April 12, 2023
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Dr. Andrew Peter: The rule of thumb for the destination is someplace we haven’t been before. someplace that you probably wouldn’t go on your own and someplace that’s marginally uncomfortable, whether that’s language, destination, different religion, something to just bring you outside of your comfort zone.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I am Bethany Fishbein. I’m the CEO of The Power Practice and host of The Power Hour Optometry Podcast. Today I am here with the team of Homer Eye Care located in Homer, Alaska, to talk about some unique things that their practice does to maintain an amazing culture. Make sure that everybody is always on board with the plan. So, team, thank you so much for being here. I’m excited.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Cool. Happy to be here.
Anna: Thank you.
Frank: Thanks for having us.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So we’ve got Dr. Andrew Peter, who is the Owner and Founder of Homer Eye Care. You started the practice or did you purchase it from someone else?
Dr. Andrew Peter: I bought it about a decade or so ago. So it was started in 1980ish, I think. And then I bought it in 2012. And it’s been an evolution since that time.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Cool, So introduce your team, so we know who else we have on the call.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Yeah, so I have got a team of 10 or 12 right now but we got four on the call today. So we got Frankie mermaid here. He’s kind of our Lead Optician. And Meagan the southerner who’s currently located in South Carolina. And Linnaea, she’s been with me kind of from the bitter beginning. So that’s been kind of fun to have her long. She’s a local here, raised just up the road. And Miss Anna, who has been with us couple years now. And yeah, I guess you guys can fill in maybe a little bit more what y’all do?
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, let’s start with Frank. Frankie mermaid is that when you go buy that new for today?
Frank: That’s a whole long story that we got. We don’t have time for that today. As far as what I do, I am an Optician. I’ve been an optician for going on six years now. Definitely specializing in repairs for sure. But just overall enjoy helping patients any way that I can.
Dr. Andrew Peter: But also a master video editor and the monday.com creator
Frank: I wouldn’t say master but I appreciate it.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Any any other random thing you might come up with. You’re like where’s Frank?
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: That’s awesome! How about you Linnaea.
Linnaea: I am a Paraoptometric Technician. been doing this for 10 and a half years now. Dr. Peter trained me from the beginning. But yeah, the interesting journey because I of course was born and raised here. So I get to see family and friends almost every day and kind of a honor to be able to help them with their eye care needs, but also just to get to hang out with them during exams. So it’s pretty cool. And of course, cool to hang out with our team. We have a really cool thing going and it’s been really cool to see it evolve over the years.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: That’s awesome. So the area that you’re in, is it like rural part of Alaska? I don’t know Alaska geography at all. So maybe it all feels rural to me but is it like a small town.
Frank: it’s on the road system so that’s pretty good.
Dr. Andrew Peter: One road in one road out which
Frank: you can drive there.
Dr. Andrew Peter: There’s a lot of folks don’t have that.
Frank: Pretty urban for Alaska.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Are there other doctors in town or what’s the like, what’s the population like?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Yeah,Homer is what 5000 people in town, but I think hospital serving area they say is 10 to 12,000. But because we’re so far away from things I mean, we’re four and a half hours from Anchorage by car in the next nearest town of any size is almost a two-hour drive away. But as far as healthcare there’s what another ophthalmology practice in town in us in a total of four or five eye care professionals in the community. Not everybody’s working full time but we’re here it’s a unique cultural setting. And just based on our location, we have the opportunity to maybe do things a little different.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Let me finish introductions before I get rolling with questions because I have a bunch of them. But, Anna.
Anna: Yeah, I’ve been here a couple of years. I am the Personnel Manager so that means I do a variety of different things, from patient interactions to just keep it upbeat on the team and making all the training systems onboarding.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Awesome. And how about you Megan?
Meagan: Yes, so I have been with the team on and off for four years. I am completely on now, obviously, but I am the Communications Director. So I have my hands and pretty much every type of communication that comes in and out of our office. Since I am remote. I don’t get to have patient interaction but I do still make that connection on the phone with them. And by what I post for our marketing, and all of that.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Awesome. So really what drove this conversation is I had gotten introduced to your practice through another group that were a part of and Andrew always had something that was kind of intriguing to me one day it was that I think you’re skiing to work or cross country skiing your kids to school. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And then I came on to a call late one day and you were talking about a trip that you were planning, I think to Grenada, that sounds familiar.
Dr. Andrew Peter: That must have been a couple years ago or one year ago. Yeah. Granada, Spain. Yes. We’ve been somewhere since then. But we’re getting better at it. So we left Grenada, that would have been what November of 2021? Yes, onboard. Right. Right.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Yeah. So you were talking about this trip and I got into our call late amng though that you were talking about your family or something. And then as I listened to you, I realized that you were talking about going with your entire team to have a staff retreat or a staff meeting in Spain, which is a little bit of a hike from Alaska not drivable. It just really struck me as very different and exciting. So talk a little bit about the idea behind this kind of team meeting.
Dr. Andrew Peter: What’s been a number of years ago now. So the actual start of it is a bit fuzzy in my mind, but I think it was just kind of an idea to reward the team for all of their efforts. And the fact that I myself enjoy travel and different cultural interactions, and the fact that I’m from the Midwest and cheap so I can find some good flights to South America for the first time. So we went to Park Tahina, Columbia the first time and the economics of it. I remember using some miles and we got an Airbnb and I think it was like, a very reasonable trip. I don’t think we spent more than like, I don’t know. 35000 bucks for the entire week for the entire team. And that was great.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: For how many people?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Was that eight I think.
Frank: I think the team was Yeah, seven or eight around that time.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Yeah, I think so. and sticking with a housekeeper and a cook. So we were living large down in Colombia. And the first trip was good, because we didn’t have anything to live up to. Everybody had fun. And we definitely learned a lot. But we learned a lot, not only the things that we wanted to do again, but the things that we didn’t want to do.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein:So, I mean, Linnaea, you said you were there from the beginning. You were there with a doctor?
Linnaea: So not necessarily with the previous doctor. I came on right around the time when Dr. Peter bought the practice, maybe a year after, but I didn’t get to work with the previous doctor like one day. Yeah, basically from the beginning with Dr. Peter at least.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Gotcha. So I mean, you’re there. You’re on this team and he says, Okay, we’re gonna go have this meeting in Colombia. What’s the what’s the reaction? Okay?
