Once you know and understand your values, that is when you can be your true authentic self. And once you're true to yourself, you can be true to your team and to your patients.
Dr. Kiran Ramesh is a successful business owner, consultant, speaker, and an all-around powerhouse in the optical industry. In this episode, Harbir Sian talks to Dr. Ramesh about how she leads with love and tries to empower others. She discusses how being your true, authentic self can be the key to reaching your personal and professional goals.
On the clinical side, Dr. Ramesh shares how uncovering her own binocular vision issues has led her on a passionate journey to build a successful neuro-visual practice and share the importance of binocular vision with her colleagues.
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The Power Of Authenticity - Dr. Kiran Ramesh
I have an incredible guest, as always. I'm trying to bring on people who can help us, inspire us, empower us, and help us grow in our businesses and our profession in different ways, help us think outside the box. Dr. Kiran Ramesh, my wonderful guest, is the perfect person. She leads everything she does with her four tenants, which are love, connect, inspire, and empower. In my experience working with her and connecting with her over the years, I feel that she lives by those.
I've been feeling those four tenets from her every time I talk to her. She is a NeuroVisual Optometrist based in the Toronto area. Her practice was the best eyecare practice in 2019, and then she was best in training in 2020 from transitions. She is a powerhouse. That is the word that comes to mind here. I'm excited to have you on. There's going to be so much value out of this conversation. Thank you so much for coming on my show.
Thank you for having me. I'm laughing because I hosted an event and I ran into a friend of mine that I haven't seen in about a year. He literally called me a powerhouse, used the exact same terms, and texted me. I find that hilarious.
There you go. It's confirmed. If more than one person says it, it's real
It'll be my new title. Perfect. Confirmed by two.
That leads perfectly into the first thing I was going to ask you. If you were going to give a bio of yourself, a description of yourself, what would it be? I feel like now powerhouse has to be in there somehow.
That's what's funny. When I was hosting this event, I said, “I don't even know what to say because I do have a multitude of things.” I started off with that. I said, “Someone called me a powerhouse.” If I were to give a bio of myself, it's what you said. Everything I do is by love, connect, inspire, and empower. Those are the four values I use to run my practice. Those are the four values I use to bring anyone into my practice. If you don't have those, you can't be working with me. Those are the four values I use in my friend circle and my home. It's the four values that resonate most with me. That qualifies as to who I am or indicate who I am. I would use that.
That's probably going to pop in throughout our conversation. You can say this is how those four tenets have helped in this area of your career. You do have many different things going on in your career. Aside from being an optometrist, being a mother, you have your own consulting firm now and these other things working with industry. There are many things that you're doing. It’s an inspiration as well. Let's start somewhere a little bit different.
I talked to you about this as well. This conversation we're having is coming off the heels of a series of conversations I've had. There are six of them. It’s about the future of Canadian optometry where I interviewed the heads of or people in the leadership roles of certain organizations, FYidoctors, Specsavers, Luxxotica, Essilor, and Iris to ask them some direct questions about what you think is going on in Canada, where do you think your company's going, and what's the future look like. I know with everything that you do and how involved you are in the industry, I'm sure you have some interesting thoughts. I'd love to hear those if you wouldn't mind sharing some juicy gossip.
In some of the conversations I've had with industry, it's becoming a bit obvious, or even if we look to what has happened across the world. If we use something like Specsavers, for example, coming into Canada, they've commoditized the eye exam. An eye exam, they're not doing anything wrong. They're doing a proper eye exam, a comprehensive eye exam where they're doing OCTs on everyone. In terms of commoditizing, meaning they put a value to it, which what we consider comprehensive eye exams.
Now everyone needs to ask themselves what's included in your eye exam. Why is it any different than what they're doing? I know in our practice, that's what we've started to do. What value are we putting in that a patient is going to get through our eye exam? How can we justify the cost of an eye exam compared to if someone went to something like Specsavers or in general? In the past, it was like if someone went to Hakeem or if they went to any other clinic. It's never about the competition. I never focus on the competition. It's being aware of what you can do internally and what's better for your patients. All of us, like you, do dry eye. There's dry eye, low vision, myopia control.
