Anyone who has a passion for sports vision can start offering this specialty service in the current clinical set up. This is what today’s guest shares with us. Dr. Jennifer Stewart is a former Div 1 athlete, business consultant, founder of a sports vision clinic called OD Perspectives, and creator of the Performance 20/20 sports vision training program. In this episode, Dr. Stewart discusses her journey from wanting to be a vet to becoming a well-recognized speaker, author, and consultant in the eye care space. She also gives us some insight into what a thriving specialty clinic looks like. Dr. Stewart is a strong advocate for private practice optometry. As such, she is active in consulting for and supporting private practice optometrists around North America. Join in and listen to what she has to say!
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Sports, Business, And Independence - Dr. Jennifer Stewart
Thank you so much for taking the time to join me as always to learn and to grow. I'm super excited to have you here because I have a wonderful guest that I've been hoping to have for a while, Dr. Jennifer Stewart. If you haven't heard of Dr. Jennifer Stewart, she is an optometrist, international speaker, writer, consultant, and entrepreneur with a deep interest in sports vision. Jennifer is a Cofounder of Performance 20/20. She is also the recipient of the Theia Award for Innovation from Women in Optometry. She is a fellow grad of the New England College of Optometry. Go, NECO. Thank you, Dr. Stewart, for joining me here on the show.
Thank you. I should have worn my NECO sweatshirt. I should have been all decked out.
I'm not, although I have this. It sits here. I've got this thing. They sent me that for doing some speaking thing a while back. I'm very happy to keep it.
Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here. I love your show. I've been such a fan. Thank you for asking me. I'm excited to talk about everything we have planned to talk about.
Thank you. Me as well. On a personal note, the first time we met in person was briefly at Vision Expo or something but it was like I was seeing a friend. That's the beauty of the digital world, social media, podcasts, and all this stuff. You get to know people. We're lucky to have so many good people like yourself in the industry, honestly. It's always fun going to events like Expo to meet people. Maybe it was New York. I also saw you speak at the Vision Monday thing at the Global Summit. That's what it was.
When you're on stage and speaking about what you do and what is to come in optometry, I was intrigued by what you had to say. One of the big things is I am a huge sports fan. Give me anything sports related, I will watch it, listen to it, and read it. That has been your career. You've been in sports. I want to start with before you became an optometrist because you are a high-level athlete yourself. Tell us a little bit about what types of athletics and sports you've been into.
I've done everything at this point. I was a track and field athlete all through high school. I competed in Division 1 track and field in college. I was a triple jumper, long jumper, and a shot putter. I was more of a field event specialist all through college. I spent a decade after college competing in triathlons in all different distances from short to Half Ironman. I've done road races, marathons, and trail races. I was competing as a cyclist for a little bit. I competed in Olympic weightlifting for the last few years. I was not in the Olympics but Olympic weightlifting.
It's the style of weightlifting, but still to compete in that is incredible. I've heard you speak to that a little bit. It's not just lifting weights. You have to learn the movements. There are a lot of mechanics and biomechanics that go into that to make it efficient. That's stuff that I'm happy to go into the nitty-gritty about but we will save the audience all of that detail. What do you feel like you took from your time? You're still competing in various sports. At Div 1 level, what did you learn competing at such a high level that you're able to bring into your career?
It was a lot of work and a lot of time management. As a Division 1 athlete and a pre-med student at the same time, I was the only one combining a challenging course load with a sport that is all year. I did indoor and outdoor track. From August through May, we were competing and training. Time management was the biggest. It's learning how to prioritize time, school, studying and work. That has helped me and it translated even now. I'm super efficient with my time. I schedule everything. I know when I'm most effective.
As we were talking about before, I'm a morning person. I am not an afternoon or evening person. For any hard work or thinking I need to do, I usually block out my calendar for the morning to do that. I do a lot of writing. I do all of that in the morning. Competing like that made you figure out when you are your best and when you do your best at certain things. I had to get it done at certain times. That's still how I work. Around 2:00, I shut everything down. I could still do other things but I know I'm not going to write an article at 2:00 or 3:00 because no one would want to read that.
