January 11, 2023
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Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: When they’re met at the door by a smiley sunshiny face when everybody is greeting them happily. It’s very rare that patients hold on to that negativity.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I am Bethany Fishbein, CEO of The Power Practice and host of the Power Hour Optometry Podcast. And my guest today is Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook, who is an optometrist, and she and her husband Mike are owners of Visionary Eye Care in Lutz, Florida outside of Tampa. And we’re talking Practice Culture. This conversation came up because Jen had posted on Facebook and also posted to our client email list and she shared a post that one of her staff members had written and I think, Jen, your comment was, this gives me the warm fuzzies or something like that, and I use that term to. The staff member’s post said “I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I started at Visionary and I can’t be more stoked about it. Finding a place where I love working feels like I finally found the one and all my past jobs are like toxic exes. If I ever leave Visionary, I’ll remember it as the one that got away. Glad I put my resume out there just for fun”. Like that’s really the ultimate dream to have a staff member unsolicited post something like that about the joy of working at your office and so it prompted me to reach out to Jen and say, let’s talk about how you got there. So thank you so much for being here with me.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Well, thank you for the invitation.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, my pleasure. So talk about the story of opening your practice a little bit because I know when you opened, culture was one of those things that you thought about when you thought about your dream business.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Well, maybe all of us have been in a situation where it wasn’t thought about and I started in a corporate location. I did not enjoy going to work the other people did not enjoy going there. It rubbed off on the patients to you know, when he would walk into an exam room and if you weren’t very happy. The patients weren’t happy either. And it just all seemed to feed on itself. So when I had the idea to open my own practice, and bring my dog to work, that was the main focus. And it was recommended to me to read several books and I think one of the most important ones is “Fish” I forget who wrote that. But it was the idea of all the fishmongers up in Seattle. Going to work and they have to be at work at something like 04:30 in the morning in Seattle, throwing fish. So that doesn’t seem like a great situation. Yet they came up with this fish philosophy. And that was if everybody chose their attitude, had fun, was present and decided to make their day. It was a great place to work. And so that’s pretty much the cornerstone of my practice is that we’re going to have fun.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I taught some of that was the inspiration because I’ve been there to the Pike Place Market out in Seattle and I’ve read the book and what you’re saying is so true. These are just like fish guys, right? They get up at three o’clock in the morning. They dress in their waders or whatever those like waterproof pants are called. It’s not a super glamorous job. In a lot of cases. They’ve created an environment and it’s become a tourist attraction. The people that hear you travel to Seattle are like “Did you see the fish? Did you see the guys throwing the fish?’’ and it also makes sales. I’m always amazed, there’s like other fish stores in Pike Place Market that nobody’s in line for. And in the meantime, these guys are shipping fish across the country just by making happiness for the people that visit.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Right, it’s all about the energy. And so we have a bulldog in our office. I’ve always had bulldogs in the office. And I’ve just decided that this is going to be a happy place to work. And we have our meeting every single morning and sometimes I quizzed the staff on the four fish philosophies. Because whenever I hire somebody, I give them the book, and I’m scribe on the inside. Welcome to Visionary and I expect everybody to read the book. And I think they realized that that moment. Well, hopefully they realized before I hired them, but that this was a place where its culture is important to me and everybody who works there.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Your point of that, I hope they realize it before I hire them. Like it’s evident even through your website. Culture is just carried straight through, you know, right on your front page of your website. It says our mission or goal is to create a fun and relaxed atmosphere. When you look at the profiles of your different team members it has not just where they went to school and what their skills are but what they love to do outside of work. Yours and Mike’s have what you love to do outside of work, Boscoe has his own profile on the website. He’s listed as the office manager with a nice
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: His management. Yeah!
