It has been said that the doctors on the site don't offer enough constructive advice. So here I am...
I don't know about any other doctors but if you have any questions for me I'd be happy to answer them. But rule #1 is to make the questions to the point. I'd rather not type forever. 😉Rule #2, I won't argue with anyone. Please respect my opinion. 🙂Most of my comments will only be from my perspective and I'm not going to give you studies or statistics. Take it at face value.
Let's see how many questions I get.
( I'd appreciate it if only optometry students post in this thread. Thank you. )
I was asked to tell my story so here it is... Believe it or not, THIS IS THE SHORT VERSION! Could have been waaaaaaaaaaaaaay longer
😉
I want to tell this story to show you that it's a tough world out there and you need to be prepared for it. There are a lot of unscrupulous people in the world and many of them are ODs and OMDs. Believe me, Im no dummy. I was an electrical engineer in my prior life for five years at IBM so its not like I hadnt seen the world. I probably could write a book about my life but I dont think anyone would even care. Anyway
Here goes
I originally went to optometry school to become a private practice optometrist. That was my dream. I wanted to own a large practice.
I was an electrical engineer at the time at IBM having worked for five years in Texas. Really it only took me one day on the job before I realized, in a cold sweat, what the heck am I doing? Im not corporate material! Five years of pure torture, going through yearly layoffs convinced me that engineering was ridiculous. I didnt want my life dictated by corporate profit takers. So I needed an occupation where I could be in control. Took me two years of night classes to do my biology and chemistry preregs.
Lucky for me, the least expensive optometry school at the time, UHCO, happened to be in the same state as my residence. Unlucky for me, the admissions director was an ___ and he required me to take additional courses which made no sense. I could have made an additional $10K at my job in that time! What a jerk.
During one of my externships I was ill and the attending thought I was faking it so he told me to not come back. Odd that he didn't take it upon himself to examine my eyes since they were killing me. Anyway, the school did nothing about it. He was a big benefactor so obviously who cares about the student. I then went to a LASIK center to finish out my externship but it was a place that no one wanted to work at (thats why there was an opening). I could see why. They were slave drivers and didnt bother to teach anything. During my second week I had to move my family: my wife, my 80 yo mother-in-law, and my newborn to a new residence and we miscalculated on the time. It took us until 4 am, I overslept, showed up at "work" two hours late, and I was let go again. I finished my externships 3 months late.
Oh well. I graduated in 99.
My first real job was in Houston at Eyemasters. The "owner" of the doctor side owned five locations and he promised me an ownership position after two years. I soon grew weary of the commercialism, the lack of equipment, the shuttling around, and what I was certain of a broken promise if I kept that up since there was nothing written. I quit after only 60 days. Made me feel ill since I wasnt sure what to do next.
I had no idea what I was going to do but decided to work for myself by filling in up and down the Texas Gulf Coast. Turned out to be a pretty good gig except that I had to travel a lot. It was a good experience since I got to see a lot of commercial and private practices and how they ran. I advertised my availability and I was generally able to keep up the work assignments with no interruptions for a full year.
One doc tried to sell me his office which interestingly was a Vision Source in the Houston underground. Boy was that a hard sell! Looked like a good opportunity but it seemed like he was really trying the hard press trying to get me to agree to his over-inflated price. I almost went for it. Glad I didn't. One month later I heard he sold the practice and moved to California. An odd get away huh? Then shortly thereafter I read an article from the Texas Optometry board that this doctor lost his license. Not sure what the reason was thinking back on it but I remember that it reflected very negatively on the practice
We then decided to move to Colorado to work for a Wal-Mart in the middle of nowhere USA. Yeah, it was spectacular since our house was at 8,000 feet. It had an outdoor hot tub complete with elk that came through the back yard regularly. It was awesome sitting under a clear moonless night in mid-winter.
I worked six days per week and it was miserable. I thought I could do this for a few years and build up some savings so I could buy a practice. The store manager was a jerk since he couldn't keep his little troll self out of my office. He thought he ran this little town and of course he didn't want some punk optometrist telling him what to do. But I did everything I could to try to build that practice by even working WITH the optical because we could mutually expand our businesses. Hey, I was into making money right? He opened all my mail with his excuse being the anthrax scare at the time. Funny that he didn't open the bank's mail. I told him that I had confidential information that should not be tampered with. Didn't matter. The optical personnel came into my office at all hours getting trial contacts which was ridiculous so I piled up all the contacts in the optical after a couple of months of that crap. The troll came in whenever he felt like it to remove things from my walls telling me that it was interfering with their cameras. Whenever there was a disagreement with a patient, of course he took the customer's side 100%. He even griped at me when a stupid volunteer complained about where I was parking. Yeah, okay, 20 acres of empty parking wasn't enough for a town of 12,000 people. Long story short: New optical manager comes in, acts like I'm the devil, conspires to get me fired. She was a wacko! Turns out my
good friend from optometry school worked with this optical manager (they were good friends) and the store manager behind the scenes for six months and she was installed as the next optometrist in my place. Thats right, they conspired to have me fired. She always wanted to live in the area and apparently it didn't matter that she kicked her friend to the street. She is still there.