I'm sure people would still enjoy it but fair enough. It may not be your best work. I had on Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Hayley Wickenheiser, an ice hockey player. That was one of the questions I asked her as well. She competed at the highest possible level of her sport. Time management was one of the key things that she said too.
That translated into her going into medical school and all this stuff as well. The other thing she took away that I wanted to ask you and I've understood at least from my conversations with athletes is grit. It's the ability where you know you have to push through this practice or this thing. Would you agree that you get grit from your sports training and that translates?
I love the word grit. I’m always looking to do something new even when it's hard and thinking of a new business to start or a new venture. Even presenting in front of a huge crowd can be intimidating but you get up and do it. That's how I felt when we started our sports vision practice. It was a lot of work. Creating something out of nothing was challenging, but every day I got up and did something. Even if I didn't feel like I was making progress when I would step back and look a year or six months in the rearview mirror, I'm like, "We have accomplished a lot."
Sports Vision: Starting a sports vision clinic was a lot of work. Creating something out of nothing was really challenging.
I would agree that grit is part of it, grit and practice. The last couple of years have been challenging as a business owner. All of us at times wanted to give up and be like, "What else can we handle at this moment?" Grit gets you through and helps you be a better leader of your team. Going through COVID as business owners, none of us knew what to do or how we were going to come out of this but we had to keep pushing through, especially for our staff, to say, "We're going to be fine. I don't know when will open or how it's going to look but we will all be fine." That grit translates into leadership as well.
The grit that you learn from sports translates into leadership and business as well.
It's leadership by example. If your staff sees that you're continuing to push through no matter what the obstacles are, they will get the courage and motivation to do the same. Let's talk a little bit about practice. I'm a big sports fan myself. I've seen what you've done at least a little bit in the sports vision space. I find that super intriguing. I would love to learn lots more about it and share that with our colleagues too to see if there's any interest out there for our colleagues to get into that space a little bit as well. First off, how did you find yourself in that in that space of sports vision? You're an athlete but how did you decide to open up an entire sports vision center?
It took me a long time. I started when I was at NECO. I co-founded the Performance Vision Club, which is still thriving and growing. It’s amazing. I think it’s almost twenty years. I teach a sports vision elective at NECO. I knew that it was a field or a niche that I was interested in. I was introduced to a colleague, Dr. Don Teig, when I was a 1st or 2nd-year student at NECO. He was in Connecticut at the time and was one of the largest sports vision practitioners. He invited me to come by and see what he was doing.
I knew that it was something I wanted to do. I just didn't know how. I spent the time at NECO figuring that out and trying to get involved in the community and network. I went to every national meeting possible to be in the room with other people who were doing sports vision to be a sponge and learn from them. I thought, "As soon as I graduate, I'm going to start a sports vision practice." It took me ten years. Life gets busy. I bought a practice three years after graduation.
I was busy growing the practice and learning how to run a practice. I had two kids. I graduated from NECO in 2007. In 2015, we opened Performance 20/20. It was something that was always on the back of my mind. Every year, it was on my list. The year would go by and I'm like, "I didn't get to it yet but I will." There's never a good time to start a new business. My husband and I decided that if we were going to do it, we should figure out how to do it, and we did.
There are so many lessons in that. One is if you want to start a business or become something, you have to put yourself into it and fully immerse yourself in that world, going to all the conferences and speaking to everybody. Finally, there's never a perfect time to open a business. There's no such thing. There are always going to be crazy obstacles. You just have to do it. I assume they're mostly athletes. What types of patients or athletes were you seeing?
Mostly hockey, so Canadian people. My Canadian friends are very big hockey fans. I was not a hockey person at all. I had never been to a hockey game. I knew zero about hockey, but we ended up with a space in a large hockey facility. It ended up being the perfect location for a sports vision practice because we were around the athletes. There was a strength training facility, a chiropractor group, a physical therapy group, and hockey players everywhere.
I had to learn about hockey pretty quickly. I delved into learning about the positions, but I was very honest about what I didn't know. I didn't pretend to be an expert. By nature of the people we worked with, we mostly worked with goalies. I got to be good at understanding what the goalies' needs were. That translated to lacrosse. We had a lot of lacrosse players. It's another sport I had zero knowledge of. I had never been to a lacrosse game.
