First Meeting

Swell and I recently went to Vision Expo West.

It was in Las Vegas.

We had two main goals in going to Vision Expo:
1) Finish our required continuing education for this year
2) Visit with family who met us in Vegas from their home in Canada.

A side benefit of our trip to Vegas was having the ability to talk to a representative from an optometric consulting firm about the services they offer to new start-up optometry practices.

Shortly after our return home I received a call from this firm and we set up a telephone meeting with one of the co-founders to go over, again, the services they offer and to answer any questions we had.

That meeting occurred yesterday.

It was scheduled for 10 am. At 10:03 am I was getting a little upset that they weren't more punctual.

At 10:05 am my phone indicates I had a new voicemail.

Apparently much like a watched pot and boiling water, a watched phone doesn't ring.

I quickly phoned them back and I spoke with the co-founder of the company for 35 minutes.

It was basically a sales pitch for what they do.

Swell and I have many concerns about going into business for ourselves. The primary concern is money. We don't live lavish lifestyles.

We have one car. It was a gift. (Well, we have two cars but one is back west slowly rusting away and it is a 1970).
We have basic cable (I suppose we could cancel that and save some money every month).
We don't buy a lot of clothes or things.
We just need money for our student loan payments and our household expenses.

And to travel.

We must have money to travel.

As I typed the above sentence I could hear hundreds of private practice optometrists scream out in unison that Swell and I don't deserve vacations, that we have no right to expect to travel. They expect us to scrape by for the good of the profession. To devote our lives, our every waking breath to the betterment of the profession.

I'll reiterate we need money to travel. If private practice can't afford us that we won't be private practitioners.

We're not asking for vacations in Hawaii, or ski trips to Switzerland. We need money to visit Swell's elderly grandparents and her mentally ill Aunt in the hell on earth known as Bucharest, Romania.

Once a year.

At least.

We also need money for me to be able to up and travel to conferences that I want to attend. Like the WCO in London next April.

These are necessities.

Anyway back to the phone call.

The catch phrase for this consulting firm is that being a private practice owner is like climbing a mountain. You can't climb a mountain without first starting down the trail. As you start down that trail the consulting firm will be there right by your side. Hand in hand.

So romantic.

Brought a tear to my eye.

I was told that private practice is the best way to maximize:
Income
Equity and
Freedom

Other modes of practice will allow you to maximize at most two of the three.

He asked what time line we were thinking of. It was the first time we've said this aloud to anyone else.

September 1.

Ideally on September 1, 2008 we will unlock the doors to our purchased practice and start seeing patients. If we are unable to find a practice worth purchasing in the very near future we will start down the path to a cold opening.

Which is far more scary but at the same time far more exciting.

To buy a practice is to buy a history. Having worked in many practices in my short career I'm not sure I want some of that history. How do you change policies and procedures without alienating the existing patient base? How do you take a refractive practice and build it into more without turning existing patient's off? In a perfect world a practice would be available that did things very similarly to the way we would want to do things.

Its not a perfect world.

Opening cold is fraught with problems. Most of them - in my non-business savvy mind - money problems.

Cash flow.

We can't sit around seeing a patient here and a patient there. We need to be able to grow the practice quickly. Ideally being able to take a part-time associate on in 2-3 years.

So we can practice less.

So the co-founder was happy that we were open to either purchasing or opening cold. From the tone in his voice I think he prefers opening cold. He was also happy that our time line is set. Furthermore he was happy that Swell and I have defined our roles in this adventure.

Me = the heavy. The hire/fire guy. The meet with leasing people, etc.
Swell = day to day operations. She is, after all, the one who will be working in the practice. I'll be working elsewhere to support it (especially if we open cold). She is excited about working with an optician (or by herself) to develop the optical. She's looking forward to decorating a practice. And most importantly she's looking forward to building relationships with the patients and treating their vision and eye care needs. (How is that for a Pacific University statement? Vision AND eye care. Two different things.)

Importantly we were told that in the first part of the program the consulting firm will be by our sides. As we meet with finance people. As we look at leases. They will help us analyze locations and cities. They will offer advice on all facets of the journey. As he said, "Anything you would do to get this practice bought or open we'll now do together."

This is important to us. I've always been of the mind that we should let professionals do what their good at while we do what we're good at. I'm not an MBA. I'm not a financial guy so I need all the input I can get.

It was a sales meeting.

And I was sold.

As I type this Swell is faxing our deposit in and we've taken our first steps down the path, toward the mountain called private practice.