Linnaea: So I’ve traveled on my own a little bit before, nothing quite like this. Unfortunately, Colombia has a representation of bad media. And Dr. Peter had been there several times before he took us so he was talking it up to us and definitely making it sound better and better, but because of the representation that has been provided to this particular country, I didn’t want to make my mom nervous. So I actually didn’t even tell her that I left until I got back but on the plus side, it was it was incredible. And that trip definitely paved the way to open the app to any potential location. So it’s been a real eye-opener.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: That first one you take everybody or is it certain people how’d you decide who got to them?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Yeah, we took everybody. We’ve kind of molded around whether or not we should prioritize senior team members or folks that had been there X amount of time. But we just figured if we wanted to get people on the bus and doing the right things all the time, we just went for it. Because if you look at the return on investment of you know, a good team, in your business, a small investment upfront is just cents on the dollar of your return on investment. So to not do it is a bit of a foolish maneuver, in my opinion. Granted, I mean, we were still working through understanding our cultural goals. So some of the folks and that first team didn’t fit the ideal situation that we were looking for. So of course, you’re going to lose some of those team members to attrition, as we sometimes say, you have to free up their future. But that’s a far better way to go as opposed to having people stick around and have them not be trained. That’s far worse off. So that’s kind of been the rule of thumb that everybody gets to go. It’s been altered a bit, but for the most part, it’s a team-wide thing.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So you’ve got everybody there. You’re staying in a house together or an Airbnb together for, is it a week?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Typically. So we go for two weeks, I give the option to go for two weeks. I highly encourage that because I’m going to buy the flight there and back. So our meetings typically are five days and they’re pretty full on. And then at the conclusion of the meeting, I’ve given everyone else another week, of which I just kind of like brush my hands and I say good luck in some of these folks, depending on where we are in the world. That’s a bit of an uncomfortable scenario. So whether you’re in urban Columbia, or I mean, most recently, we’re in the middle of Kenya, folks have to figure out where they’re going next and how they’re going to do it. And that’s beyond my influence. And I do that on purpose, because that’s a personal growth bit.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: For those five days? What are you talking about when you’re there? Because sometimes we’ll hear people talking about meetings and they’re dreading the hour a week or they’ve canceled that because they said this time isn’t worth it to the practice. So what’s your thought process? Or how are you going into those five days to make it impactful and get the effect that you want?
Dr. Andrew Peter: So maybe Anna and Meghan are best to answer this because they were part of the most recent meeting.
Meagan: I was gonna jump in and answer that. So it’s not what you would think you think, Oh, you’re going to this meeting. We’re gonna talk about clinic stuff all day long for five days, but it’s so much more than that. And it’s a lot of personal growth, personal development going on. During these days where our mind is literally mush by the end of the day with how dig we’re deeping to think bigger than what we are and it just takes us some time to tap into that different mindset to make ourselves grow to let the conversations flow. So it’s not just how are we going to fix the clinic? It’s how are we going to better ourselves and what are we going to do with that moving forward?
Anna: Yeah, I think that was my biggest surprise when our first meeting because I haven’t been there very long. When I went to my first one is we spent very little time talking about what we were going to be doing when we got back. We spent some time on how we were going to do what we do when we go back. But most of the time we spent was on the why we do what we do, personally professionally all across the board and how to just use that to fuel every day.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So when you’re talking about growth, is it like personal growth within the business? Are you thinking about what you want the practice to do? Or is it really thinking about what individuals want to do like give me more of a sense of what the not goal is but kind of what the gist of the conversation?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Let’s say it depends on the trip. I’d say that trips that had been much more clinic and business focus, there have been trips that are almost entirely personal growth, focus, and then there have been some that have been healthy mix of both, just depends on where we think that time is most validly spent.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And you do them once a year or less frequently than that.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Historically. It’s been once a year.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Is it always the same week? So you just know in January, that’s part of what happens that month.
Dr. Andrew Peter: It was originally in February, but we did adjust that to late October, early November. So it’s not always exactly on the same dates or weeks. But it’s we know the ballpark of where it’s going to land. You’re trying to make most of the weather because fall in Alaska is amazing through October. And winter starts to get pretty good in December. But that month in November’s less than ideal, so if we could escape for a bit, we try to shoot for November to go somewhere.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: You said Grenada we got Colombia, Kenya, where else have you been?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Morocco and then we’re supposed to be in Shanghai but that whole COVID thing kind of run our belt. That was interesting because it was coming out of China. I was almost ready to pull the trigger to go to China anyway. But then I was just imagining like the news story and NPR. You know, a group of 12 healthcare professionals in rural Alaska, bring back COVID-19 And like this is going to be shit for advertising so we best not do that. So as it turns out, that was probably a good call. But we’ll see where we go next. But kind of the rule of thumb for the destination is someplace we haven’t been before. someplace that you probably wouldn’t go on your own and someplace that’s marginally uncomfortable, whether that’s language, destination, different religion, something to just bring you outside of your comfort zone because like going to Hawaii would be a complete red flag ain’t going to happen, not for us. The goal is that we want to be better people, more knowledge, better understanding. So not only for the day in day out in the business, but also in our personal lives and in your community as well because as we know, he just picked up the newspaper and there’s all sorts of nastiness and misguided information out there. So better thing to just go and see it for yourself.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And Andrew, do you have the personal philosophy and some thoughts on the importance of being uncomfortable? Well, you just share a little bit more of why that’s important to you and should be important to everybody.
Dr. Andrew Peter: I don’t want to impose my views on other folks, but you know, type two fun of kind of pushing your boundaries, I think is just a necessity for growth. Humans are really capable of incredible things that we might not think that we are. You just have to put yourself between a rock and a hard spot, and then you’ll figure it out at that point. So for me whether it’s traveling in an uncomfortable destination or being on the side of a mountain or fill in the blank, those are just growth opportunities. So it’s all good.
Frank: I could see you writing a book and you’re titled “The Importance of Being Uncomfortable”.
Linnaea: Totally
Dr. Andrew Peter: fail fast.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So you pick the location, just based on those criteria you find somewhere you can get a reasonable flight. This is where we’re going and who figures out the agenda, what you’re going to talk about what you want to accomplish.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Well, I would say we reference what we’ve done in the past. And then we’ve got an idea of what the flavor of conversation within our weekly team meetings has been prior to the trip. But one of the things that I’ve learned and I would say that the team has learned if we try to create a rigorous schedule, Number one, don’t try to do too much. Because you simply can’t do it all and you’re gonna get overwhelmed. And number two, don’t make it so strict that you can’t allow a fair bit of zigging and zagging like you have to allow the conversation to be quite organic and follow that thread. You really don’t know where it’s gonna go, you know? A couple of my team members, they lead some conversations that I would happily tell you about except that wasn’t there. That’s another conversation. And a lot of times if I’m leading part of the conversation, like my team will look around and be like, well, where the hell your notes and I don’t have any notes like there’s no PowerPoint. PowerPoints are boring. Nobody in the right mind wants to watch a PowerPoint. So it’s just you’re catalyzing a discussion and getting people to think that’s the key bit. Think it sounds simple. It’s not
Linnaea: A common thing on that one is we get into these discussions and we try and light a fire under each of our butts. And it takes a while for us to get going. So giving ourselves time that to kind of wrap our heads around the conversation and the topic is very, very important for how we end up at the end of the day.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, I think that that idea of moderating a conversation and kind of inspiring a conversation and then letting ideas flow from the synergy of the people in the room is really valuable because one of the reasons people stop meeting sometimes it’s a lot of work to prepare for them. If you are coming up with bullet points on a PowerPoint, and here’s what I’m going to need to tell people for 30 minutes or 60 minutes. I can’t imagine doing that for five days. But here’s something that’s on my mind that I’d like to openly discuss with a group. Sometimes that’s all you need. And then that can lead to a half day or days conversation and it builds from there. So what are some of the big personal or professional epiphanies or big moments that have come out of these meetings are things that you remember, of? You know, this made a difference to me, at work or in life.
Anna: One of my big ones is from our latest meeting in Kenya. And it was from a communications discussion and discussion went well, it was open-ended. We seem to get a decent amount out of it, whatever. But the conversations that sprung out of afterwards between individual team members about how they communicate and what they hear when they communicate this to him or what they just need out of a relationship professionally, has really really continues to impact our day-to-day here and has just changed our relationship and how we interact that our team was good before but it just had that level of that one of things. Hey, we can talk about this all we want. But this is opening the discussion. It’s about that individual personal and personalized growth that comes afterwards.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Cool. Thank you! Who else has one
Linnaea: back at, just as getting started so we did not fully wrap our heads around this when it was introduced to us by Dr. Peter. But the idea of a great game business. We were introduced to that back in Colombia, and we definitely didn’t have it when we got back.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Linnaea, was this before after your fireball incident. I forget that was the impediment there or not.