Authenticity: The eye exam in Canada got commoditized. You need to know what value you're giving the patient through your eye exam and justify its cost.
What can you even do within your practice, not knowing that these people were coming to enhance the value of what it is that you provide? That needs to be the key. That conference of eye exam needs to be all-encompassing. You need to be able to convey that message of what your eye exam includes and make sure it does include more than what anyone else has. That concern about the commoditizing and devaluation potentially of what an eye exam is.
If you say we do a comprehensive eye exam, but we charge half of what everybody else charges, it's going to raise some eyebrows. Patients are going to wonder why there is such a difference. That does put a bit of pressure on everyone else. When you're a large organization and you can afford to have your eye exam set at a certain number, lower number, it puts pressure on everyone else. Generally, the pressure means everybody else brings their price down, or at least that's the assumption of what would happen.
They've got the money to market. You need to make sure you're marketing with every phone call that's coming in. Are you conveying what you provide? That's the key. In my clinic, we barely market externally. We did it a long time ago. It's like in life where you talk about what makes the biggest change. The biggest change is when you work on yourself internally. Same with your clinic. When you work on your internal clinic, you are going to get far more big changes as opposed to just constantly looking outside of yourself.
When you work on your clinic internally, you're going to get bigger changes as opposed to constantly looking outside of yourself.
I like that connection. That’s deep. That's the kind of stuff I love. That's perfect. Think of your clinic as a being and you get to work internally on the being. There we go. This is why I have you on. Let's talk about your clinic. You're a NeuroVisual optometrist. I want to know a little bit more about what that means and exactly what type of services you offer in your practice.
I graduated, did optometry, and became an optometrist. I did what most people did originally, which was primary care. Come in, get your eyes tested, go home. I only had team members when I bought my clinic. I had my babies. Things plateaued. When it was going up, things plateaued, and then I came back into the practice. When I came back into the practice, being back, it was a whole flood of patience. I thought, “I need more space. I want to expand.”
I looked at more space and I thought, “What am I going to do with this space?” Binocular vision was something that was always enticing. From there, I realized I had learning issues. That got me even more involved. That's what got me into vision training and vision therapy. I call myself a NeuroVisual optometrist because everything I do now is with the brain and the eyes. If you call yourself an optometrist, I feel like we need to gain more value of who we are and what we can provide. I started doing that. I expanded my clinic. We now have eleven team members. From there, it's gone on. We do myopia control, dry eye, and nutrition. I would like to bring low vision in next.
That being said, I don't do all of that. That's not my passion. My passion is NeuroVisual optometry, vision therapy. I had my own issues. I can relate to patients. I can talk to patients about that. I have other doctors that are passionate about dry eye and nutrition because that's what their internal being tells them. They were worried about the world and their health. That drove them into that. I have another one that specializes myopia control. Everyone does their own niche based on who they are as a person. Even within our team, we ask everyone, “Who are you as a person? What did you want to do as a child? What do you love?” We intertwine their role with who they are. From there, we expanded out. That's how we got larger.
A few things to unpack there. One, I always assumed you did the BV stuff from day one, but you didn't. You brought that in later. Also, you mentioned earlier that you had your own binocular vision issues that I thought you maybe knew about that earlier too, but you also only discovered that after you started practicing.
That's what's funny. After going through school, you think something like that would've been caught, but no. I was here and I started taking these courses. You're hearing all these symptoms beyond what you're taught in school. I went in and saw a colleague. I had an evaluation done. I had a major CI and issues with my fusion reserves. I went for training. It's crazy on how it changed how I practice, how it changed who I am as a person. Whereas before, it was practice and go do. That's where a lot of it was external marketing and all that. Once I realized how I changed myself, everything stopped.
I started giving myself breaks and started to empower my own team and myself. I literally took a whole turn onto how I started doing optometry and then started to become the voice of VT for Canada, Vision Therapy Canada, which at that time was called Canadian Optometrists for Vision Therapy and Rehabilitation asked me to be on the board of directors. I said, “I don't know if this is what I'm interested in because I don't like politics.” They created a role for me the director of internal and external affairs. They know that that's what I love to do. I went across Canada. That's where I met you.
