20/20 MONEY: The Business of Optometry

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Dr. Andy Yaryan, OD .   Andy and I have a great and wide-ranging conversation. Andy shares why his culture has been so important to his success and demonstrative ways in which he measures culture in his practice, why focusing on the two things every human wants can be instrumental in productive team members, a number of lessons he...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Mike Jorgenson with Carr Healthcare Realty . Mike joins me on the show to discuss all things real estate and optometric practices and we discuss many different aspects of real estate. We talk about evaluating the location of your practice, buying vs leasing, the timeline for buildouts, why it's a mistake to just call the number th...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Dr. Matt Mitchell, OD. Matt joins me back on the show to put a light-hearted spin on some of the traditional practice benchmarks that are used in the profession. He talks about benchmarks that he feels are a bit over-rated in their use and dependency and which complementary benchmark that could be used that is under-rated, but sti...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guests on today's show are Mike Kogelis & Dr. Julie Helmus, OD. Mike and Julie join me on the show to talk about the growth of each of their respective businesses—Mike as the co-owner with his wife Dr. Rasa Tamulavichus of Big City Optical , a 17 location practice in the greater Chicagoland area and Dr. Julie Helmus, the G2 owner of Helmus Optometry , a s...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Dr. Pete Kehoe, OD. This intro is packed with great info, so I hope you'll listen to the entirety of it before jumping forward to the conversation.   Pete and I share in a great conversation focused around one of the more important facets that impact a successful and cohesive practice: ensuring you have the right team members in t...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Dr. Matt Mitchell, OD. Matt joins me back on the show in response to a very thoughtful piece of feedback he sent me about his view on debt and money after listening to a number of episodes of the show. Matt's been a long-time listener of the show and has also been a guest a number of times. I really appreciated Matt sending the fe...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! On today's episode I share some insights and experience as to why there can be a disconnect between owner and associate when it comes to establishing a buy-in price on a practice in which the associate has been working. This misalignment of value happens all-too-often and I'm hoping that this conversation can give you insights as to what both parties are thi...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Dr. Mike Neal, OD. Mike owns both a private practice in rural PA and is also the founder of Build My Team , a platform intended on helping practice owners nationwide simplify and streamline the hiring process for non-OD team members. Mike joins me to talk about how he flipped hiring on its head for his practice and how he's built...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Kayla Ashlee. Kayla is the creator behind Spexy, an online training platform that's built to help independent ODs and their teams make the most out of their optical and empower them to embrace change in their practice. Kayla joins me back on the show to talk about the importance of tracking frame turnover in your optical and how i...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Jackson Pace. Jackson joins me on the show today to talk through his journey working for a growing and thriving practice as a CFO and the lessons he's observed along the way that he's helping apply to the work that he does with practice owners around the country. We talk about when he thinks a practice is ready for a full-time CFO...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! On this episode I talk about the importance of having a multi-year timeline when deciding to sell your business and why factoring your practice's perceived or actual potential into the valuation isn't a strategy that's going to actually show up in the value of your practice..   As a reminder, you can get all the information discussed in today's conversation...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Dr. Julie Helmus, OD. This is part 2 of my conversation with Julie and in this episode, we dive deeper into the deal structure of buyer her parent's practice, how it was funded, the current org chart of the practice, and some of the pieces of tech that they are using to manage a practice as large as theirs. Julie is also gracious...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Dr. Julie Helmus, OD. Julie joins me on the show to share her journey into practice ownership as the G2 owner of Helmus Optometry (IOW, buying her parent's practice). She shares the journey that she went through as a partial owner, navigating perceived nepotism in the practice during the acquisition process, her decision to keep i...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Dr. Chris Wolfe, OD. Chris joins me on the show to share in a conversation about how ODs can think about pricing the different services provided in the practice and how to frame that conversation with your patients, how ODs can think about researching their pricing on medical procedures, how to think about scheduling in your pract...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Matt Curts . Matt has a long and storied career. As a long-time CFO, he has a lot of experience working on businesses through the numbers. But, as Matt continued to lean into his passion and purpose, he realized that purpose and the pursuit of purpose is not limited to just a few but should be possible for everyone. He made the de...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Ali Oromchian . Ali joins me back on the show to talk about a not-too-common but very important part of any partnership: the terms and conditions of the buy/sell agreement that essentially is a part of every partnership. The extent to which the terms of the buy/sell are explicitly documented, however, can be wide-ranging.   In thi...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Nathan Hayes with IDOC. Nathan joins me back on the show to give another perspective around the question I asked Erich on last week's episode: how should a potential buyer/future owner look at lower-revenue private practices and whether it's better to buy a "fixer upper" vs cold starting their own practice. This was another spirit...

Welcome to another episode of 20/20 Money. My guest on today's show is Erich Mattai with Akrinos. My conversation with Erich is essentially one of two conversations that I had with two different guests (the second guest/conversation will be next week's episode), all focused around one question: what should someone do if they're considering buying (or selling) a low-revenue private practice. To put...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money. My guest on today's show is Dr. Ted McElroy, OD. Ted's become a good friend and collaborator over the years and there are few individuals that I've met that are more vocal and passionate about communicating the importance of developing leadership skills to private practice owners. In today's conversation, Ted and I go through an abridged version of the prese...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Dr. Mick Kling, OD ( Mick's Practice , info on Mick's Impact Leadership business ). Mick joins me on the show today to talk about the balance and "passing of the torch" from the seller to the buyer if the seller decides to stay in the practice and work post-sale and what that means for the culture of the practice. We talk about th...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Dr. Bethany Fishbein, host of the Power Hour podcast and CEO of The Power Practice . Bethany joins me on the show to talk about how making tiny improvements in your practice and lead to remarkable financial results in your practice. This is another conversation had through the filter of what James Clear talks about in his book Ato...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guest on today's show is Dr. Todd Cohan, OD ( email ; website ). Todd joins me back on the show to unpack the success that his practice had in 2022 and what made it his best year in practice—both in quality of work as well as profit margin.   We cover a lot of different areas in this conversation, including his continued expanding scope of care that he's...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! This was a very special episode of 20/20 Money, as it not only was live on location at IDOC Connection 2023 in Orlando with Nathan Hayes but also done in front of an audience with a Q&A session towards the end of the conversation.   Nathan and I talked about practice profits and household budgets and how to build personal wealth through the business of optom...

In this episode, we'll talk about how you can use information from last year's tax return to plan proactively for the coming year. This approach can help you save money on taxes and avoid common mistakes and, as an optometric practice owner, take more agency over your cash flow during the course of the year. As a reminder, you can get all the information discussed in today's conversation by visiti...

Welcome to this episode of 20/20 Money! My guests on today's show are Drs. Zac & Joelle Holland, OD. Zac and Joelle join me back on the show to celebrate something that I know many younger ODs aspire to achieve and a number of seasoned ODs have already achieved: the paying off of their student loans. What makes their story so unique, inspiring, and empowering is the amount of student loan debt the...