Linnaea: Oh no.
Frank: that was a wild turkey right.
Linnaea: wild turkey, That’s kind of an after luckily.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Hopefully not right after
Dr. Andrew Peter: Well.
Linnaea: I probably won’t get into that. Yeah, so Dr. Peter, he introduced the great game of business to us and how that whole idea of monitoring our books works and how the entire team can be involved in that making decisions that affect how the clinic runs and operates and how team members are reimbursed. It’s just the coolest thing because we’re all highly involved in what our clinic does, and the decisions that we make instead of just one person at the top or what have you. So that one was introduced. But again, we didn’t really get the hang of that for a few years, I would say but now we have a thursday morning meeting and we discuss GGOB every single morning and it’s insane our predictions they’re so so close to what we actually get through the course of the month and for the course of the year. It’s highly rewarding. So it’s been really cool to see that and then also to utilize that same idea in home life and how we track our home expenses. So it’s been incredibly rewarding.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Cool. One more, I would love to hear Frank or Megan, something else.
Frank: As far as you know, biggest takeaways are moments. I mean, yeah, there’s definitely moments where you’re in the meeting and it’s been hours. Sometimes it can feel like we’re all just kind of pounding our head against the wall until we just break through and actually get somewhere real in the conversation and those are all those are all good, but I think that things that have stuck with me over the course of these trips has been the importance of travel the importance of getting out of your comfort zone and exposing yourself to places and people that 99% of America will never do. I think it’s crucial and I think that it also highlights the like we were talking about before where we you, you get to kind of have that freeform conversation with a group of people that can last, you know, half of the day like when do you ever get to do that? When do we ever have the opportunity to do that in our day to day lives? It just doesn’t happen. But it’s something that’s incredibly rewarding and deep, whatever that means. It’s just something that you like I said, you just can’t do anywhere else.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And your role with bringing on new personnel is it’s something that you’re talking about when you’re hiring.
Anna: I do most of the hiring at this point. So I would say it’s something that I bring up when it becomes relevant. It’s not something that I try to use. Like I mentioned it a little bit but it’s not something I try to use as like a hook or a bait, but it is really a criteria that I look at new hires with is, Is this someone that I want to spend two weeks in Kenya with not a personality thing that like a prove that you’re fun to be around sort of thing, but if I would worry about spending two weeks with the whole team or how you’d affect the whole team traveling or being on an airplane with you for 12 hours, then that’s like a crucible of how a 40 hour work week goes. It’s the same kind of stresses. It’s the same kind of communication issues. It’s a very different box, but the same kind of things come up just way more intensely. So it is something that I filter that through and it’s a factor for sure.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: What’s like a red flag somebody could throw up in that initial interview that makes you say, Nope, this is not going to be somebody that I want on this trip or in this whole trip of running a business together.
Anna: One of our trips we did look at key characteristics of team members so things that are common across all of our team members and things that we’re looking for in future ones and they are genuine authenticity and collaborative communication, and relentless pursuit of growth are those three, I would say. A collaborative communication is obviously huge. We need somebody who can talk and communicate well between the team and patients. Absolutely crucial real, genuine authenticity. We want people who are real and themselves. That’s a big deal. I would say the biggest one that I look for the top one would be that relentless pursuit of growth. Because that is an open minded mindset. That’s how you view the world. That’s how you feed yourself. And that’s how you view other people. And I think that for me, is one of the biggest indicators that I look for. I mean, that makes traveling together easy that makes, if you are trying to constantly grow, you have to have a sense of humor about things. You have to take things kind of as they come and be open to failure, because that’s part of growing. Just kind of encompasses all those big things that come with big trips and the 40-hour day-to-day work week.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So what are you asking in an interview to get a feel for if somebody really has that? Or if they’re just saying the right things for purposes of getting the job?
Anna: That is a great question. It’s something that I’ve been working through. I’ve tried it a couple of different iterations. I was, you know, I know that the interviewing process for Homer Eye Care has evolved over the years. It’s kind of a work in progress. Part of its feeding off of people and just being open to who they are. And getting to know them, and not having a strict structure for how the conversation goes. It’s something I’m working on. It’s been really, really responsive to people and where the conversation goes. Part of it’s just intuition and getting to know people and see them. And one of my favorite questions is definitely tell me a story that says a lot about you. And how they answer that question, or if they have an answer is really, really telling and that’s not the most entertaining story. One of the people that I hired Sarah, my favorite answer so far has been she said, “I don’t know what’s yours?” And that was that told me a ton about her. That is 100% been true of who she is. Like, no, I need time. I have my resources. I’m going to put the spotlight back on you. Well, I figured this out. Excellent. I love that. Cool.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Interesting. So has it happened that you have somebody that you hire and the next trip comes up and for whatever reason they they don’t want to go? I remember we had a staff member years ago and we were going somewhere like not nearly exotic. It might have been like Vision Expo or Atlanta for Seco or something. And she hadn’t been on a plane she was terrified to fly or does that just go to get comfortable being uncomfortable and suck it up and take your Xanax we’re going.
Dr. Andrew Peter: typically we just shipped him out like a month early on a boat.
Linnaea: I think we’ve had a few of our employees that were maybe a little less than comfortable, but there’s always the question from Dr. Peter “Do you have a passport?” And that kind of drives that conversation and otherwise we’ve never really ran into a situation where someone wasn’t willing to come along with us.
Dr. Andrew Peter: But sometimes people need to be coerced into doing things they don’t want to do. And that applies to go into a different destination, that applies to taking on a project that applies to speaking publicly to your team or to a nonprofit somewhere. You know, people need to suck it up. And they need to learn for themselves that they really have a skill set. That they didn’t know that they have. If you give them the choice, or commonly say no, but I don’t give them the choice. You got to play this game. And my mindset has shifted so much where I’m looking ahead of how I make people better for themselves and in their relationships and their family and their community. And it’s almost in my mind a foregone conclusion that oh, yeah, it’ll apply to business that at that point, but for me, that’s not the focus. That’s a secondary benefit. So we’re trying to train people, we’re trying to make better people better teams, the secondary benefit to the patients and customers will happen.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I mean, people have reasons like stuff going on in their lives. Maybe they’re caretaking for a young child or for an aging parent is it possible to miss a trip or you figure it out?
Meagan: I can talk on this because I did miss a trip when it was during the government shutdown my husband’s military obviously, and it just financially was not feasible for us at that time. So I ended up not being able to go.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And missing that. How did you get the information that happened? Or could you still be part of things without necessarily being there? Obviously you’re you’re missing some of the cultural exposure, like fun stuff, but as far as the meeting content?
Meagan: So it is evolved since then, and we do have recordings and stuff now. But during that time, we did not record I’m not sure if there were many notes taking during that time. All I got when I got back was hey, this is what’s new. That we’re doing. So I didn’t get to experience everything that they did those deeper conversations of how they figured out things. I didn’t get to experience that and when they come back and I wasn’t going with them. There was a different fire that they came back with like they’re ready and we all get like that. And it does fizzle out, obviously, but when I saw that in them, I knew that there was no way that I could miss another one because you want to be a part of that. You want to feel that and you want to come back home and you want to make changes and every aspect of your life.
