Optometrists Building Empires

Welcome to Optometrists Building Empires! Each week, host Ankit Patel, explores the journey of practice ownership and leadership in optometry with some of the top minds in his field. This show is sponsored by My Business Care Team: We help increase revenue, reduce costs, and reduce staffing headaches. Let's build your empire together!

Optometrists Building Empires is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 107 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Unknown Host hosts Optometrists Building Empires, a business show with 107 episodes published.

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  Episode #106

  Mike Guelcher: Building a Practice That Is Profitable AND Sellable on Your Own Terms

  Aug 13, 202640 min

  Mike Guelcher is one of the few people in eye care who has seen the business from every angle: senior leadership at Allergan, eight years leading acquisition efforts for one of the largest private equity-backed optometry platforms in the country, and hands-on projects inside the exam lane. Now co-founder and managing partner at Prism Consulting Partners and a certified exit planning advisor, Mike helps independent optometry owners build practices that are not just profitable but sellable on their own terms. In this episode, he walks through the 22-year journey that made that work possible, why the sequence of those career steps mattered as much as the steps themselves, and how he learned that prescribing decisions and practice sales alike come down to trust built over years. He also shares how an unexpected corporate reorganization in 2014 turned into the most fortuitous door of his career. If you own a practice you may one day sell, this conversation is a look at the other side of that table.

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  Episode #105

  The 2:15 Problem: Missed Calls, Burnout, and the Half of Optometry That Is Running on Empty

  Aug 6, 202613 min

  It is 2:15 on a Tuesday. A patient sits in her car with 15 minutes before her next meeting, contacts running low, finally ready to book the exam she has been putting off since April. The phone rings four times, five times, and about 30 seconds later she hangs up. Research puts the callback rate closer to 1.5 out of 10, which means roughly 85 percent of those callers never try again. Worse, the call leaves no evidence: no voicemail, no note, no report. Three weeks later the schedule looks soft and it feels like a marketing problem. This solo episode connects that missed call to the burnout data. A University of Colorado study of U.S. optometrists found 53.6 percent burned out, with only four tenths of a clinical day separating the most burned out doctors from the least, and EMR users running 17 percentage points higher. The fix is not working harder. It is changing the ratio of what you personally do.

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  Episode #104

  From Burnout to Building a Team of Travel Optometrists with Dr. Fred Cho

  Jul 31, 202637 min

  Dr. Fred Cho is not a practice owner and never has been, yet he is building something most ODs do not know exists: a team of travel optometrists serving remote communities and filling a multi-provincial doctor shortage in Canada. Licensed in Ontario, Manitoba, and Newfoundland, the University of Waterloo grad tells Ankit how burnout forced the change that reshaped his whole career, and why he now speaks, blogs, and podcasts about building a career that actually fits your life. A different kind of empire, built on freedom, geography, and a business model worth understanding whether you own chairs or fill them.

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  Episode #103

  What Your Practice Is Actually Worth: EBITDA, the 50% Rule, and the 25% Benchmark

  Jul 23, 202610 min

  A solo episode pulled from the iCareGrow series conversations. EBITDA gets thrown at practice owners every time a buyer makes an offer or a bank sizes a loan, and most owners nod along without knowing what it really measures. Ankit breaks it down in plain terms: what EBITDA is, why it isn't cash flow, the 50% cost benchmark, the 80% schedule-fill check, the 25% doctor take-home target, and a rule-of-thumb range for what a practice might sell for. Grab your P&L and follow along. Join the next event at iCareGrow.com. Connect with Ankit: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankitpatelcvc/ MyBCAT: https://www.mybcat.com iCareGrow events: https://icaregrow.com/ Book a meeting with Ankit (free copy of his book Optometry Redefined included): https://meetings.hubspot.com/ankit98/optometry-redefined Optometrists Building Empires: https://buildingempires.live

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  Episode #101

  Scaling True Eye Experts as a Non-OD CEO with Kevin Whaley Stefany

  Jul 9, 202638 min

  Kevin Whaley Stefany is a master optician and one of the few non-OD CEOs in optometry. He co-founded The Eye Doctors, which scaled into True Eye Experts, an award-winning multi-location group in the Tampa Bay area, and led it as CEO for more than 14 years. Now the founder of Autograph Eye, he talks with Ankit Patel about the optician-to-CEO path, office efficiency, new revenue streams, and what it takes to grow a multi-location optometry group. Sponsored by My Business Care Team. https://mybcat.com

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