I probably picked the two sports I was least familiar with, but I grew to appreciate working with the athletes and understanding what they needed and how to design a training plan for that. I'm impressed with the work ethic of the athletes that we have, how much they love their sports, and how excited they were to teach me. That was almost 6 or 7years ago and we're still close with some of the first athletes we worked with. We're now much older.
It was a slow evolution of starting a business and at first, expecting that as soon as we opened the door, people would flood in and go, "This is the best business idea that we have ever heard. We want to give you lots of money." It doesn't happen that way. With grit, I got in front of anyone who would listen to me talk about sports vision. I spoke in front of coaches, athletes, parents and people. I did demos and pounded the pavement to get the word out. I networked and learned from other people.
I joined the International Sports Vision Association. I'm on the executive board. I found like-minded people who were equally passionate and excited to share their knowledge. I am in the role now to do that for other people. I'm excited about sports vision. I find my role now is more on outreach, education, helping people develop their sports vision practice, and helping them figure out what they want to do and how to do it and be out there talking about it.
I will open invite. We have our next conference in February of 2023 in Texas. It is an international conference. Please visit International Sports Vision Association if sports vision is something you're interested in. We have such an awesome program already set of great speakers. It’s not just optometrists. We have athletic trainers, physical therapists, and chiropractors. We're open to anyone that works with athletes. It's a great way to network and learn.
Sports Vision: If sports vision is something you're interested in, visit International Sports Vision Association. It has such a really awesome program and a set of great speakers. It’s a great way to network and learn.
That's amazing because that was going to lead to one of my next questions. What if there is an optometrist out there who is interested, how can they get involved? That's perfect. What you did is you immersed yourself in that world and attended these conferences. I recommend checking that out in 2023. Is there something you would say to another OD to tell them that it's a valuable specialty for them to bring in or lean into? Is it something that you can just tack onto your existing practice if you have space? Do you have set up a totally separate performance center like what you have?
My answer is all of the above. It has been fun. I've been doing my lecture for the NECO students. The way I set up the first three lectures was an introduction to sports vision. What is it? My second lecture was sports vision for the primary care optometrist. We decided to add that in for students who might graduate and are not in the right situation for them to open a Performance 20/20 completely separate from their location like I did, but they might be in a commercial location or an associate in a practice that might not have sports vision.
We talked about ways to even start talking to patients differently about their needs, fitting contact lenses differently, prescribing sports eyewear, which is a huge passion of mine, and making sure we're recommending independently tested protective eyewear. Every one of us could practice sports vision today, tomorrow or next week, depending on how we talk to the patient in our chair. That can go from that to opening up multiple locations of sports vision practices.
It's such a cool niche and a specialty because you can do it for the next patient you see after reading this. You can go in and talk to them a little bit differently about their sports and hobbies, and make specific recommendations without having any fancy equipment and spending any extra money. I've worked with lots of doctors on setting up clinics where they say, "I can't buy a building or open another space but I have an extra lane or a small corner of my office. Can I start doing additional training?"
We work together to figure out what equipment they can buy or fit, and develop a program from that. It can be as simple as thinking about your patients as athletes to developing this complex program and facility. The great thing is anyone can do it. It depends on where you are now and where you might end up tomorrow to be able to do that.
That's good to know. I've had a very big interest in sports and sports vision as well but I never knew where to start. Now I know. Every time I think about sports vision, I think about the thing where the person is tapping. Is that one of the things that most people are doing? Can you give me an example of a couple of different tests or activities that you run with athletes?
We have the synaptic sensory station, which is a big touch screen that athletes are using. That one is their eye-hand coordination or quickness of movement. That's one of my favorite pieces because it's a great piece of technology. It's also one of the most expensive. Sometimes people get stuck because they look at the price tag of this equipment. They're like, "I can't do that," but in starting a practice, maybe you don't get an OCT or an Optos right away, but you start with some other equipment and then put that on your list.