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, an open-door snuggle policy and I know this is a podcast and audio only but I’m enjoying watching Boscoe sitting next to you supervising us as we record this so I think anybody who looks whether it’s a patient or a potential staff member can start to get a feel right away. That this is not just a regular doctor’s office like this is something different. Do you find that there are people who apply who have no idea or do most people come in with a little bit of a background idea of like, “Okay, we did a little bit of research here and we see this”.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: At this point in my practice. Yeah, they realize it but the first three years of practice I’ve been open now for coming up on 14 years. So I think this statistic was my first three years I went through almost 23 employees. I was not scared to make the turnover if it wasn’t a good fit, but now yeah, they recognize it
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I mean, that’s a thing and a new practice that happens because you’ve got an idea of what you want. And you don’t quite know in the beginning how to get people to be what you want. So then they’re not.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Yeah, you hire for energy and you hire for excitement and sometimes that goes along with other things that you might not necessarily want in practice.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Right. Okay. So even from the beginning, you are trying to hire for culture because a lot of people, especially brand new, they’re not sure what they’re doing and they’re hiring. Well, they didn’t really seem great, but they had six years of optical experience. Like I see people knowingly making that wrong choice. So you weren’t doing that.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: No, I was not. Now with my six employees, three of them drive a minimum of 45 minutes each way to get to my office. And that last employee, she was my last hire. She was going back and forth about the distance because here I mean, you can get a place to work within 10 minutes where you live, but one of the other employees pulled her aside and said, “Look, I know the drive is long. I drive 50 minutes each way to work, but I love it every day. And I love coming to work”. So she was the one who actually convinced the employee who posted to actually join on, because of our culture.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So when you’re interviewing, how do you get people that are just gonna be that?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: I don’t know. I just hang out with them. I talked to them. I have a real conversation. It’s not me, hounding them with questions. I really feel that I’m a horrible interviewer. Because I can’t think of the right questions to ask. It’s more of just getting a feel of somebody. And do you want to be around this person or not? And if I don’t want to be around them, will my patients will my staff? And so, afterward, we also have a working interview if I think it’s going to be a good fits potentially. I have them come in and they work a half a day with us and we see how it is, skills are secondary.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So I mean the ones that didn’t work out, especially in those early days, is that what it was they didn’t have the skills or like what didn’t work out?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Gosh, I’ve had everything from substance abuse, alcoholism, theft, one person that I can think of about the culture specifically. She was always so negative. You know, when you answer the phone and you can hear somebody smiling over the phone, like “Hi, Welcome to Visionary Eye Care!” versus “Visionary Eye Care, how can I help you?” That’s a difference. And sometimes you can’t train that. So yeah, there were issues when people were just very negative when they would come in and it wasn’t enjoyable. And you can tell the entire team would just be brought down a bit.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: when that’s going on. Is that something that you’re talking to staff members about like having that conversation? Like “You’ve got to be happier you’ve got to be positive”, or is it you can tell they’re not a right fit and just we’re gonna hold out for someone who is?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: With every morning meeting, you can see how things are going. You kind of touch in with everybody during the morning meeting and I can see if they’re just not joining and if that continues, then you know, sometimes I’ll bring them into my back office and say, you know, is everything okay? Are you happy here? What’s going on? And if it’s not working out, it’s just not working out.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So your patients who come in, people do feel the energy. And so what are some of the comments that you get from a new patient walking in like people have to walk in and realize, Okay, this is different, even just to walk in and be greeted by a bulldog or it’s not what you expect from a doctor’s office.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: They make comments often that everybody is so happy and everybody is so nice, which that’s the bare minimum for me. But yeah, it’s mostly like “Wow, this place is awesome. This place is so much fun. Or I’ve read your reviews” and I go “Yeah, well, I bribe them all, So”
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: To just maintain, you can have it you can have the right team, the right place. Everybody’s great. But people are people, right? Somebody has a bad day. Something happens in the morning. They have a fight with somebody out of the office. Like, how do you keep what’s out of the office, out of the office, and keep this positivity in the office?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: That is part of the Choose your attitude of the four pillars, the fish philosophy, everybody has a bad day. Some people gotta want to bring out specifics right now. You know, for the employees that are there now. But it’s just the underlying idea that I do care about my staff. We’ve been together for many years, my longest employee has been with me for 13 years. The next gosh, I think it’s eight years. Another for five, we’re very close. So I do care about them. And if they’re having a bad day, we talked about it now and we realize that we’ve got to keep it up at the office or else we feel it at the end of the day when we do our numbers.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Talk about that link because that’s huge and people don’t realize that the difference that caring through a positive culture and a positive energy makes on what happens in the practice that day.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Yeah, if you’re having fun with people genuinely, and the patient doesn’t feel like you’re going at them for something. I think it puts them more at ease. And so if you’re handing off a patient to an employee, which I do, they come to the exam room and I tell them about their situation. Surely there’s the situations where their prescription hasn’t changed. They’re not interested in getting anything, but I’ll joke around with them. I’m like, “Well lucky for them. Their prescription hasn’t changed very much. So that means you need to twist their arm and make them buy five more pairs”. And you know, they’ll laugh. And you know, sometimes the staff member will pick up on that. It’s like “well, come on, let’s get some sunglasses” or something or “let’s do something like, Okay, fine”. It’s genuine and it’s relaxed. And yeah, sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. But I think overall it makes the patients enjoy their time and so that when they do think of their eye care, they always come back, hopefully.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I want to just go back to something that she said before because it reminded me of a conversation that I was having with a practice manager who’s fairly new to management. You were talking about your staff working with you for a long time and you care about each other and you’re really close. And I was talking to this new manager last week and she had a one of her first negative situations with a staff member that she found out that somebody was talking about her behind her back, and her comment was, “I shouldn’t have let her know anything about me. I know you’re not supposed to be friends with your employees.”
