Milissa Stone, Licensed Operator (LO), at Pearle Vision in Grand Junction, Colorado, says she’s gained so much confidence in her business decisions since becoming a SNAPP member. In fact, she’s also active on the SNAPP Board, and she loves where SNAPP has been and where it may be going.
![](images/StoneMilissa_200_223.png) Milissa Stone
“I’ve changed so much as a result of my involvement in SNAPP,” she says. “I’ve gone from working 9-5 on the retail floor or covering the front desk to almost entirely pulling myself away from that and working on the business.”
And…it was due to encouragement from SNAPP members that she moved her Pearle Vision Eye Care Center out of a rental space, bought a building—half of which she leases to a dermatologist—and reaped the benefits of having moved from renting 1,500 square feet to owning a building with 7,000 square feet.
SnappGroupMasterminds
As helpful as SNAPP National Meetings have been, Stone says that she recently has gained even more benefits by becoming part of the SnappGroupMasterminds. Group participants enroll, pay an annual fee and meet four times a year—at least one or two of those in person. The advantage is that the group dives deep into both tangible and intangible aspects of their businesses.
For example, the first group held a Shark Tank-like event during which people presented their best business ideas in a creative format modeled after the popular TV show of the same name. “The idea exchange was amazing, and these LOs and doctors were sharing an enormous amount of experience about how to operate a business and what drives revenue in their locations,” she says.
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A key takeaway for Stone was to shift an employee’s role each day to focus exclusively on customer care. “Now that I’m not working on the floor each day but can view the practice, I could see that when we have five people on the floor, about four of them are regularly busy. So I thought I would start rotating one person a day out of his/her regular retail floor duties and move them into this customer care role, which involves greeting patients, explaining any expected wait times, answering questions and making sure they leave without unanswered questions.”
This move has already proven to increase patient satisfaction, flow and even revenues. Patients feel seen and heard and make a personal connection with someone immediately.
The staff members have also enjoyed the change in routine. Hearing more directly from patients about what’s confusing in the process or what they don’t understand also encourages the employees to take greater ownership of the patient experience.
Proof in the metrics
While Stone is happy to share the ideas that work for her, she’s also competitive about her own performance. Some of the participants in the SnappGroupMasterminds typically rank higher than she does in the company’s high-performing operators listing. “My eye care center had seemingly plateaued at #19 for quite some time. It was like I couldn’t get out of my own way to push it higher,” she says. But listening to the other SnappGroupMasterminds participants and analyzing their data has helped her identify opportunities in her pricing strategy. In fact, changing her fees and system for collecting co-pays has catapulted her practice to #5 on the company’s list.
“We are not in competition with each other locally, so SnappGroupMasterminds members are open to sharing the details. We can learn so much from how other people do this, and with the year-long SnappGroupMasterminds program, we have the time to really get to share these best ideas,” she says.
Stone remembers becoming a new LO and how intimidated she felt. She took over the franchise in 2005; she had been working in that location as an optician since 1992. “I’m not a doctor-owner. I have one store. I thought I was limited. But once I began to surround myself with people who perform better than I did, my performance improved,” she says. Plus, the more she dared try new strategies in her office, the more she had to share with others in the network.
The next SNAPP Mastermind group will be forming soon. To learn more about becoming a member of an intimate group dedicated to improving the business, contact Dr. Lisa Hamilton.
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