I'd go across the different provinces, then I started doing lectures. I started speaking at the association meetings. I got the word across. I grew Visual Therapy Canada’s annual gala by almost 80%. I have numbers, I can't remember them. I grew their sponsorship, everything. It was great because the world started to understand it wasn't even just an optometrist, but it was industry. Industry started to understand what vision therapy was.
As you're speaking, I was like, “Yes, that's where we met.” BCDO, I remember there was a booth and you were there. Around that same time, I imagine it was with a lot of the stuff you were doing that my interest peaked. I don't do any BV still as I've started to venture into some other spaces and specialties, but that's always on my mind. It seems like maybe one of the most, if not the most, impactful thing that I could do as an optometrist is potentially help many people who have these underlying issues. It’s good to know.
Everything that we do can impact, like, “Here, you're working with the brain.” You can impact someone's life. With dry eye or with nutrition, you're impacting someone's lifestyle. You're impacting their well-being. There's so much in every discipline that we do that can change how people function.
In that period of time, what was that roughly timeline from when you came back from your maternity leave and you felt like things were plateaued to going back up in a trajectory again? How long was that?
2014 to 2017. I expanded, went from 2,000 square feet to 4,000 square feet. It went straight up. I opened up the VT practice. I went from 1 therapist to 3 therapists. 2017 was when I started going around and speaking. 2018 was when I started going around and speaking.
There's clearly been consistent growth in various areas of your practice. You said you've brought in other doctors with these awards, the best eye care practice, best in training. There's constant growth and success, if you want to call it that. Are there a few things that you can distill from that 2014 onward? Things that you did or implemented or psychological changes, however you want to phrase it, that helped that growth. If somebody wanted to approach it differently, what would you say?
Starting from when you start small. When you're in a small practice, one of the things, and you're the only owner, what happens is every little thing, the light bulb needs to be changed or anything. People start coming to you. One of the first things I did was I started to stop and book at about three hours of my schedule, which was in the middle of the week and time for me.
Authenticity: If you're a small business owner, make sure that you set aside some time for yourself. During this time, you should ask yourself what you need to do or where you want to grow.
It was time for me to decide what do I need to do for my practice? Where do I want some growth? Within that time, probably half hour, an hour allocated when people could come to ask me questions. That took away all of the excess. It became to the point because it was once a week, sometimes, what they would've come to me before was already resolved.
That was one of the things. The other thing I started to do was I empowered my team. If they had an issue, tell me what the issue is, come up with a solution, and then I'll approve it. I was no longer coming up with the actual answers. Now is yes or no, which is fantastic because it empowers them to decide. They're capable of making these decisions. Those were two of the biggest things that I started to do. Once we started to grow it, realizing that you need a manager, you need someone to run the practice. From there, it was the manager and I that would take that time.
Once a week, we'd set up a meeting and say, “What are our goals?” We'd start with the beginning of the year. What are our goals? What are going to be our KPIs? What do we want to achieve? What do we want to achieve by the end of the year? We would work with the industry and say, “Here's what we want to achieve. What do you want to see from us?” We started creating all these goals and we would get everyone involved. That made the biggest changes.
Empowering the staff to come up with solutions and rather than you having to be the one to problem solve, they can solve it and almost puts you in a little more of a CEO type of a position where I'm making sure things are working well. The office manager thing, I have to say, is something that in our office has made a big difference. I know since we spoke about these types of things, we've started to implement more of that. That's made a massive change.
Having someone who can take care of a lot of those issues that bog you down a little bit on the day-to-day so you can think a little bigger, think on how you can grow your practice, that's been huge. It's been invaluable. We have two practices. We have an office manager in each office now. That person truly values their job in the office more, too, when they're empowered to take up more responsibilities.
One of the things for me, too, was cutting down my meeting time. I was no longer seeing anyone where, “Let me introduce what's new in the industry and stuff.” It was go through the manager first, see what needs to come to me. I got to come in and see my patients, which is what I wanted to do. I got to go in, have a meeting, and then everything would come to me. It literally is like you're a CEO. “Here's what's new in this product. Here's what's here.” I'm yay or nay on what's going to come in.