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: What?
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: That’s what I said. I mean, that’s kind of like prevailing attitude. Sometimes like when I started working. The office that I was working in was run by somebody much older than I was and they were always very strict like there’s a line and your staff shouldn’t call you by your first name your staff shouldn’t like you should know little things about them so that you can politely ask but you’re not their friend. If you’re their friend. You’re not going to be an effective employer.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: That’s not my way at all. I can’t pretend I’m not a very secretive person at all. So I have all the conversations with my staff, and I enjoy being with them. And I think they work for us and my family. I’ve raised my three girls at the practice. I mean, in the beginning, I built a playroom upstairs in my office. So I opened when I was three months pregnant with my first girl and I had three girls in my first three years. So it was a family office. My babies were at the office I’d see a few patients go nurse, see a few patients go nurse, and the staff work harder I feel when they see that it’s for all of us. We’re one big unit because when the practice does better, we do better they do better. It’s all one group. So I could never draw a line. I wouldn’t be happy.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: And I mean there are situations that have come up and I’ve seen your comments on them and always appreciate the commitment to maintaining culture. In the comments, somebody will ask like, “this patient really treated us poorly and is now asking for a refund. They were really mean to my staff member and now do they want a refund for their glasses? What do you think I should do?” And I feel like your comments are always like, “Give them what they want and get them out the door”. You don’t need that toxic energy in your practice. Are there situations you can think of where your culture kind of trumped financial and everything else?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Absolutely. I remember one patient that we got rid of, or that I politely fired because she was so rude to the staff. She was always very nice to me. They were a high-profile patient and wasn’t worth it. Every time she was going to come into the office. The whole staff was upset or worried about how it was gonna go. So I remember calling her I did it. This is what I would call them personally and invite them to find their happiness elsewhere. And she’s like, “Well, I’m sorry, your staff doesn’t have thick skin.”
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Oh.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Yeah, it’s like that’s not how you treat people. So I’ll forward your family’s records and I think it was a family of five I don’t even remember now it’s so many years ago that let the staff know that I always have their back. And we don’t tolerate that.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: How often does stuff like that come up?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Luckily, not that often. When they’re met at the door by a smiley sunshiny face when everybody is greeting them happily. It’s very rare that patients hold on to that negativity. We usually get it out of them or we get to the root of why it’s there. And, you know, it’s like one of my employees specifically she’s like, “Wow, his wife is really sick” or this and that and we understand and she’s like “I softened him up, he’s okay. Now he’s good.” So we create the atmosphere where we coax them out of it, so to speak.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: It’s a nice way of doing it to understand the underlying reason or to try and understand the underlying reason for whatever is making them miserable and it’s an eye care office and people come in sometimes with fears or hesitation or they’re nervous about what you’re going to find what they’re going to have to spend what’s going to happen next or nothing related to you at all and they’ve got their own issues in the morning. So the call that he sees, I don’t know everybody’s living something you know nothing about or something like that. That’s nice that when your staff notices that they kind of try to get to the root of what it is. And I think that’s what most people want is just to feel understood and to know that someone is listening and caring, then they chill out.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: And if there are issues with their purchases, because surely that happens in everybody’s practice. My staff is empowered to make it right. I don’t hold patients to only one remake. I don’t hold them to these very strict rules of what the staff can do for patients. So we are a very patient-centric office in that I really do whatever is necessary to make the patients happy often. I liken it to doing business like Nordstrom, you can wear a pair of shoes, and if they weren’t comfortable, you can bring them back to Nordstrom. Did you know that? It’s amazing. I don’t take advantage of that. But I’ve certainly done it once and I was just so amazed. So that’s how we are and so if a patient is having trouble with situation with our practice, the glasses aren’t working quite right or they weren’t happy with their choice. Then my staff has the flexibility to restyle them and they’re not worried that I’m gonna go after them saying Why did you do this? So the staff knows that they’re empowered to help the patients. There’s really no reason for the patients to hold on to that anger and that they know that we’re really do, I’ll do anything that will make it right, but I just have to know what to do to make it right, So sometimes they have to see me again or what have you, but it creates a good energy.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: And I think we’ve bored Boscoe, he got up and left here right before I wanted to talk about him a little bit
