hear the number of spring breaks you have left with your kid or the number of meaningful summer vacations you have left with your kid. And you just like, you know, whatever that number is, it's always less than 18. And like, it always.
- [51:31]
Gary Gerber
Yes.
- [51:32]
Eugene Shotsman
So.
- [51:32]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now it's A question. Can I get my kids to come to my concerts? Come up and they got their own life to live in a. They're. They don't live with me anymore. You know, it's. So, yeah, luckily we're doing a lot of the band I'm with now, different band. Anyway, so that story. So that guy played with him for tour with him six, seven years. He moved to Belarus, so he's out of the country. So kind of put the music thing at home for a while. Tree outsides got up and running. Jamming, taking a lot of time. Now I've got a little bit more time and I'm actually playing with a band now, which I still can't believe because I'm still a rocker at heart, but I'm actually playing with the Jimmy Buffett tribute band Goat. Go figure that out.
- [52:21]
Eugene Shotsman
And pretty awesome, actually.
- [52:23]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, these guys play all over the place. We played in Colorado Springs last week. We're going to eastern Ohio. Coming up, we're playing at the Padres game here in San Diego. Play over. Over Southern California, it's called. If anybody wants to look, you can see a picture of me with a Hawaiian shirt on. It's called the Jimmy Buffet dot com. But we're all over the place. We're playing the Orange County Fair.
- [52:47]
Eugene Shotsman
I'll put a link in the show notes.
- [52:49]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Yeah, it's crazy. I never thought after playing, you know, smoke on a Water with the singer from Deep Purple, I'd wind up playing Margaritaville with a Jimmy Buffett tribute band.
- [53:01]
Eugene Shotsman
But you know what? That's the thing. And we talked a little bit about this before the show, and I still want to know the answer to this because I feel like any hobby I would get involved in, I would always be curious about the. I don't know the business of that hobby. I just can't turn it off. As a business guy, it's like I get. I get involved with little things all the time, and then I'm like, oh, like, I need to help optimize this. I need to help these guys run this better.
- [53:26]
Gary Gerber
Right?
- [53:26]
Eugene Shotsman
That kind of thing. So how do you turn that off?
- [53:29]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, it's. You caught me off guard with that question. It was, do I get involved with the business side of the band? And I. I can happily say no. I'm at the point now, maybe it's wisdom of being a little bit older. It's just go up there and do your thing and have fun and let the business be the business. And there's nine guys in this band, there's a, there's a lot of gear. We got to move around. There's a whole stage show that we do. Stuff got to get moved around from place to place. I mean, there's a lot of work, let alone managing nine personalities. They're all musicians who are all crazy. Everybody's got an opinion about everything. You can't think about this. You can't. You can't get two optometrists to agree where they should go for lunch. How are you going to get nine musicians to agree on the, you know, which song we should play next? Right. It's so, in a way, it's kind of nice that I'm not involved and I just kind of step back. Whatever happens, happens. A lot of stuff I would do differently, but it's okay. I'm having fun doing well.
- [54:35]
Eugene Shotsman
That's the thing, is that this is. And you're kind of in enjoyment mode and passion mode, right. Like, you don't go to a Mexican resort and like, try to think about how you would manage the resort or you start giving, get. Giving the pool boy management tips and to try to re. Optimize a schedule.
- [54:52]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, yeah, I, I would always, I mean, for years when I was in heavy consulting mode, I couldn't go out to dinner without like finding something wrong. Not with the food, because I'm not a foodie. I was terrible. I would know. But just like the system had. I ran it. They should have done this. They should. Or flip side, whether they do that really good. How can I steal that idea and bring it back to my doctors?
- [55:16]
Eugene Shotsman
That's me everywhere. And I, I can't turn it off anywhere at the, at this point.
- [55:20]
Gary Gerber
But it's, you know, it just brought up an example. I was, I was in Malaysia a long time ago and real long time ago, like 30ish years ago. And it was the first time. I remember after a meal, they came up at the table with like a, like a credit card thing and it actually had a wire connected to it because I guess it was pre WI Fi. And maybe Al Gore didn't invent the Internet yet. That was a long time ago. But you were paying for your meal at the table. And now everybody does that. They show up, they give you this, you know, they give you a little keypad. Put, put your tip in. I want to ask you a couple questions. I love that one. Yeah, put your card in this can. Ask some questions. What kind of questions? Who do I think should be the next president? What kind of questions are you going to ask me. So. And I. I remember seeing that and stressing over, wow, that was so cool. Like, that saved them a lot to save them a lot of time. And it was easier for the customer, in my opinion. How do I bring that in to my doctor's office?
- [56:32]
Eugene Shotsman
Because the guy's standing over you.
- [56:33]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, right there. Right. It's like, how do I. How do I bring that into that office and like, can I just enjoy it with something cool? No, I wasn't able to, but now I just. Yeah. Have. Having fun playing. I didn't notice Jimmy Buffett fans are called Parrot heads, which I didn't even know was. I thought Jimmy Buffett only had one song. Parrot heads. Like, you know, parrots. Yeah. And they parrot. Had fans. We. Gene, this is crazy. We haven't done a single show that hasn't sold out yet. We did an outdoor show in Palm Desert. Was over a thousand people there. They. It's just nuts. And they know the words to every song. They know like words, the B side songs. All I knew about Jimmy Buffett before this band was Margaritaville. I thought it was a one hit wonder. I had no idea this guy really song. The song's actually pretty cool. The words are really good. He's a really good lyricist. Having fun on the keyboard parts? I'm playing typical keyboards, piano, organ, but then I gotta play the strings and the horns and harmonica solos and some oohs and ahs and some percussion sounds. I'm having fun. It's cool. It's a fun little gig.
- [57:45]
Eugene Shotsman
And the thing is, I see the smile on your face and you're. You know, I think the reality is, like you said, it's the. It's the thing that you wanted to do the whole time and now you get to do it. And I think that the whole point of this show is helping people do that sooner in their life and also set their business up for success. To be able to really be able to enable the kinds of things that you want to do as passion projects. Not necessarily as passion projects, but as full time.
- [58:15]
Gary Gerber
Yeah, it's the same. If I knew then what I knew now it's. Yeah, it's. I mean, so now you guys are listening to the show, so now you know it. So you gotta. You gotta do it. And I mean, this is something like how now you think about it this way. How could you not want to do this? Because I don't think anybody says, I want to die with the phoropter in my hands. Like that would be a little odd. Right. There's other things in life. And I don't get me wrong, I didn't. I didn't not like practicing. It was great. I had a great career. I had a great, great practice, and it was fine. I just, it was other things I wanted to do. I just, I didn't have this mindset early, early on. If I did, I think I could have got to this point maybe 10 or 15 years sooner. I just wasn't thinking about it at the time. But with all this information we have now to push out to docs, the show and just to everything that does go on online that was not available back then, I mean, there's really no reason not. I mean, you can have it all. You can really have a great practice and you can have a great life.
- [59:15]
Eugene Shotsman
And I love the next step. Right. Is that find your passion, quantify it, and start working and start working backwards towards that quantified passion, involvement in your life.
- [59:26]
Gary Gerber
Yep. Yep. It's either practice your piano scales or practice your golf swing, whatever it's going to be.
- [59:32]
Eugene Shotsman
Whichever. And anything in between.
- [59:34]
Gary Gerber
Yep, exactly.
- [59:35]
Eugene Shotsman
All right, Gary, pleasure having you on the show as always. Great conversation. Thanks so much for being on the Power Hour.
- [59:41]
Gary Gerber
My pleasure. Thank you. Great to be here.