So I sat in our house for three months looking for more opportunities. Felt that Colorado wasnt it so we found a great practice for sale in Georgia. Saw twice the national average of patients a year but had a high percentage of VSP. Ugh. But I thought it could be a good practice to build up the medical side. Had to work for this guy for two years and he would sell to me. It was awful. I had to sit with his horrible wife in the back and she was a pig who had a really bad attitude. The doc had congestive heart failure and it was part of the deal that I hire him so that it would carry him to Medicare age. Long story that I wont get into. Anyway, he was quite ill originally then it seemed that he was getting better by the day. He was an arrogant SOB who changed the contract is seemed daily for no other reason than the felt like it. Don't like it? Then walk out. was his response. He sure was a nice guy in the beginninglike a Southern Gentlemanbut I sure learned the true him. Like I had any thoughts of leaving after investing so much time and energy! Long story short: He pulled out at the closing table (at the 11th hour) telling me he changed his mind. Sure we had a contract and I could have sued him but it would have meant living like a street person so I could prove that we were damaged severely. Yeah, we came THAT close to buying this place.
Turns out, he shafted a couple before us, and he did the same thing to one other doctor after me. But he opened right across the street so that may have backfired on him.
It took me about a month to recover from severe depression. I just suddenly snapped out of it. I then spent the next 4 months filling in at various places from Augusta to Savannah. In the meantime I was scouring the trade magazines, the AOA news, and the internet looking for another practice to buy. I searched in 25 states and went through at least 100 offers. We took about 8 seriously. Most offers were just ridiculous. Its really interesting what doctors will tell you to inflate their bottom line. Often they will tell you that they wrote off thousands from various things like their furniture in their houses. Incredible how many docs took me for a sap.
One doctor here in Connecticut actually made me fly out to the state (from GA), seemed like we practically had a deal, when they told me oh by the way, we just installed a new phone system, that will be $5,000 more. No thanks. Good bye. (it was more to it than just that but it illustrated how sleezy this guy wasI didnt see this deal going anywhere).
Just missed a million dollar practice in Ohio where the doctor died suddenly. The wolves really come out of their dens when this happens.
Looked at places in Chicago, Pennsylvania, Virginia, California, Washington, and each one of these places just had ridiculous offers or the sleeze factor was too high. Then we finally found a great offer in CT. The owners appeared to be ready to sell, the office was really nice, and the patient base was great. But
This deal almost didnt go through either at the closing table because the sellers let the frame inventory run dry. So I would have owned an optical with zero frames. We worked that one out fortunately. I told them point blank, this is the way its going to be or no deal. My attorney looked at me like I was nuts. I was fully prepared to walk away. I had been screwed so many times I knew what it felt like to hit bottom so this was nothing new. Learn the power of walking away. It works. Although I believe I way over paid, it has worked out in the end.
We are now the proud owners of a million dollar practice.
Yeah, I admit I made a lot of mistakes. Maybe I was a bit too trustingat least in my younger days. Im not that way now believe me. I dont trust anyone, but maybe thats not good either. Maybe I could just say I ran into some incredibly bad luck. I like to think it was this to preserve my precious ego. Looking back, Im not sure what I could have done differently or if I could have seen the signs and avoided certain disasters. Fortunately, I never lost huge sums of money except maybe my time and energy. The practice in GA did cost us quite a bit since we had to hire attorneys to put together the deal and the jerk owner ran up the bill since he kept making changes. But it wasnt enough to keep us from buying a large practice. Anyway
I was persistent in getting what I wanted. I wasnt about to let anything get in the way of my dream.
My advice to you: Take chances since youll never really live without doing it and dont ever give up on your dreams.
The bartender kept trying to get me to drink beer.. and I soooo wanted that beer. But, figured OD with beer breath after lunch was probably a bad idea. (even if my team IS winning) 