Dr. Andrew Peter: In the journey is the destination to come back with just the bullet points of oh yeah, this is the conclusion. And then you say okay, this is what we’re going to do. The buy-in, that you’re going to get is going to be you know, a very low percent. I mean, it’s the same baloney. A doctor goes to a CE or a wisdom-sharing group and they come back with these grand ideas in he or she just starts spitting out we’re gonna do this, this and this. And if the team wasn’t part of the process, they’re like, Ah, Jesus, just another meeting and we got to deal with all this noise. Coming. Good luck getting traction with that. So you really have to walk the journey together.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: When somebody starts. Do they get included right away?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Absolutely.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I remember you telling us sorry. I can’t remember who it was on your team. But you were telling me that it was somebody’s like first day. They started with a trip.Almost.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Yeah, my poor associate day one of work. He was on a plane to Grenada. It was kind of humorous because it takes you know, two days to get there. And we need not to go into the details but we eventually get to Granada out after traveling across the world. And we show up to this Airbnb And everyone’s tired and everyone’s hungry and Frank’s like, where’s the red wine? They’ve got this cook cooking this plate to paella outside. It’s like a four-foot diameter plate to paella and God smelled amazing. It was good. It wasn’t awesome. But the great thing is that associate day number now two, we get dish dip our food and my poor associate. It was a rabbit paella, so he’s got this rabbit head in his paella. And he’s like, What the hell is this thing and as it turns out, it was rabbit so that was day two, and he was well indoctrinated into both the travel and then the remainder of the week was was pretty amazing meetings, both just based on the team and the food, the music, the red wine, all the above was pretty ideal.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And you share that you do great game. So talk to us a little bit about the financials of it now with a larger team with destinations you’re talking about potentially not having Doc’s and staff. Do you close the office for two weeks, like talk about the money side of it.
Dr. Andrew Peter: So yeah, we do a great game. Our scoreboard is cloud-based, so anybody within the team can sign on and look at it, and edit it at any time from anywhere. I know that a lot of folks are diehard like right on the board, but we’ve we’ve gone cloud-based, of course the trip itself, you are going to incur expenses for your flights, hotels, etc. The big quote unquote expense certainly would be the decrease in revenue because we do close the office. So we can look at the numbers and two weeks. It just goes away. But it’s an efficiency thing too. We have to ask yourself, based on the conversations and the solutions we come up with, can we make 50 weeks out of the year, produce what we would have in 52. And I will take that bet seven days out of seven, because without that investment, those 52 weeks would be significantly less efficient. I promise you because I’ve been there. So the investment both of money and time for us has been certainly a net positive. Not to mention, I mean, it’s fun. This past year as anyone who does great game, you get to the end of that fourth quarter and you’re looking at where your level of bonuses and people are scratching their heads and we’re trying to make it all happen and as it turns out, we dropped a couple levels in this last quarter. So I showed the team to be like, Well, if we would have stayed here and we would have seen patients and we didn’t have these expenses, you know, our productivity for those two weeks would have been this and potentially your bonus would have been this. Do you want to go on trips again? And people like heck yeah! There was no discussion for people like him and or her around it. I mean, really, who would rather work versus like cruise around in a land cruiser looking at elephants. Like honestly, who the hell would work like no way? Not me. I think that’s kind of the opinion of the rest of the team, but it’s all about efficiency.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And that second week, do people tend to hang out together or do people go do their own thing? What’s been the trend? for week two? When it’s okay now here you are in Kenya.
Anna: a little bit of everything, some of us tend to hang out with each other for at least part of it. Some of us branch off and do their own thing. It depends on the location. It depends on kind of what around there is to do and where you want to go with it. I’ve had a travel partner for the last two years that I stick with. We traveled super well together and it’s really really changed our in office relationship in such a great way. And yeah, we’ve hung out with like, there was eight of us, I think in Kenya that went to do a couple of things and then we split off from there. Just kind of depends on what you want to do.
Linnaea: And I’ve been lucky enough to have my significant other along with me. So he’s basically joined me on the second week and sometimes even during the first week he listens in on our meetings and sometimes has a bit to contribute he, of course hangs out with me. But on all of our trips we’ve ended up pairing up with either a single person from the crew or a group of people I know back in Morocco. I hung out with Andrew and his wife Heidi and their daughter and one of our old patient coordinators. That was a blast. So much fun. Yeah, traveling with Andrew is like nothing else. But yeah, we just got to switch it up and have a good time.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Do people bring significant others and families is that part of what happens?
Linnaea: I think it’s a definite option, especially for that second week. There’s always the conversation for the first week on whether or not to have significant others along for the meeting side of things. And that one’s always up to Dr. Peter and whether or not he’s okay with that. But second week, absolutely. So we’ve had breaks significant other couples along with us. She went to Morocco as well. So definitely pretty cool.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: That’s awesome. So what would your general advice be to somebody out there listening to this saying there’s absolutely no way I could or would ever want to or choose to or be able to do this with my team? What do you wish that they knew?
Dr. Andrew Peter: A. You can do it if you want to. B the economics certainly play out in your favor. If you’re providing your team the tools to be more independent, better communicators, better listeners, better leaders. What we do in a professional setting is a lovely thing. You know, we change people’s lives. It’s great. But I think my personal feeling in this industry, we become don’t take this wrong to patient-focused and not enough team-focused. So if we ask yourself like what are we trying to do, are you first and foremost serving your patients? Are you first and foremost serving your team? And for me, it’s the latter. So if I can serve my team in some capacity, it’s my team that’s going to serve the community and the patients and the customers. So, as far as advice do it, how you do it, it’s totally up to you. But do it. Invest in your team. Don’t try to do too much. Allow the conversations to be organic, and follow the rabbit holes because there will be many. I don’t know if other organizations would have a similar path to us. But the first couple of meetings were good but not great. They were hard. We learned lots of things, but it’s part of the process. We wouldn’t be where we are now. Without the process. That’s life. Just how it is.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: The advice to follow the rabbit holes I think is is really valuable. There’s so many things that in a day-to-day conversation or a day-to-day meeting that you don’t have time to get into and get out of. So either you don’t go in or you’re in you unravel something and don’t have time to resolve it. Like as you’re saying this. There’s things that I’m imagining that I think if I could like spend a day or two days or some time with a little break in the middle talking about this topic, here’s what we’d be able to do. I think that that’s really something to think about for sure.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Yeah, I mean, I know that we’ve taken either like a single question and answer or like a specific scenario, and we’ve used like three hours on it. And no one would say that that’s preposterous, but one of the things that we talked about quite regularly it’s it’s not you know what you say? It’s how you say it, and getting into the details in all things listening and communication, and sharing empathy and giving people a plan and changing their life. I mean, when you get granular it’s pretty interesting, the magic that can happen.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Awesome. I thank you so much for doing this and sharing your stories and talking about the thing that really is quite unique to your office but from everything you’re saying shouldn’t necessarily be I think there are lots of ways to emulate it not necessarily doing exactly what you’re doing, but I hope that it’s versa thought process for a lot of people listening out there that it is for me. So thank you guys so much for your time today. I know I’m gonna get the question. Are you hiring?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Come on up, we’re not hard to find truly. We’re at the end of the road in North America. So if you keep going west, that’s where we’re located.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Awesome. Thank you guys so much.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Thank you. Bethany.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: For more information on Power Practice. Find us online at powerpractice.com
Read the Transcription
Dr. Andrew Peter: The rule of thumb for the destination is someplace we haven’t been before. someplace that you probably wouldn’t go on your own and someplace that’s marginally uncomfortable, whether that’s language, destination, different religion, something to just bring you outside of your comfort zone.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I am Bethany Fishbein. I’m the CEO of The Power Practice and host of The Power Hour Optometry Podcast. Today I am here with the team of Homer Eye Care located in Homer, Alaska, to talk about some unique things that their practice does to maintain an amazing culture. Make sure that everybody is always on board with the plan. So, team, thank you so much for being here. I’m excited.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Cool. Happy to be here.