When I work with consulting clients, we have our dream list or our wish list of equipment, "What do you want? What can you afford? How do we get there? and plan for that. When I speak to the students, I tell them, "You could do sports vision now with a lot of the tools you're using." We use a lot of Hart charts and Marsden balls. I know that people are like, "I'm digging deep for my binocular vision knowledge." I'm not a binocular vision person. I didn't do a residency. We do a lot of this in free space.
One of my hesitations to start was that I refer out for binocular vision. I have some great colleagues that do that. I had some people reach out to me and say, "I would love to do it but I didn't do residency. I don't do a lot of vernacular vision." There are different ways of training athletes. We used a lot of that technology but we used it at a distance. We had Hart charts and Marsden balls. You get creative with balance. There are balance boards, BOSU balls, trampolines, and lots of ball tossing and juggling.
If you watched Hard Knocks: The Detroit Lions, they did their pre-season. One of the players was juggling. He talked about how he loves to juggle because it helps him with his hand-eye coordination. I was like, "There it is." We did a lot of work with ball toss trail strobes, which are the glasses that go on that flicker and block your vision to help you with anticipating and your brain processing quicker. Those are a little bit more of an investment than Hart charts and Marsden balls, but you can do a lot with very little and a lot of creativity. The barrier to entry is not quite as much as most people think. With some creativity, you can do a lot with less.
That's great to know. I find the analogy there. I've leaned into the dry eye as a specialty over the last couple of years. For me and a lot of ODs as well, when you look at a specialty like dry eye, I want to have the big shiny IPL plus the big meibography. The next thing you know, it's $150,000. If you want to start doing dry eye, you need to first start asking the patient the right questions. You already have a slit lamp, fluorescein, and some of the tools that you need. Do the questionnaires first and then slowly work your way. That sounds analogous to what you're saying about sports vision.
In any practice, a lot of the people that are coming in are athletes, whether they're kids or adults. We forget our adult patients are competitive athletes as well. It's not even having to go out and recruit new patients and new athletes to your practice. By asking better questions and then giving different solutions that they might not get at a normal exam, you're already a sports vision doctor. You're thinking about smaller prescriptions. I will prescribe minus a quarter in one eye for an athlete because it makes a difference.
Making sure that you're optical has good independently tested sports protection and that you're up to date on all of the standards of different lenses already sets you apart as a sports vision doctor because you know something more than the doctor down the street. You're up-to-date on the newest technology. You're looking out to protect your patient.
Sports Vision: Just making sure that your optical has good independently-tested sports protection and that you're up to date on all of the standards of different lenses already sets you apart as a sports vision doctor.
You're offering a service that most practices are not with a very small amount of education, investment, time and money. You're talking to patients differently about nutrition, supplementation, glare, contrast, and visual acuity. You’re asking good questions, digging a little deeper into what they might be struggling with, and recommending a macular supplement to help with contrast and glare. They are going, "I didn't even think of that," and being a little different and a little more thoughtful.
That is a perfect segue into the next segment of questions I wanted to ask you. A lot of this talk about specializing and asking unique questions is something that will distinguish your practice from other practices, chains, and entities out there. On my show, I've been having a lot of conversations about those types of things, private practice, corporate, private equity, and so on.
One of the core themes that keep coming back through those conversations is that optometrists have the power to distinguish themselves to weather any storm and overcome any challenge, obstacle, or competitor. I feel that way myself. You are very invested in that world of private practice and independent optometry yourself. You write for Independent Strong. Can you tell me a little bit about what that is and what your title is there?
I'm the new professional editor of Independent Strong, which is a newer Jobson publication, which is aimed at supporting independent practices, whether optometry, Opticianry, or independence in eyecare. I was super honored to be asked. In my whole career, I've been in practice for fifteen years. I've been in independent and private practice the whole time. I am strongly invested and truly believe in independent eyecare.
I love optometry and all of the ways that you can be successful. No matter what changes happen, optometry keeps evolving and things keep changing, but a private practice that provides great patient care and is always on the cutting edge will be successful. We can't rest on our laurels. Any business is like that. You can't be complacent. You always have to be improving and looking to be better. In independent eyecare, we have such opportunity to do that, whether it's specialties, dry eye, sports vision, low vision, myopia management, and aesthetics.