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: I think he sees my kids through the window.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Gotcha. It was watching very attentively and then he’s looking like when are you gonna get to my part? All right. You haven’t talked about me enough yet. I’m going, there’s something more interesting going on in this house. So talk about bringing a dog to work because every time somebody mentions it, it stirs up some controversy. Between the dog lovers and be weird people.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Yeah. I have so many patients who say they come just because of Boscoe and then we all giggle and but it creates a great fun place. Everybody is notified beforehand that there’s a dog in the office. We do live in a very dog-friendly area.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: How do you notify them that there’s a dog?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: So on the door of my practice, my lawyer friend said that I have to legally make notice that there’s a dog on the premises. So we have a sign on the door. It says the Bulldogs are in and that does evidently confuse some people they think that we’re Georgia Bulldog fans or something. But no literally there’s a bulldog in the office but from the appointment reminder, we asked them if there are any issues with having a bulldog in the office. Or if there are any allergies or would you prefer to have the dog elsewhere? Very rarely that occurs but sometimes it does. We always make a note on their appointment “okay with dogs.” So when we go through the appointment every morning, we make sure that they were notified. And of course, this has happened because some have slipped through and they were petrified. But we make sure that everybody is notified and is on their appointment slot okay with dogs.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: And does he like, roam freely in the office, or does he have a spot and kind of get brought out sometimes like what is his day-to-day job description entail?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: He is allowed to roam through the office, but his routine is that he typically sleeps under my desk in my personal office. And then when a patient is Sat, I go, “Alright Boscoe, It’s time to go to work.” And it takes a lot of coercing and he gets up and he slowly walks into the exam room with me with his tongue hanging out. And he often doesn’t even look at the patient in the morning. He just goes straight to his bed underneath my desk. That’s the morning patient. The afternoon patients get the crazy bulldog. The crazy bulldog chases my spotlight as I check pupils, I will make the spotlight from the VIO all over the wall and he will just tear across the exam room. Like he’s a kitty cat. And he goes nuts trying to get it, it’s very funny. And then he often wrestles with the extra person in the exam room. So when I’m seeing a child often it’s kids in the afternoon or someone brings a friend the extra person sitting on the couch in the exam room gets a handful of bulldog and it’s kind of fun. Not very efficient for an exam but it makes for a good time.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Absolutely. I’m a dog person clearly. So I’m Team Boscoe and this one but people are relaxed and they’re comfortable and they’re I don’t know, you’re your best self when you’re playing with the dog. I think.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: It puts me at ease too. And you know, it breaks the ice with a lot of patients. It’s comfortable. And interestingly enough, Boscoe has convinced or maybe it was my old Bulldogs Herbert and Joseph convinced a dentist-patient of mine she ended up getting two dogs in her office because of mine, and named them Max and Mandy for maxillary and mandible. It’s very funny.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: It’s hilarious. Yeah. So when you have those patients that are petrified or say “No, I’m not okay with the dog”, like, is there anybody that says I’m not coming there because you have a dog or that’s unprofessional? That’s terrible.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: I don’t know. That hasn’t gotten through to me. Maybe it has and stuff hasn’t told me. They know that I wouldn’t care. I did one time, and somebody applied to work for me. This was so interesting. He applied to work for me. And in my advertisement, “looking for new employees” I say at the very end “Must Love Dogs”. So even when I’m interviewing people the people work for him. He has to be good with dogs. But he sent me an email berating me, saying “No self-respecting office would ever have a dog in their facility” and kept going on and on. It was like well, then obviously this isn’t a place for you. It’s okay. There are other places you can go work.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Like before he even interviewed this happened?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Yes, yes. He was just responding to my ad. This must be a fake office or fake ad or employment, No self-respecting office, whatever. So I found that very amusing.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yes. So needless to say, he doesn’t work there.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: There are plenty of offices to choose from. If people don’t want to come where there’s a dog, then there are other places they can go to. The practice is here to serve us. I think a lot of Doctors forget that. They want to be all things to all people. But I think it was Gary Gerber who told me he’s like “The office is here to serve you. Make you happy.” And that’s what we do.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: For somebody who’s in their office and is listening to this and wants what you have like this sounds amazing. I want this but they haven’t prioritized it. And so things are not working. Now. What advice would you give to make the culture better?
Dr.Jennifer Brady Cook 26:15
Read the book “Fish” start there. I would start with that.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Gotcha. Jen, if people want to see your website or want to be able to find you, where do they go?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Our website is visionaryeyecaretampa.com
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Awesome. It’s worth a look at the website. It’s a great site. It really gives a feel to the practice and to you and your whole team. So congratulations on building what you set out to create and I love that because you put that work in to do it. You get to be somewhere you enjoy working every day. He’s right. The practice is there to serve you. You’ve got to enjoy what you’re doing. And it sounds like you’ve really nailed it. So thank you so much for sharing all of this!
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Thank you so much. And a shout out to Regan Barnes, one of my employees who is now at optometry school for building that whole website from scratch.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Wow! That was an employee who did that.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Yeah. That was an employee who did that. Yeah, she did a wonderful job.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Oh, you’re not kidding. Well, public shout-out to her Regan if you hear this great job! and Jen, Thank you again for talking.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Thank you so much, Bethany!
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: And for more information on building the practice of your dream. Please check out our website at www.powerpractice.com.