Anna: Thank you.
Frank: Thanks for having us.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So we’ve got Dr. Andrew Peter, who is the Owner and Founder of Homer Eye Care. You started the practice or did you purchase it from someone else?
Dr. Andrew Peter: I bought it about a decade or so ago. So it was started in 1980ish, I think. And then I bought it in 2012. And it’s been an evolution since that time.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Cool, So introduce your team, so we know who else we have on the call.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Yeah, so I have got a team of 10 or 12 right now but we got four on the call today. So we got Frankie mermaid here. He’s kind of our Lead Optician. And Meagan the southerner who’s currently located in South Carolina. And Linnaea, she’s been with me kind of from the bitter beginning. So that’s been kind of fun to have her long. She’s a local here, raised just up the road. And Miss Anna, who has been with us couple years now. And yeah, I guess you guys can fill in maybe a little bit more what y’all do?
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, let’s start with Frank. Frankie mermaid is that when you go buy that new for today?
Frank: That’s a whole long story that we got. We don’t have time for that today. As far as what I do, I am an Optician. I’ve been an optician for going on six years now. Definitely specializing in repairs for sure. But just overall enjoy helping patients any way that I can.
Dr. Andrew Peter: But also a master video editor and the monday.com creator
Frank: I wouldn’t say master but I appreciate it.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Any any other random thing you might come up with. You’re like where’s Frank?
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: That’s awesome! How about you Linnaea.
Linnaea: I am a Paraoptometric Technician. been doing this for 10 and a half years now. Dr. Peter trained me from the beginning. But yeah, the interesting journey because I of course was born and raised here. So I get to see family and friends almost every day and kind of a honor to be able to help them with their eye care needs, but also just to get to hang out with them during exams. So it’s pretty cool. And of course, cool to hang out with our team. We have a really cool thing going and it’s been really cool to see it evolve over the years.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: That’s awesome. So the area that you’re in, is it like rural part of Alaska? I don’t know Alaska geography at all. So maybe it all feels rural to me but is it like a small town.
Frank: it’s on the road system so that’s pretty good.
Dr. Andrew Peter: One road in one road out which
Frank: you can drive there.
Dr. Andrew Peter: There’s a lot of folks don’t have that.
Frank: Pretty urban for Alaska.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Are there other doctors in town or what’s the like, what’s the population like?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Yeah,Homer is what 5000 people in town, but I think hospital serving area they say is 10 to 12,000. But because we’re so far away from things I mean, we’re four and a half hours from Anchorage by car in the next nearest town of any size is almost a two-hour drive away. But as far as healthcare there’s what another ophthalmology practice in town in us in a total of four or five eye care professionals in the community. Not everybody’s working full time but we’re here it’s a unique cultural setting. And just based on our location, we have the opportunity to maybe do things a little different.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Let me finish introductions before I get rolling with questions because I have a bunch of them. But, Anna.
Anna: Yeah, I’ve been here a couple of years. I am the Personnel Manager so that means I do a variety of different things, from patient interactions to just keep it upbeat on the team and making all the training systems onboarding.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Awesome. And how about you Megan?
Meagan: Yes, so I have been with the team on and off for four years. I am completely on now, obviously, but I am the Communications Director. So I have my hands and pretty much every type of communication that comes in and out of our office. Since I am remote. I don’t get to have patient interaction but I do still make that connection on the phone with them. And by what I post for our marketing, and all of that.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Awesome. So really what drove this conversation is I had gotten introduced to your practice through another group that were a part of and Andrew always had something that was kind of intriguing to me one day it was that I think you’re skiing to work or cross country skiing your kids to school. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And then I came on to a call late one day and you were talking about a trip that you were planning, I think to Grenada, that sounds familiar.
Dr. Andrew Peter: That must have been a couple years ago or one year ago. Yeah. Granada, Spain. Yes. We’ve been somewhere since then. But we’re getting better at it. So we left Grenada, that would have been what November of 2021? Yes, onboard. Right. Right.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Yeah. So you were talking about this trip and I got into our call late amng though that you were talking about your family or something. And then as I listened to you, I realized that you were talking about going with your entire team to have a staff retreat or a staff meeting in Spain, which is a little bit of a hike from Alaska not drivable. It just really struck me as very different and exciting. So talk a little bit about the idea behind this kind of team meeting.
Dr. Andrew Peter: What’s been a number of years ago now. So the actual start of it is a bit fuzzy in my mind, but I think it was just kind of an idea to reward the team for all of their efforts. And the fact that I myself enjoy travel and different cultural interactions, and the fact that I’m from the Midwest and cheap so I can find some good flights to South America for the first time. So we went to Park Tahina, Columbia the first time and the economics of it. I remember using some miles and we got an Airbnb and I think it was like, a very reasonable trip. I don’t think we spent more than like, I don’t know. 35000 bucks for the entire week for the entire team. And that was great.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: For how many people?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Was that eight I think.
Frank: I think the team was Yeah, seven or eight around that time.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Yeah, I think so. and sticking with a housekeeper and a cook. So we were living large down in Colombia. And the first trip was good, because we didn’t have anything to live up to. Everybody had fun. And we definitely learned a lot. But we learned a lot, not only the things that we wanted to do again, but the things that we didn’t want to do.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein:So, I mean, Linnaea, you said you were there from the beginning. You were there with a doctor?
Linnaea: So not necessarily with the previous doctor. I came on right around the time when Dr. Peter bought the practice, maybe a year after, but I didn’t get to work with the previous doctor like one day. Yeah, basically from the beginning with Dr. Peter at least.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Gotcha. So I mean, you’re there. You’re on this team and he says, Okay, we’re gonna go have this meeting in Colombia. What’s the what’s the reaction? Okay?
Linnaea: So I’ve traveled on my own a little bit before, nothing quite like this. Unfortunately, Colombia has a representation of bad media. And Dr. Peter had been there several times before he took us so he was talking it up to us and definitely making it sound better and better, but because of the representation that has been provided to this particular country, I didn’t want to make my mom nervous. So I actually didn’t even tell her that I left until I got back but on the plus side, it was it was incredible. And that trip definitely paved the way to open the app to any potential location. So it’s been a real eye-opener.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: That first one you take everybody or is it certain people how’d you decide who got to them?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Yeah, we took everybody. We’ve kind of molded around whether or not we should prioritize senior team members or folks that had been there X amount of time. But we just figured if we wanted to get people on the bus and doing the right things all the time, we just went for it. Because if you look at the return on investment of you know, a good team, in your business, a small investment upfront is just cents on the dollar of your return on investment. So to not do it is a bit of a foolish maneuver, in my opinion. Granted, I mean, we were still working through understanding our cultural goals. So some of the folks and that first team didn’t fit the ideal situation that we were looking for. So of course, you’re going to lose some of those team members to attrition, as we sometimes say, you have to free up their future. But that’s a far better way to go as opposed to having people stick around and have them not be trained. That’s far worse off. So that’s kind of been the rule of thumb that everybody gets to go. It’s been altered a bit, but for the most part, it’s a team-wide thing.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So you’ve got everybody there. You’re staying in a house together or an Airbnb together for, is it a week?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Typically. So we go for two weeks, I give the option to go for two weeks. I highly encourage that because I’m going to buy the flight there and back. So our meetings typically are five days and they’re pretty full on. And then at the conclusion of the meeting, I’ve given everyone else another week, of which I just kind of like brush my hands and I say good luck in some of these folks, depending on where we are in the world. That’s a bit of an uncomfortable scenario. So whether you’re in urban Columbia, or I mean, most recently, we’re in the middle of Kenya, folks have to figure out where they’re going next and how they’re going to do it. And that’s beyond my influence. And I do that on purpose, because that’s a personal growth bit.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: For those five days? What are you talking about when you’re there? Because sometimes we’ll hear people talking about meetings and they’re dreading the hour a week or they’ve canceled that because they said this time isn’t worth it to the practice. So what’s your thought process? Or how are you going into those five days to make it impactful and get the effect that you want?