We have such a lot of different things we can offer our patients. Independent frame is looking at what you have in your optical independent labs and lenses, supporting other businesses that support independent practice, and being around other doctors that are independent. I'm a member of EyeDock. I've been a member for my whole career being part of organizations that are focused on independent eyecare.
I'm super excited to be on the team for Independent Strong. We are providing high-level content to support our fellow independent practitioners. I encourage you, if you haven't signed up or visited the website, we're working hard on some great content. We have 2023 pretty much planned out. I'm excited about what we're doing there. September was my first month as the editor.
I shared a lot about what brought me into optometry and private practice in my editorial and then talked about storytelling, which is one of my favorite things to talk about in one of my articles. Any part of optometry that I'm in is supporting my fellow independence, giving them a voice, and making sure they feel supported and feel that they are able to be successful.
In Canada, alarm bells are ringing. Specsavers is the new entrant into the Canadian market that's making a big splash and that has got everybody on the edge, but private equity has been a factor here for a few years now. The US is a much bigger market. Things like that have been happening there for longer like the value chains, the private equities, and so on. Do you feel from your experience that private optometry will always have a place in the industry? Will it stay strong? Is there a fear of potentially this all being gobbled up at some point?
If anything, it's growing. It could be the people I surround myself with. In every forum I was on, and you're on them too, I've seen such a change in the questions people are asking and the path that they're looking to take, especially new grads and newer practitioners. I've seen more posts about cold starts and practice buy-ins, "I want to practice the way that I want." It was COVID partially that people took stock of how they wanted to live their lives and how they wanted that to look.
A lot of them are choosing a private practice. Either it might be that they don't find a practice they want to buy so they're starting cold. When I was graduating, I felt like I didn't see that as much. Maybe it's social media, and you're seeing it more. A lot of my classmates are either now or a few years ago starting cold. We have been out for fifteen years, but I'm seeing it more in the newer grads and even our colleagues that have consulting.
There are a lot of cold-start programs that are coming out and are out now that are aimed at supporting these practices. If anything, there's going to be a resurgence of people starting practices that more support and align with their personal beliefs and values versus just taking a job to do it. That's super exciting. It's fun to watch people say, "I went into optometry for a reason."
There is going to be a resurgence of people starting practices that align with their personal beliefs and values instead of just taking a job.
I was talking to somebody about this who had a change in her role. She said, "I went to optometry school. I remember saying when I was interviewing that I wanted to do X. I came out of school and took a job. It couldn't have been farther from that." I interview students coming into NECO. They all say that they want to go in to help patients and spend time with them. They graduate, and they might end up in a role that doesn't support that. People are stopping and saying, "Why am I doing this? This is not what I want to do. How do I create the role that allows me to be successful and happy?"
There's always going to be a challenge. I sold my practice in June. I was in private practice. I owned my practice for twelve years. I was there for fourteen but we had a Warby Parker open up a mile down the street a few years ago. We were like, "Eh." We have Pearle, LensCrafters, Warby Parker, and Costco all within a 1 or 2-mile radius of our private practice. If you provide the level of care to your patients that you want to and differentiate yourself with service, product and staff, I truly believe that you can be successful with the Warby Parker right down the street.
That's incredible to hear that new grads or ODs, in general, are looking to open up their businesses. That's heartening and reassuring to hear. The pendulum tends to swing. It may have swung all the way one way and now it is coming back a little bit. That's nice. It's good encouragement for those who are concerned about the competition from these other entities to know that they can still survive and thrive with that. It all becomes noise in my opinion. It's just background noise. There's nothing out of all of those that sticks out and says, "You have to come and see us.” We have the opportunity to be that beacon that people see as, "That's the place I should go instead of the chains and so on."
You have some experience in the business realm consulting and so on. I would love to ask you a couple of quick questions. We don't have as much background in education as we would like to have. If you wouldn't mind sharing some key little things for someone to take home or take back to their office and say, "I have to look at these KPIs or metrics and work on these few things."