Read the Transcription
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: When they’re met at the door by a smiley sunshiny face when everybody is greeting them happily. It’s very rare that patients hold on to that negativity.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I am Bethany Fishbein, CEO of The Power Practice and host of the Power Hour Optometry Podcast. And my guest today is Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook, who is an Optometrist, and she and her husband Mike are owners of Visionary Eye Care in Lutz, Florida outside of Tampa. And we’re talking Practice Culture. This conversation came up because Jen had posted on Facebook and also posted to our client email list and she shared a post that one of her staff members had written and I think, Jen, your comment was, this gives me the warm fuzzies or something like that, and I use that term to. The staff member’s post said “I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since I started at Visionary and I can’t be more stoked about it. Finding a place where I love working feels like I finally found the one and all my past jobs are like toxic exes. If I ever leave Visionary, I’ll remember it as the one that got away. Glad I put my resume out there just for fun”. Like that’s really the ultimate dream to have a staff member unsolicited post something like that about the joy of working at your office and so it prompted me to reach out to Jen and say, let’s talk about how you got there. So thank you so much for being here with me.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Well, thank you for the invitation.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, my pleasure. So talk about the story of opening your practice a little bit because I know when you opened, culture was one of those things that you thought about when you thought about your dream business.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Well, maybe all of us have been in a situation where it wasn’t thought about and I started in a corporate location. I did not enjoy going to work the other people did not enjoy going there. It rubbed off on the patients to you know, when he would walk into an exam room and if you weren’t very happy. The patients weren’t happy either. And it just all seemed to feed on itself. So when I had the idea to open my own practice, and bring my dog to work, that was the main focus. And it was recommended to me to read several books and I think one of the most important ones is “Fish” I forget who wrote that. But it was the idea of all the fishmongers up in Seattle. Going to work and they have to be at work at something like 04:30 in the morning in Seattle, throwing fish. So that doesn’t seem like a great situation. Yet they came up with this fish philosophy. And that was if everybody chose their attitude, had fun, was present and decided to make their day. It was a great place to work. And so that’s pretty much the cornerstone of my practice is that we’re going to have fun.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I taught some of that was the inspiration because I’ve been there to the Pike Place Market out in Seattle and I’ve read the book and what you’re saying is so true. These are just like fish guys, right? They get up at three o’clock in the morning. They dress in their waders or whatever those like waterproof pants are called. It’s not a super glamorous job. In a lot of cases. They’ve created an environment and it’s become a tourist attraction. The people that hear you travel to Seattle are like “Did you see the fish? Did you see the guys throwing the fish?’’ and it also makes sales. I’m always amazed, there’s like other fish stores in Pike Place Market that nobody’s in line for. And in the meantime, these guys are shipping fish across the country just by making happiness for the people that visit.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Right, it’s all about the energy. And so we have a bulldog in our office. I’ve always had bulldogs in the office. And I’ve just decided that this is going to be a happy place to work. And we have our meeting every single morning and sometimes I quizzed the staff on the four fish philosophies. Because whenever I hire somebody, I give them the book, and I’m scribe on the inside. Welcome to Visionary and I expect everybody to read the book. And I think they realized that that moment. Well, hopefully they realized before I hired them, but that this was a place where its culture is important to me and everybody who works there.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Your point of that, I hope they realize it before I hire them. Like it’s evident even through your website. Culture is just carried straight through, you know, right on your front page of your website. It says our mission or goal is to create a fun and relaxed atmosphere. When you look at the profiles of your different team members it has not just where they went to school and what their skills are but what they love to do outside of work. Yours and Mike’s have what you love to do outside of work, Boscoe has his own profile on the website. He’s listed as the office manager with a nice
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: His management. Yeah!