Dr. Andrew Peter: So maybe Anna and Meghan are best to answer this because they were part of the most recent meeting.
Meagan: I was gonna jump in and answer that. So it’s not what you would think you think, Oh, you’re going to this meeting. We’re gonna talk about clinic stuff all day long for five days, but it’s so much more than that. And it’s a lot of personal growth, personal development going on. During these days where our mind is literally mush by the end of the day with how dig we’re deeping to think bigger than what we are and it just takes us some time to tap into that different mindset to make ourselves grow to let the conversations flow. So it’s not just how are we going to fix the clinic? It’s how are we going to better ourselves and what are we going to do with that moving forward?
Anna: Yeah, I think that was my biggest surprise when our first meeting because I haven’t been there very long. When I went to my first one is we spent very little time talking about what we were going to be doing when we got back. We spent some time on how we were going to do what we do when we go back. But most of the time we spent was on the why we do what we do, personally professionally all across the board and how to just use that to fuel every day.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So when you’re talking about growth, is it like personal growth within the business? Are you thinking about what you want the practice to do? Or is it really thinking about what individuals want to do like give me more of a sense of what the not goal is but kind of what the gist of the conversation?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Let’s say it depends on the trip. I’d say that trips that had been much more clinic and business focus, there have been trips that are almost entirely personal growth, focus, and then there have been some that have been healthy mix of both, just depends on where we think that time is most validly spent.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And you do them once a year or less frequently than that.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Historically. It’s been once a year.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Is it always the same week? So you just know in January, that’s part of what happens that month.
Dr. Andrew Peter: It was originally in February, but we did adjust that to late October, early November. So it’s not always exactly on the same dates or weeks. But it’s we know the ballpark of where it’s going to land. You’re trying to make most of the weather because fall in Alaska is amazing through October. And winter starts to get pretty good in December. But that month in November’s less than ideal, so if we could escape for a bit, we try to shoot for November to go somewhere.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: You said Grenada we got Colombia, Kenya, where else have you been?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Morocco and then we’re supposed to be in Shanghai but that whole COVID thing kind of run our belt. That was interesting because it was coming out of China. I was almost ready to pull the trigger to go to China anyway. But then I was just imagining like the news story and NPR. You know, a group of 12 healthcare professionals in rural Alaska, bring back COVID-19 And like this is going to be shit for advertising so we best not do that. So as it turns out, that was probably a good call. But we’ll see where we go next. But kind of the rule of thumb for the destination is someplace we haven’t been before. someplace that you probably wouldn’t go on your own and someplace that’s marginally uncomfortable, whether that’s language, destination, different religion, something to just bring you outside of your comfort zone because like going to Hawaii would be a complete red flag ain’t going to happen, not for us. The goal is that we want to be better people, more knowledge, better understanding. So not only for the day in day out in the business, but also in our personal lives and in your community as well because as we know, he just picked up the newspaper and there’s all sorts of nastiness and misguided information out there. So better thing to just go and see it for yourself.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And Andrew, do you have the personal philosophy and some thoughts on the importance of being uncomfortable? Well, you just share a little bit more of why that’s important to you and should be important to everybody.
Dr. Andrew Peter: I don’t want to impose my views on other folks, but you know, type two fun of kind of pushing your boundaries, I think is just a necessity for growth. Humans are really capable of incredible things that we might not think that we are. You just have to put yourself between a rock and a hard spot, and then you’ll figure it out at that point. So for me whether it’s traveling in an uncomfortable destination or being on the side of a mountain or fill in the blank, those are just growth opportunities. So it’s all good.
Frank: I could see you writing a book and you’re titled “The Importance of Being Uncomfortable”.
Linnaea: Totally
Dr. Andrew Peter: fail fast.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So you pick the location, just based on those criteria you find somewhere you can get a reasonable flight. This is where we’re going and who figures out the agenda, what you’re going to talk about what you want to accomplish.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Well, I would say we reference what we’ve done in the past. And then we’ve got an idea of what the flavor of conversation within our weekly team meetings has been prior to the trip. But one of the things that I’ve learned and I would say that the team has learned if we try to create a rigorous schedule, Number one, don’t try to do too much. Because you simply can’t do it all and you’re gonna get overwhelmed. And number two, don’t make it so strict that you can’t allow a fair bit of zigging and zagging like you have to allow the conversation to be quite organic and follow that thread. You really don’t know where it’s gonna go, you know? A couple of my team members, they lead some conversations that I would happily tell you about except that wasn’t there. That’s another conversation. And a lot of times if I’m leading part of the conversation, like my team will look around and be like, well, where the hell your notes and I don’t have any notes like there’s no PowerPoint. PowerPoints are boring. Nobody in the right mind wants to watch a PowerPoint. So it’s just you’re catalyzing a discussion and getting people to think that’s the key bit. Think it sounds simple. It’s not
Linnaea: A common thing on that one is we get into these discussions and we try and light a fire under each of our butts. And it takes a while for us to get going. So giving ourselves time that to kind of wrap our heads around the conversation and the topic is very, very important for how we end up at the end of the day.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, I think that that idea of moderating a conversation and kind of inspiring a conversation and then letting ideas flow from the synergy of the people in the room is really valuable because one of the reasons people stop meeting sometimes it’s a lot of work to prepare for them. If you are coming up with bullet points on a PowerPoint, and here’s what I’m going to need to tell people for 30 minutes or 60 minutes. I can’t imagine doing that for five days. But here’s something that’s on my mind that I’d like to openly discuss with a group. Sometimes that’s all you need. And then that can lead to a half day or days conversation and it builds from there. So what are some of the big personal or professional epiphanies or big moments that have come out of these meetings are things that you remember, of? You know, this made a difference to me, at work or in life.
Anna: One of my big ones is from our latest meeting in Kenya. And it was from a communications discussion and discussion went well, it was open-ended. We seem to get a decent amount out of it, whatever. But the conversations that sprung out of afterwards between individual team members about how they communicate and what they hear when they communicate this to him or what they just need out of a relationship professionally, has really really continues to impact our day-to-day here and has just changed our relationship and how we interact that our team was good before but it just had that level of that one of things. Hey, we can talk about this all we want. But this is opening the discussion. It’s about that individual personal and personalized growth that comes afterwards.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Cool. Thank you! Who else has one
Linnaea: back at, just as getting started so we did not fully wrap our heads around this when it was introduced to us by Dr. Peter. But the idea of a great game business. We were introduced to that back in Colombia, and we definitely didn’t have it when we got back.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Linnaea, was this before after your fireball incident. I forget that was the impediment there or not.