First is knowing that you should be looking at metrics and KPIs, and knowing that there are things you should be measuring. There's a quote about, "What gets measured gets managed, and what gets managed gets improved." I have it up on my board because I live by that. It's great to go in and say, "I need to fix my business. I need to be better." I'm guilty of it too. I would go to one of these EyeDock meetings and come back. I'm so excited, gung-ho and inspired, and I want to make changes but you have to know what you're doing before you can make those changes, and then know what you're going to end up with.
I've been a big fan of metrics forever. I've been a big fan of GPN, the Edge software. I've used it. I was their 2nd or 3rd account when it was four generations of technology from what it is now. First is measuring and not just saying, "I'm busy. I'm not making enough money. I need to see more patients because I need to make more money." If you don't know how many patients you're seeing or what the behavior is of those patients, you can't make good choices and changes, and then monitor if those are working.
First, if you're not measuring that, you should be. You don't have to do it with an Excel spreadsheet or a pen and paper. It can all be done for you. The Edge pulls that all out of your practice management system. As long as you're categorizing everything correctly, you can have a dashboard that you can look at. First is getting set up to do that, and then measuring whatever you are looking to improve.
A lot of people are looking at the capture rate. It's a big one. People overestimate their capture rate and then they wonder why they're not making more money. They're like, "Everyone is getting glasses. We just need to do this," but you have to look at how many are doing that. Capture rate is a big one, having a plan in place if the number is not where you want it to be, instead of going, "It's online sales. It's Warby Parker. It's Costco down the street," and not throwing in the towel if that number is not quite what you would like it to be.
First is measuring it and putting a plan in place to say, "I thought it was a lot higher, but what are we going to do about it?" and not re-inventing the wheel to do that. Just like in sports vision, there are people that want to help. I'm an EyeDock member. They have a great team that will help. The Edge team helps too. It doesn't have to be that you live in a vacuum and do this on your own. Whatever challenge one of us is having, guaranteed many of us have had this before.
It's not feeling like you have to start over and climb this mountain alone, but reaching out to consultants and people to help. Once you've identified that, it's education and having staff buy-in, not just saying, "You need to do better," running back to your office and going, "Do it," but embracing that it's a team approach and investing the time, money, and education in your staff.
You don’t have to live in vacuum and do everything on your own. Whatever challenge you’re having, it is guaranteed that many of us have had that before. Reach out to consultants and learn from them.
Speccy is another one of my absolute favorite training resources. It's an online training platform that is a lot of fun and a great education for everybody on our team. It helps us understand how to be better in our opticals. Once the training is in place and you're doing it, then continuing to measure, not setting it and forgetting it, being continuous on monitoring metrics, identifying to checking where we're at, and then continuing to make changes, and not feeling overwhelmed.
A lot of people go into it with good intentions. They look at a dashboard and they're like, "Forget it." Pick one per quarter. Pick one in January. Pick one on October 1st. I'm going to measure the capture rate and look at what our capture rate is currently. If it's not where I would like it to be, we're going to have a team meeting about that and make sure everyone in my office knows what capture rate means and how that affects our practice, bottom line, and success. How can we be better at it?
Every month, maybe you're saying, "Here's where we are. We're getting better but we all have to be in. I have to be better at recommending multiple pairs in my exam chair. My front desk needs to be better at reminding people to bring their glasses, sunglasses or sports eyewear.” I'm planting that seed. My technicians maybe mention that as well. My opticians are the final stop. They're fulfilling the treatment plan that I put in place. We're all working together towards this goal.
It's not biting off more than you can chew and feeling overwhelmed that you have to change twenty metrics. If you try to do that, everyone gets disappointed and discouraged, and it falls apart. If you focus on one at a time and then keep circling back, making sure that you're continuing to measure that, and supporting your team to do that, it makes a big difference.
Sports Vision: If you focus on one metric at a time and then keep circling back and making sure that you're continuing to measure that and supporting your team to do that, that makes a big difference.