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yeah, an open-door snuggle policy and I know this is a podcast and audio only but I’m enjoying watching Boscoe sitting next to you supervising us as we record this so I think anybody who looks whether it’s a patient or a potential staff member can start to get a feel right away. That this is not just a regular doctor’s office like this is something different. Do you find that there are people who apply who have no idea or do most people come in with a little bit of a background idea of like, “Okay, we did a little bit of research here and we see this”.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: At this point in my practice. Yeah, they realize it but the first three years of practice I’ve been open now for coming up on 14 years. So I think this statistic was my first three years I went through almost 23 employees. I was not scared to make the turnover if it wasn’t a good fit, but now yeah, they recognize it
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I mean, that’s a thing and a new practice that happens because you’ve got an idea of what you want. And you don’t quite know in the beginning how to get people to be what you want. So then they’re not.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Yeah, you hire for energy and you hire for excitement and sometimes that goes along with other things that you might not necessarily want in practice.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Right. Okay. So even from the beginning, you are trying to hire for culture because a lot of people, especially brand new, they’re not sure what they’re doing and they’re hiring. Well, they didn’t really seem great, but they had six years of optical experience. Like I see people knowingly making that wrong choice. So you weren’t doing that.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: No, I was not. Now with my six employees, three of them drive a minimum of 45 minutes each way to get to my office. And that last employee, she was my last hire. She was going back and forth about the distance because here I mean, you can get a place to work within 10 minutes where you live, but one of the other employees pulled her aside and said, “Look, I know the drive is long. I drive 50 minutes each way to work, but I love it every day. And I love coming to work”. So she was the one who actually convinced the employee who posted to actually join on, because of our culture.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So when you’re interviewing, how do you get people that are just gonna be that?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: I don’t know. I just hang out with them. I talked to them. I have a real conversation. It’s not me, hounding them with questions. I really feel that I’m a horrible interviewer. Because I can’t think of the right questions to ask. It’s more of just getting a feel of somebody. And do you want to be around this person or not? And if I don’t want to be around them, will my patients will my staff? And so, afterward, we also have a working interview if I think it’s going to be a good fits potentially. I have them come in and they work a half a day with us and we see how it is, skills are secondary.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So I mean the ones that didn’t work out, especially in those early days, is that what it was they didn’t have the skills or like what didn’t work out?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Gosh, I’ve had everything from substance abuse, alcoholism, theft, one person that I can think of about the culture specifically. She was always so negative. You know, when you answer the phone and you can hear somebody smiling over the phone, like “Hi, Welcome to Visionary Eye Care!” versus “Visionary Eye Care, how can I help you?” That’s a difference. And sometimes you can’t train that. So yeah, there were issues when people were just very negative when they would come in and it wasn’t enjoyable. And you can tell the entire team would just be brought down a bit.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: when that’s going on. Is that something that you’re talking to staff members about like having that conversation? Like “You’ve got to be happier you’ve got to be positive”, or is it you can tell they’re not a right fit and just we’re gonna hold out for someone who is?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: With every morning meeting, you can see how things are going. You kind of touch in with everybody during the morning meeting and I can see if they’re just not joining and if that continues, then you know, sometimes I’ll bring them into my back office and say, you know, is everything okay? Are you happy here? What’s going on? And if it’s not working out, it’s just not working out.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: So your patients who come in, people do feel the energy. And so what are some of the comments that you get from a new patient walking in like people have to walk in and realize, Okay, this is different, even just to walk in and be greeted by a bulldog or it’s not what you expect from a doctor’s office.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: They make comments often that everybody is so happy and everybody is so nice, which that’s the bare minimum for me. But yeah, it’s mostly like “Wow, this place is awesome. This place is so much fun. Or I’ve read your reviews” and I go “Yeah, well, I bribe them all, So”
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: To just maintain, you can have it you can have the right team, the right place. Everybody’s great. But people are people, right? Somebody has a bad day. Something happens in the morning. They have a fight with somebody out of the office. Like, how do you keep what’s out of the office, out of the office, and keep this positivity in the office?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: That is part of the Choose your attitude of the four pillars, the fish philosophy, everybody has a bad day. Some people gotta want to bring out specifics right now. You know, for the employees that are there now. But it’s just the underlying idea that I do care about my staff. We’ve been together for many years, my longest employee has been with me for 13 years. The next gosh, I think it’s eight years. Another for five, we’re very close. So I do care about them. And if they’re having a bad day, we talked about it now and we realize that we’ve got to keep it up at the office or else we feel it at the end of the day when we do our numbers.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Talk about that link because that’s huge and people don’t realize that the difference that caring through a positive culture and a positive energy makes on what happens in the practice that day.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Yeah, if you’re having fun with people genuinely, and the patient doesn’t feel like you’re going at them for something. I think it puts them more at ease. And so if you’re handing off a patient to an employee, which I do, they come to the exam room and I tell them about their situation. Surely there’s the situations where their prescription hasn’t changed. They’re not interested in getting anything, but I’ll joke around with them. I’m like, “Well lucky for them. Their prescription hasn’t changed very much. So that means you need to twist their arm and make them buy five more pairs”. And you know, they’ll laugh. And you know, sometimes the staff member will pick up on that. It’s like “well, come on, let’s get some sunglasses” or something or “let’s do something like, Okay, fine”. It’s genuine and it’s relaxed. And yeah, sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. But I think overall it makes the patients enjoy their time and so that when they do think of their eye care, they always come back, hopefully.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: I want to just go back to something that she said before because it reminded me of a conversation that I was having with a practice manager who’s fairly new to management. You were talking about your staff working with you for a long time and you care about each other and you’re really close. And I was talking to this new manager last week and she had a one of her first negative situations with a staff member that she found out that somebody was talking about her behind her back, and her comment was, “I shouldn’t have let her know anything about me. I know you’re not supposed to be friends with your employees.”
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: What?