Linnaea: Oh no.
Frank: that was a wild turkey right.
Linnaea: wild turkey, That’s kind of an after luckily.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Hopefully not right after
Dr. Andrew Peter: Well.
Linnaea: I probably won’t get into that. Yeah, so Dr. Peter, he introduced the great game of business to us and how that whole idea of monitoring our books works and how the entire team can be involved in that making decisions that affect how the clinic runs and operates and how team members are reimbursed. It’s just the coolest thing because we’re all highly involved in what our clinic does, and the decisions that we make instead of just one person at the top or what have you. So that one was introduced. But again, we didn’t really get the hang of that for a few years, I would say but now we have a thursday morning meeting and we discuss GGOB every single morning and it’s insane our predictions they’re so so close to what we actually get through the course of the month and for the course of the year. It’s highly rewarding. So it’s been really cool to see that and then also to utilize that same idea in home life and how we track our home expenses. So it’s been incredibly rewarding.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Cool. One more, I would love to hear Frank or Megan, something else.
Frank: As far as you know, biggest takeaways are moments. I mean, yeah, there’s definitely moments where you’re in the meeting and it’s been hours. Sometimes it can feel like we’re all just kind of pounding our head against the wall until we just break through and actually get somewhere real in the conversation and those are all those are all good, but I think that things that have stuck with me over the course of these trips has been the importance of travel the importance of getting out of your comfort zone and exposing yourself to places and people that 99% of America will never do. I think it’s crucial and I think that it also highlights the like we were talking about before where we you, you get to kind of have that freeform conversation with a group of people that can last, you know, half of the day like when do you ever get to do that? When do we ever have the opportunity to do that in our day to day lives? It just doesn’t happen. But it’s something that’s incredibly rewarding and deep, whatever that means. It’s just something that you like I said, you just can’t do anywhere else.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And your role with bringing on new personnel is it’s something that you’re talking about when you’re hiring.
Anna: I do most of the hiring at this point. So I would say it’s something that I bring up when it becomes relevant. It’s not something that I try to use. Like I mentioned it a little bit but it’s not something I try to use as like a hook or a bait, but it is really a criteria that I look at new hires with is, Is this someone that I want to spend two weeks in Kenya with not a personality thing that like a prove that you’re fun to be around sort of thing, but if I would worry about spending two weeks with the whole team or how you’d affect the whole team traveling or being on an airplane with you for 12 hours, then that’s like a crucible of how a 40 hour work week goes. It’s the same kind of stresses. It’s the same kind of communication issues. It’s a very different box, but the same kind of things come up just way more intensely. So it is something that I filter that through and it’s a factor for sure.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: What’s like a red flag somebody could throw up in that initial interview that makes you say, Nope, this is not going to be somebody that I want on this trip or in this whole trip of running a business together.
Anna: One of our trips we did look at key characteristics of team members so things that are common across all of our team members and things that we’re looking for in future ones and they are genuine authenticity and collaborative communication, and relentless pursuit of growth are those three, I would say. A collaborative communication is obviously huge. We need somebody who can talk and communicate well between the team and patients. Absolutely crucial real, genuine authenticity. We want people who are real and themselves. That’s a big deal. I would say the biggest one that I look for the top one would be that relentless pursuit of growth. Because that is an open minded mindset. That’s how you view the world. That’s how you feed yourself. And that’s how you view other people. And I think that for me, is one of the biggest indicators that I look for. I mean, that makes traveling together easy that makes, if you are trying to constantly grow, you have to have a sense of humor about things. You have to take things kind of as they come and be open to failure, because that’s part of growing. Just kind of encompasses all those big things that come with big trips and the 40-hour day-to-day work week.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: So what are you asking in an interview to get a feel for if somebody really has that? Or if they’re just saying the right things for purposes of getting the job?
Anna: That is a great question. It’s something that I’ve been working through. I’ve tried it a couple of different iterations. I was, you know, I know that the interviewing process for Homer Eye Care has evolved over the years. It’s kind of a work in progress. Part of its feeding off of people and just being open to who they are. And getting to know them, and not having a strict structure for how the conversation goes. It’s something I’m working on. It’s been really, really responsive to people and where the conversation goes. Part of it’s just intuition and getting to know people and see them. And one of my favorite questions is definitely tell me a story that says a lot about you. And how they answer that question, or if they have an answer is really, really telling and that’s not the most entertaining story. One of the people that I hired Sarah, my favorite answer so far has been she said, “I don’t know what’s yours?” And that was that told me a ton about her. That is 100% been true of who she is. Like, no, I need time. I have my resources. I’m going to put the spotlight back on you. Well, I figured this out. Excellent. I love that. Cool.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Interesting. So has it happened that you have somebody that you hire and the next trip comes up and for whatever reason they they don’t want to go? I remember we had a staff member years ago and we were going somewhere like not nearly exotic. It might have been like Vision Expo or Atlanta for Seco or something. And she hadn’t been on a plane she was terrified to fly or does that just go to get comfortable being uncomfortable and suck it up and take your Xanax we’re going.
Dr. Andrew Peter: typically we just shipped him out like a month early on a boat.
Linnaea: I think we’ve had a few of our employees that were maybe a little less than comfortable, but there’s always the question from Dr. Peter “Do you have a passport?” And that kind of drives that conversation and otherwise we’ve never really ran into a situation where someone wasn’t willing to come along with us.
Dr. Andrew Peter: But sometimes people need to be coerced into doing things they don’t want to do. And that applies to go into a different destination, that applies to taking on a project that applies to speaking publicly to your team or to a nonprofit somewhere. You know, people need to suck it up. And they need to learn for themselves that they really have a skill set. That they didn’t know that they have. If you give them the choice, or commonly say no, but I don’t give them the choice. You got to play this game. And my mindset has shifted so much where I’m looking ahead of how I make people better for themselves and in their relationships and their family and their community. And it’s almost in my mind a foregone conclusion that oh, yeah, it’ll apply to business that at that point, but for me, that’s not the focus. That’s a secondary benefit. So we’re trying to train people, we’re trying to make better people better teams, the secondary benefit to the patients and customers will happen.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I mean, people have reasons like stuff going on in their lives. Maybe they’re caretaking for a young child or for an aging parent is it possible to miss a trip or you figure it out?
Meagan: I can talk on this because I did miss a trip when it was during the government shutdown my husband’s military obviously, and it just financially was not feasible for us at that time. So I ended up not being able to go.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And missing that. How did you get the information that happened? Or could you still be part of things without necessarily being there? Obviously you’re you’re missing some of the cultural exposure, like fun stuff, but as far as the meeting content?
Meagan: So it is evolved since then, and we do have recordings and stuff now. But during that time, we did not record I’m not sure if there were many notes taking during that time. All I got when I got back was hey, this is what’s new. That we’re doing. So I didn’t get to experience everything that they did those deeper conversations of how they figured out things. I didn’t get to experience that and when they come back and I wasn’t going with them. There was a different fire that they came back with like they’re ready and we all get like that. And it does fizzle out, obviously, but when I saw that in them, I knew that there was no way that I could miss another one because you want to be a part of that. You want to feel that and you want to come back home and you want to make changes and every aspect of your life.