That's amazing advice. Thank you. People get overwhelmed. I'm speaking for myself. I do this all the time. I'm like, "Everybody gets this, but let me speak for myself." I know that from my experience now. If there's one person that feels a certain way, probably other people have the same concern. A lot of times, you feel overwhelmed or you're almost scared to even look at the number in the first place but you have to rip that Band-Aid off and look at it. You know what your starting point is.
Just one per quarter. Don't worry about your transitions, non-glare, average frame price, average lens price, and capture rate and go, "We're going to do all of this," because it won't work. If you focus on your capture rate, and as your opticians are selling more frames, then hopefully by nature of that, everything will start to improve. You can start to look, "Let's pick one more." You have to keep remembering that we're still continuing our capture rate. We're not going to drop that but you can build. You're gradually layering on. You can then become nitpicky at smaller things but look at bigger picture ones first.
Thank you for that. That's encouraging for anybody who's not so comfortable with the metrics and that side of the world. Their business is a nice place to start one step at a time. At the end of every episode, I ask two questions to all my guests. Before we get to that, I have one more question to ask you. You're a mother, an entrepreneur, and a business owner. You sold your business. Congratulations. You're the editor of Independent Strong. You're on the board of all these things. You're an award-winner and all of these. The question is this. Are you a superhero? What is your superpower?
I wish. That is so flattering. We are all superheroes. All of us entrepreneurs wear a superhero cape at one point. All of us parents are superheroes together in pushing through. It's that grit. It's getting up and getting it all done. Sometimes I look at my day and my to-do list and I'm like, "How am I going to get through that?" I'm a big fan of lists. It's old school. I buy these Steno pads and make a list of what needs to get done. All day, even if I have already done it, I put it on the list and cross it off. My superpower is making lists, being accountable, and feeling good that at the end of the day, I've crossed all of them off mostly.
All of all of us entrepreneurs wear a superhero cape.
I truly love optometry. That's what helps. I'm so excited about the field. The last few years have been such a blessing to be able to get out there, speak to so many people, write, and be able to have a platform to talk about independent practice, sports vision, and all the things that I'm super passionate about and be able to hopefully inspire people. That's what I love. That's what keeps me going. I love doing things like this. I was so excited to be on your show. I'm such a fan. When you were at Vision Expo and you had a camera crew following you around, I was like, "That's amazing."
I blame Darryl Glover for that.
That was pretty awesome. I'm inspired by the people I've met. In the last few years, I've met so many people on LinkedIn, Instagram, social media, and Vision Expo East. It was like seeing old friends. I feel like I knew everybody. I'm like, "We're old friends.” I've never met any of you in person but we have all collaborated so much and supported each other. We are so excited about what everyone is doing. My favorite thing that I do is connecting people to help them either in their business or support. I'm like, "Have you met so and so? You should get together. You could collaborate well." What keeps me going is how many people I can meet and how I can help them meet other people to be more successful.
That's amazing that you do that. I would call that a superpower. That's beneficial. I'm sure it feels good to you, but that's uplifting the whole profession by connecting good people with other good people. Thank you for doing that. Before we jump into those last two questions, where can people connect with you if they want to learn more about you and say hello?
I am on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. I'm not good at Twitter. If you find me on Twitter, I'm trying to be a little bit better there. I'm super active on LinkedIn and Instagram. My consulting company is called OD Perspective. I have a website and a blog. I aspire one day to have a podcast, so you never know.
I like the tagline on your website, "Believe in your vision." That's very good.
I will be at meetings and the Optometric Management Symposium in November 2022. We will meet in real life again. I'll be at the International Sports Vision Association meeting and the EyeDock meeting both in February 2023. You can find me on Independent Strong. I'm super active there. I'm always looking for great content. If you've got an idea, shoot me a message. I'm also on the GPN eyeTHRIVE platform where I have a monthly column on communication. I'm also hosting a five-part webinar series on building your authentic practice. If you miss it live, you can still sign up as an eyeTHRIVE member and listen to the recording. I'm excited about that. I'm everywhere.
Going back to the superhero thing, there are even more things that you're doing that I didn't even know about. Thank you. Here are the last two questions. Number one, if we could step in a time machine and go back to a point in your life that was difficult when you were struggling, you're welcome to share that moment if you would like it. There's no pressure on that but more importantly, what advice would you give to young Jennifer at that time?