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: That’s what I said. I mean, that’s kind of like prevailing attitude. Sometimes like when I started working. The office that I was working in was run by somebody much older than I was and they were always very strict like there’s a line and your staff shouldn’t call you by your first name your staff shouldn’t like you should know little things about them so that you can politely ask but you’re not their friend. If you’re their friend. You’re not going to be an effective employer.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: That’s not my way at all. I can’t pretend I’m not a very secretive person at all. So I have all the conversations with my staff, and I enjoy being with them. And I think they work for us and my family. I’ve raised my three girls at the practice. I mean, in the beginning, I built a playroom upstairs in my office. So I opened when I was three months pregnant with my first girl and I had three girls in my first three years. So it was a family office. My babies were at the office I’d see a few patients go nurse, see a few patients go nurse, and the staff work harder I feel when they see that it’s for all of us. We’re one big unit because when the practice does better, we do better they do better. It’s all one group. So I could never draw a line. I wouldn’t be happy.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: And I mean there are situations that have come up and I’ve seen your comments on them and always appreciate the commitment to maintaining culture. In the comments, somebody will ask like, “this patient really treated us poorly and is now asking for a refund. They were really mean to my staff member and now do they want a refund for their glasses? What do you think I should do?” And I feel like your comments are always like, “Give them what they want and get them out the door”. You don’t need that toxic energy in your practice. Are there situations you can think of where your culture kind of trumped financial and everything else?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Absolutely. I remember one patient that we got rid of, or that I politely fired because she was so rude to the staff. She was always very nice to me. They were a high-profile patient and wasn’t worth it. Every time she was going to come into the office. The whole staff was upset or worried about how it was gonna go. So I remember calling her I did it. This is what I would call them personally and invite them to find their happiness elsewhere. And she’s like, “Well, I’m sorry, your staff doesn’t have thick skin.”
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Oh.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Yeah, it’s like that’s not how you treat people. So I’ll forward your family’s records and I think it was a family of five I don’t even remember now it’s so many years ago that let the staff know that I always have their back. And we don’t tolerate that.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: How often does stuff like that come up?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Luckily, not that often. When they’re met at the door by a smiley sunshiny face when everybody is greeting them happily. It’s very rare that patients hold on to that negativity. We usually get it out of them or we get to the root of why it’s there. And, you know, it’s like one of my employees specifically she’s like, “Wow, his wife is really sick” or this and that and we understand and she’s like “I softened him up, he’s okay. Now he’s good.” So we create the atmosphere where we coax them out of it, so to speak.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: It’s a nice way of doing it to understand the underlying reason or to try and understand the underlying reason for whatever is making them miserable and it’s an eye care office and people come in sometimes with fears or hesitation or they’re nervous about what you’re going to find what they’re going to have to spend what’s going to happen next or nothing related to you at all and they’ve got their own issues in the morning. So the call that he sees, I don’t know everybody’s living something you know nothing about or something like that. That’s nice that when your staff notices that they kind of try to get to the root of what it is. And I think that’s what most people want is just to feel understood and to know that someone is listening and caring, then they chill out.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: And if there are issues with their purchases, because surely that happens in everybody’s practice. My staff is empowered to make it right. I don’t hold patients to only one remake. I don’t hold them to these very strict rules of what the staff can do for patients. So we are a very patient-centric office in that I really do whatever is necessary to make the patients happy often. I liken it to doing business like Nordstrom, you can wear a pair of shoes, and if they weren’t comfortable, you can bring them back to Nordstrom. Did you know that? It’s amazing. I don’t take advantage of that. But I’ve certainly done it once and I was just so amazed. So that’s how we are and so if a patient is having trouble with situation with our practice, the glasses aren’t working quite right or they weren’t happy with their choice. Then my staff has the flexibility to restyle them and they’re not worried that I’m gonna go after them saying Why did you do this? So the staff knows that they’re empowered to help the patients. There’s really no reason for the patients to hold on to that anger and that they know that we’re really do, I’ll do anything that will make it right, but I just have to know what to do to make it right, So sometimes they have to see me again or what have you, but it creates a good energy.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: And I think we’ve bored Boscoe, he got up and left here right before I wanted to talk about him a little bit