Dr. Andrew Peter: In the journey is the destination to come back with just the bullet points of oh yeah, this is the conclusion. And then you say okay, this is what we’re going to do. The buy-in, that you’re going to get is going to be you know, a very low percent. I mean, it’s the same baloney. A doctor goes to a CE or a wisdom-sharing group and they come back with these grand ideas in he or she just starts spitting out we’re gonna do this, this and this. And if the team wasn’t part of the process, they’re like, Ah, Jesus, just another meeting and we got to deal with all this noise. Coming. Good luck getting traction with that. So you really have to walk the journey together.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: When somebody starts. Do they get included right away?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Absolutely.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: I remember you telling us sorry. I can’t remember who it was on your team. But you were telling me that it was somebody’s like first day. They started with a trip.Almost.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Yeah, my poor associate day one of work. He was on a plane to Grenada. It was kind of humorous because it takes you know, two days to get there. And we need not to go into the details but we eventually get to Granada out after traveling across the world. And we show up to this Airbnb And everyone’s tired and everyone’s hungry and Frank’s like, where’s the red wine? They’ve got this cook cooking this plate to paella outside. It’s like a four-foot diameter plate to paella and God smelled amazing. It was good. It wasn’t awesome. But the great thing is that associate day number now two, we get dish dip our food and my poor associate. It was a rabbit paella, so he’s got this rabbit head in his paella. And he’s like, What the hell is this thing and as it turns out, it was rabbit so that was day two, and he was well indoctrinated into both the travel and then the remainder of the week was was pretty amazing meetings, both just based on the team and the food, the music, the red wine, all the above was pretty ideal.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And you share that you do great game. So talk to us a little bit about the financials of it now with a larger team with destinations you’re talking about potentially not having Doc’s and staff. Do you close the office for two weeks, like talk about the money side of it.
Dr. Andrew Peter: So yeah, we do a great game. Our scoreboard is cloud-based, so anybody within the team can sign on and look at it, and edit it at any time from anywhere. I know that a lot of folks are diehard like right on the board, but we’ve we’ve gone cloud-based, of course the trip itself, you are going to incur expenses for your flights, hotels, etc. The big quote unquote expense certainly would be the decrease in revenue because we do close the office. So we can look at the numbers and two weeks. It just goes away. But it’s an efficiency thing too. We have to ask yourself, based on the conversations and the solutions we come up with, can we make 50 weeks out of the year, produce what we would have in 52. And I will take that bet seven days out of seven, because without that investment, those 52 weeks would be significantly less efficient. I promise you because I’ve been there. So the investment both of money and time for us has been certainly a net positive. Not to mention, I mean, it’s fun. This past year as anyone who does great game, you get to the end of that fourth quarter and you’re looking at where your level of bonuses and people are scratching their heads and we’re trying to make it all happen and as it turns out, we dropped a couple levels in this last quarter. So I showed the team to be like, Well, if we would have stayed here and we would have seen patients and we didn’t have these expenses, you know, our productivity for those two weeks would have been this and potentially your bonus would have been this. Do you want to go on trips again? And people like heck yeah! There was no discussion for people like him and or her around it. I mean, really, who would rather work versus like cruise around in a land cruiser looking at elephants. Like honestly, who the hell would work like no way? Not me. I think that’s kind of the opinion of the rest of the team, but it’s all about efficiency.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: And that second week, do people tend to hang out together or do people go do their own thing? What’s been the trend? for week two? When it’s okay now here you are in Kenya.
Anna: a little bit of everything, some of us tend to hang out with each other for at least part of it. Some of us branch off and do their own thing. It depends on the location. It depends on kind of what around there is to do and where you want to go with it. I’ve had a travel partner for the last two years that I stick with. We traveled super well together and it’s really really changed our in office relationship in such a great way. And yeah, we’ve hung out with like, there was eight of us, I think in Kenya that went to do a couple of things and then we split off from there. Just kind of depends on what you want to do.
Linnaea: And I’ve been lucky enough to have my significant other along with me. So he’s basically joined me on the second week and sometimes even during the first week he listens in on our meetings and sometimes has a bit to contribute he, of course hangs out with me. But on all of our trips we’ve ended up pairing up with either a single person from the crew or a group of people I know back in Morocco. I hung out with Andrew and his wife Heidi and their daughter and one of our old patient coordinators. That was a blast. So much fun. Yeah, traveling with Andrew is like nothing else. But yeah, we just got to switch it up and have a good time.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Do people bring significant others and families is that part of what happens?
Linnaea: I think it’s a definite option, especially for that second week. There’s always the conversation for the first week on whether or not to have significant others along for the meeting side of things. And that one’s always up to Dr. Peter and whether or not he’s okay with that. But second week, absolutely. So we’ve had breaks significant other couples along with us. She went to Morocco as well. So definitely pretty cool.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: That’s awesome. So what would your general advice be to somebody out there listening to this saying there’s absolutely no way I could or would ever want to or choose to or be able to do this with my team? What do you wish that they knew?
Dr. Andrew Peter: A. You can do it if you want to. B the economics certainly play out in your favor. If you’re providing your team the tools to be more independent, better communicators, better listeners, better leaders. What we do in a professional setting is a lovely thing. You know, we change people’s lives. It’s great. But I think my personal feeling in this industry, we become don’t take this wrong to patient-focused and not enough team-focused. So if we ask yourself like what are we trying to do, are you first and foremost serving your patients? Are you first and foremost serving your team? And for me, it’s the latter. So if I can serve my team in some capacity, it’s my team that’s going to serve the community and the patients and the customers. So, as far as advice do it, how you do it, it’s totally up to you. But do it. Invest in your team. Don’t try to do too much. Allow the conversations to be organic, and follow the rabbit holes because there will be many. I don’t know if other organizations would have a similar path to us. But the first couple of meetings were good but not great. They were hard. We learned lots of things, but it’s part of the process. We wouldn’t be where we are now. Without the process. That’s life. Just how it is.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: The advice to follow the rabbit holes I think is is really valuable. There’s so many things that in a day-to-day conversation or a day-to-day meeting that you don’t have time to get into and get out of. So either you don’t go in or you’re in you unravel something and don’t have time to resolve it. Like as you’re saying this. There’s things that I’m imagining that I think if I could like spend a day or two days or some time with a little break in the middle talking about this topic, here’s what we’d be able to do. I think that that’s really something to think about for sure.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Yeah, I mean, I know that we’ve taken either like a single question and answer or like a specific scenario, and we’ve used like three hours on it. And no one would say that that’s preposterous, but one of the things that we talked about quite regularly it’s it’s not you know what you say? It’s how you say it, and getting into the details in all things listening and communication, and sharing empathy and giving people a plan and changing their life. I mean, when you get granular it’s pretty interesting, the magic that can happen.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Awesome. I thank you so much for doing this and sharing your stories and talking about the thing that really is quite unique to your office but from everything you’re saying shouldn’t necessarily be I think there are lots of ways to emulate it not necessarily doing exactly what you’re doing, but I hope that it’s versa thought process for a lot of people listening out there that it is for me. So thank you guys so much for your time today. I know I’m gonna get the question. Are you hiring?
Dr. Andrew Peter: Come on up, we’re not hard to find truly. We’re at the end of the road in North America. So if you keep going west, that’s where we’re located.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: Awesome. Thank you guys so much.
Dr. Andrew Peter: Thank you. Bethany.
Dr.Bethany Fishbein: For more information on Power Practice. Find us online at powerpractice.com