The freshman year of college was a huge struggle for me. This is why I especially love interviewing optometry students because they are in that realm. I went to college. I was very strong in academics in high school and went into college coasting thinking that I could get through it well. I failed miserably. I was academically not doing well in my freshman year first semester.
I was the only female athlete out of all the fall athletes who were stuck in study hall for the whole semester. I went, "I'm here on scholarship. What am I going to do?" That grit comes out. I had to buckle down, figure out how to be better, and put in the work and the time when I didn't have to do it before. I reinvented myself, focused on academics, and put the time in.
I struggled with college, freedom, sports, and a load of academics, but then I turned it around. From then on, I was a 4.0 student. I was this flip-flop, but that helped me through optometry school. It's a heavy load. I love being able to share that with the students I interview because they always ask me about the academic load going into optometry school. That helped me prepare for life, realizing sometimes you have to put a little more effort in there. You will be rewarded. It's a great lesson.
Everything that you've accomplished and that you're doing here and all the amazing things, how much of it would you say is due to luck? How much is due to hard work?
We make our own luck. What I love to share with the undergrad students that I talk to is making your own opportunities and networking. I'm part of the Optical Women's Association, which is an organization that is built on networking, supporting women, and developing leadership skills. Most of it comes down to putting yourself in the right place at the right time, but you have to be there to do that.
We make our own luck. Most of it comes down to putting yourself in the right place at the right time.
Go to meetings and events. Sit down at a table where you don't know anybody, put your phone away, talk, and introduce yourself to people. Connect on social media and LinkedIn. Say yes to things because a lot of it is luck, but a lot of it is not who you know but how you've been out there and the opportunities that you create by opening yourself up to doing cool things.
What I tell the students when I talk to the students is that I've never applied for a job in my life. All of the opportunities I've had have come from being out there and being visible and starting as a student. I tell the students this. I was the keynote speaker for our optometry career symposium and that's what I said. Go to the meetings as a student. Shake people's hands. Introduce yourself.
Start making connections. Join your local society and the AOA. Go to meetings, meet with people, sit down with them, and introduce yourself to reps, people, and companies. How you create these opportunities is by being visible, active and supportive. I love to create opportunities for other people. I feel like that comes back tenfold for me. It has been fun.
That's amazing. I love that answer. I do hope all the good work you're doing and all the support you're giving does come back to you tenfold. Thank you so much, Jen, for coming to the show. I love having you on. I'm so glad we're finally able to coordinate this.
We will be in real life at Optometric Management. I hope to see everyone there too.
I'll see you there. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in to this episode with Dr. Jennifer Stewart. Make sure you check her out and see all of the cool stuff that she's doing. If you're interested in sports vision, make sure you look into that as well. As always, if you got any value from this episode, please make sure you share it. Send a text message, put up a screenshot on Instagram, LinkedIn, or wherever and let people know that we're having these conversations. I will see you in the next episode very soon.
Thank you.
Important Links
Dr. Hayley Wickenheiser - Previous episode
LinkedIn - Jennifer Stewart
Instagram - Jennifer Stewart
Twitter - Jennifer Stewart
About Dr. Jennifer Steward
Dr. Jennifer Stewart is an optometrist, internationally recognized speaker, writer, consultant, and entrepreneur.
She has a passion for helping optometrists and organizations with operations, sales success, practice management and sales team training through her advisory and consulting firm, OD Perspectives. She is the Professional Editor of Independent Strong, is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the New England College of Optometry and a consultant for Coopervision, MacuHealth and Zyloware.
With a deep interest in sports vision, Dr. Stewart is the Co-Founder and Chief Vision Officer for Performance 20/20, which provides services for sports and performance vision training. She is a recipient of the Theia Award for Innovation by Women in Optometry and serves on the Executive Board for the International Sports Vision Association.
Dr. Stewart is passionate about sports safety, enhancing performance, and helping business owners achieve their goals. An avid Disney fan, she lives her life by the quote “if you can dream it, you can do it.” She is inspired to help others with their dreams.