EYE OWN A BUSINESS
What does your dream optometry practice look like, and are you ready to make it a reality? Whether you’re an established owner, an aspiring optometrist, or someone looking to grow within the field, Eye Own a Business is your go-to resource for building a thriving practice and a fulfilling career. Hosted by Dr. Steve Vargo, a former optometrist turned expert in practice management, this podcast offers invaluable insights to help you grow both your business and your patient care. Each episode focuses on two essential pillars: elevating your practice’s operations and enhancing the patient experience. We understand that runn...
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How to Get 10 Hours a Week Back With AI (And What to Do With Them)
<p>In this episode, Dr. Steve Vargo marks the release of his new book, Human-Centered AI: How Doctors Can Use AI to Reclaim Time, Restore Connection, and Love This Work Again, and shares the personal story behind it.</p> <p>Steve opens with a look at how he's using AI to get back roughly 10 hours a week: an agent that sorts his inbox every morning, a team of 11 AI assistants led by an executive assistant named Jordan, deep research reports he turns into podcasts for his dog walks, a book landing page built in about 10 minutes, and a podcast post-production...
Why Price Is Rarely the Real Reason Patients Say No | Shareef Mahdavi
<p>In this episode, Dr. Steve Vargo sits down with Shareef Mahdavi, author of Beyond Bedside Manner and a longtime patient experience strategist, for a conversation about the part of healthcare most practices still treat as optional: how patients feel.</p> <p>Steve and Shareef unpack why the so-called soft skills aren't soft at all. They talk about why your receptionist is really your director of first impressions, why doctors tend to interrupt patients within seconds, and what changes when the doctor stops playing the hero and starts acting as the patient's guide. They also dig into why price is...
Why Most ODs Are Still Sitting Out Myopia Management (and How to Start)
<p>In this episode, Dr. Steve Vargo sits down with Dr. James Loughman, professor of optometry, founder of the Centre for Eye Research Ireland, and CEO of Ocumetra, and Dr. Ece Turhal, optometrist and director of product management at Topcon Healthcare, for a practical conversation about why so many ODs are still on the sidelines of myopia management.</p> <p>Steve, James, and Ece work through the three barriers that keep doctors out: clinical education, instrumentation, and the discomfort of anything that feels like selling. They explore why confidence, more than knowledge, sits underneath all three, why any amount of...
Why Your Revenue Per Patient Is Stuck — and How One OD Nearly Tripled His
<p>In this episode, Dr. Steve Vargo sits down with Dr. Zach Holland, owner of the Cornea and Contact Lens Institute of Minnesota, to unpack how a specialty practice grew its revenue per exam from roughly $562 to more than $1,500 — and why there was never a step-by-step playbook behind it.</p> <p>Steve and Zach talk through how Zach layered specialty pillars one at a time — scleral lenses, myopia control, dry eye, clinical trials, and in-office corneal cross-linking — using the profit from each to fund the next. They get into why he stopped referring cross-linking out, why he doesn't schedule separate consul...
If Your Capture Rate Is Stuck Near 50%, Listen to This
<p>In this episode, Dr. Steve Vargo sits down with Andrew Bruce, a licensed optician with master-level credentials in both ophthalmic optics and contact lenses, for a practical conversation about what actually keeps patients — and their eyewear purchases — inside the practice.</p> <p>Steve and Andrew start with a metric that’s quietly slipping in a lot of offices: capture rate. Andrew walks through what moved the needle during his 15 years running an optical in southwest Washington, from stocking the frames your patients are actually asking for to a doctor-optician handoff that transfers authority instead of just walking someone across the ro...
How to Get People to Say Yes Without Sounding Like a Salesperson
<p>In this episode, Dr. Steve Vargo tackles the challenge that quietly separates good practices from great ones: getting people to actually act on what you recommend.</p> <p>Inspired by conversations at IDOC’s recent sales meetings in Pittsburgh, Steve shares three lessons from his audio course built on the principles in his book Prescribing Change. First, the power of curiosity: why the most persuasive conversation Steve ever had was with a financial advisor who never once pitched his services, and how a simple three-part sequence of questions (what, how, and what if) gets patients leaning in before you ma...
Capture Rate Starts in the Exam Room
<p>In this episode, Dr. Steve Vargo sits down with Amie Robinson, ABOC, optical manager at Spring Hill Eyecare, to reframe one of the most overlooked moments in a patient's visit: the handoff from exam room to optical.</p> <p>Amie makes the case that the handoff isn't a courtesy — it's the ignition switch for the entire optical revenue engine. She and Steve unpack why patient hesitation is so often mistaken for a price objection when it's really a confidence problem, and how a doctor's 30-second recommendation transfers clinical authority in a way an optician can't replicate alone. Amy shares a...
Re-Release: Team Building: The Magic Wand to Creating a Multi-Million Dollar Practice
<p>“You can make drama or you can make money, but you can’t make both. The thing that Zig (Ziglar) always said about building a team is that “together everyone achieves more”. I have found in my 25 plus years of consulting that this is the magic wand to creating a multi-million dollar practice. The team is everything.” </p> <p>The above is directly off of Sharon Carter’s website. In this episode, we tackle the topic of team building and the impact this has on your practice. If you aspire to be a better leader and build a team that takes yo...
The Top Mistake Killing Your Second Pair Sales (It's Not Price)
<p>In this episode, Dr. Steve Vargo tackles a question that's easy to write off as an inventory problem but is actually a communication problem: why do most patients own five pairs of shoes and only one pair of glasses?</p> <p>Steve breaks down why the practices that sell more second pairs aren't better salespeople — they're better at staying curious about the patient in front of them, and that curiosity has to start in the exam chair, not the optical. He walks through what a real structured handoff between doctor and optician actually sounds like, why decision fatigue quietly ki...
“I Like to Make Money” — The Optometrist Who Refuses to Apologize for It
<p>In this episode, Dr. Steve Vargo sits down with Dr. Allan Panzer, OD, a Houston optometrist with 47 years in practice and owner of the Houston Dry Eye Clinic, for a wide-ranging conversation about the connection between financial ambition and clinical excellence — starting with a line most doctors would never say out loud: “I like to make money.”</p> <p>Steve and Allan dig into what that admission actually means for a practice. Allan walks through his history as an early Optos adopter — he was the second optometrist in the country to own a Daytona — and explains the return-on-investment thinking behind his...