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: I think he sees my kids through the window.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Gotcha. It was watching very attentively and then he’s looking like when are you gonna get to my part? All right. You haven’t talked about me enough yet. I’m going, there’s something more interesting going on in this house. So talk about bringing a dog to work because every time somebody mentions it, it stirs up some controversy. Between the dog lovers and be weird people.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Yeah. I have so many patients who say they come just because of Boscoe and then we all giggle and but it creates a great fun place. Everybody is notified beforehand that there’s a dog in the office. We do live in a very dog-friendly area.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: How do you notify them that there’s a dog?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: So on the door of my practice, my lawyer friend said that I have to legally make notice that there’s a dog on the premises. So we have a sign on the door. It says the Bulldogs are in and that does evidently confuse some people they think that we’re Georgia Bulldog fans or something. But no literally there’s a bulldog in the office but from the appointment reminder, we asked them if there are any issues with having a bulldog in the office. Or if there are any allergies or would you prefer to have the dog elsewhere? Very rarely that occurs but sometimes it does. We always make a note on their appointment “okay with dogs.” So when we go through the appointment every morning, we make sure that they were notified. And of course, this has happened because some have slipped through and they were petrified. But we make sure that everybody is notified and is on their appointment slot okay with dogs.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: And does he like, roam freely in the office, or does he have a spot and kind of get brought out sometimes like what is his day-to-day job description entail?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: He is allowed to roam through the office, but his routine is that he typically sleeps under my desk in my personal office. And then when a patient is Sat, I go, “Alright Boscoe, It’s time to go to work.” And it takes a lot of coercing and he gets up and he slowly walks into the exam room with me with his tongue hanging out. And he often doesn’t even look at the patient in the morning. He just goes straight to his bed underneath my desk. That’s the morning patient. The afternoon patients get the crazy bulldog. The crazy bulldog chases my spotlight as I check pupils, I will make the spotlight from the VIO all over the wall and he will just tear across the exam room. Like he’s a kitty cat. And he goes nuts trying to get it, it’s very funny. And then he often wrestles with the extra person in the exam room. So when I’m seeing a child often it’s kids in the afternoon or someone brings a friend the extra person sitting on the couch in the exam room gets a handful of bulldog and it’s kind of fun. Not very efficient for an exam but it makes for a good time.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Absolutely. I’m a dog person clearly. So I’m Team Boscoe and this one but people are relaxed and they’re comfortable and they’re I don’t know, you’re your best self when you’re playing with the dog. I think.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: It puts me at ease too. And you know, it breaks the ice with a lot of patients. It’s comfortable. And interestingly enough, Boscoe has convinced or maybe it was my old Bulldogs Herbert and Joseph convinced a dentist-patient of mine she ended up getting two dogs in her office because of mine, and named them Max and Mandy for maxillary and mandible. It’s very funny.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: It’s hilarious. Yeah. So when you have those patients that are petrified or say “No, I’m not okay with the dog”, like, is there anybody that says I’m not coming there because you have a dog or that’s unprofessional? That’s terrible.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: I don’t know. That hasn’t gotten through to me. Maybe it has and stuff hasn’t told me. They know that I wouldn’t care. I did one time, and somebody applied to work for me. This was so interesting. He applied to work for me. And in my advertisement, “looking for new employees” I say at the very end “Must Love Dogs”. So even when I’m interviewing people the people work for him. He has to be good with dogs. But he sent me an email berating me, saying “No self-respecting office would ever have a dog in their facility” and kept going on and on. It was like well, then obviously this isn’t a place for you. It’s okay. There are other places you can go work.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Like before he even interviewed this happened?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Yes, yes. He was just responding to my ad. This must be a fake office or fake ad or employment, No self-respecting office, whatever. So I found that very amusing.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Yes. So needless to say, he doesn’t work there.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: There are plenty of offices to choose from. If people don’t want to come where there’s a dog, then there are other places they can go to. The practice is here to serve us. I think a lot of Doctors forget that. They want to be all things to all people. But I think it was Gary Gerber who told me he’s like “The office is here to serve you. Make you happy.” And that’s what we do.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: For somebody who’s in their office and is listening to this and wants what you have like this sounds amazing. I want this but they haven’t prioritized it. And so things are not working. Now. What advice would you give to make the culture better?
Dr.Jennifer Brady Cook 26:15
Read the book “Fish” start there. I would start with that.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Gotcha. Jen, if people want to see your website or want to be able to find you, where do they go?
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Our website is visionaryeyecaretampa.com
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Awesome. It’s worth a look at the website. It’s a great site. It really gives a feel to the practice and to you and your whole team. So congratulations on building what you set out to create and I love that because you put that work in to do it. You get to be somewhere you enjoy working every day. He’s right. The practice is there to serve you. You’ve got to enjoy what you’re doing. And it sounds like you’ve really nailed it. So thank you so much for sharing all of this!
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Thank you so much. And a shout out to Regan Barnes, one of my employees who is now at optometry school for building that whole website from scratch.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Wow! That was an employee who did that.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Yeah. That was an employee who did that. Yeah, she did a wonderful job.
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: Oh, you’re not kidding. Well, public shout-out to her Regan if you hear this great job! and Jen, Thank you again for talking.
Dr. Jennifer Brady-Cook: Thank you so much, Bethany!
Dr. Bethany Fishbein: And for more information on building the practice of your dream. Please check out our website at www.powerpractice.com.