It's good to know. For me, that’s still something that we were, especially when you talk about the KPIs, working with your manager on the KPIs, the goals that you have for six months or a year or whatever it might be and then going to industry and seeing how we could partner with them or they can partner with us or however, you want to look at it to grow that. That's cool. You're looking at it like a CEO, which many of us don't do. As optometrists, we don't look at our practice, which is a business and we are the CEO of. We don't look at it that way. We need to start doing that.
On that note, one of the questions I was going to ask you later but seems to be on track now is we come out of school. If you ask 10 ODs, I bet you 9 would say this. What is the weak point when you come out of school? What's the one thing you felt not so confident in or didn't get enough training in? It would be business. I imagine most people would say that we lack that business acumen as optometrists coming out of school. Many of us do want to be business owners. How do you suggest that we, as individuals then, not necessarily within our clinic, how do we start to flex that or strengthen that business muscle?
Start from the bottom and then work your way to the top. The nice thing about having students come in is you're empowering them to become business owners. What I did was I literally went into a practice as a student and was hired as a receptionist. Within that summer, they taught me how to be an optician. I had to do everything in the practice. By the next year, I was a manager in the practice.
It's important as an owner to have every hat. Once you have worn every hat, you understand how a business should run, what worked for you, and what didn't work. Unfortunately, as a doctor, you're in this room and you have no idea what's happening out there sometimes. That taught me to understand every area, what flowed well. By the time I got into practice, I knew exactly what I wanted.
It's important for an owner to wear every hat because once you've worn every hat, you'll understand how a business should run.
I walked in and I said, “I'll work here if I can become part owner.” When I started working, I was able to literally go and I could tell each team member, “I understand where the weak parts are. We would work together and make them stronger. The reason why I can is because I've done that job.” That helps. Even during the pandemic when everything had to shut down, our practice was still open because we had to see emergencies. With limited team members, my manager and I could still do every role because we've done it in the past. Even right now, my manager's away for a month. She's been gone for a month. Everything I've taught her, she had to teach me again because you forget.
It's second nature. It comes back like this. It's important to know all of those different areas because then you see what's missing and what could be better. You can relate to your team members. When someone comes into the front, who's going to hear the worst of it? It's always going to be your patient care coordinators. By the time they come see the doctor, they're happiest. I can show them that, “We know this is going to happen. Here are different ways on how you can deal with it.” It's important if anyone can get into our practice, start from the bottom, get that exposure, do all those different roles. Even when I hired my associate, before she got licensed, she came in and I got her to see all the different roles in the practice.
That helps you understand the ins and outs of the practice and where the weak points could be, where you can make it more efficient. That's good. That's probably something I need to go through.
Honestly, it helps you understand how to run your business better. You're working on the internal. Now you're going to start working on your dispensing team or your patient care coordinators, or in my case, my therapist, or your contact lens specialist. You're like, “Let's work on these things.” Before you know it, your practice is flourishing.
That's good to know. Anybody out there looking to improve their business and the way the practice is run starts from the bottom.
It's never too late. Honestly, I will go sit at the front and I feel bad because everyone gets intimidated. My manager will come to me after. They're like, “They're a little scared.” I'm like, “I want to make sure things are still running okay and the way I want or that there's nothing happening that I couldn't make better for them.” It's good to take that time every so often. Sit in every person's different area and see what's happening.
I can see how that would be intimidating. A little bit of disclosure here for everybody who’s reading. Dr. Ramesh came into our practice virtually and helped us with some of the things that we were doing. Speaking of sitting in on somebody and making them a little uncomfortable, I had the pleasure of having Kiran watch me do a few eye exams.
To be honest with you, that’s something I would highly recommend to every optometrist, any business owner. After 10 years, 12 years of practicing, I'd been thinking about like, “I probably need someone to do this.” You get stuck in your ways. It's like driving. You pick up bad habits when you drive and you drive like that. If you were trying to take the driving test again, you'd probably fail badly. You didn't signal, turn too much, this or whatever.
Having you in there was huge. Little things that you suggested. Also, the philosophical approach to pushing your boundaries, putting yourself in an uncomfortable position to help yourself grow. I felt like it was super valuable there. From my perspective as a business owner, do what you suggested, sit in these different places. Perhaps make your staff a little uncomfortable.
With love. That’s where that value comes from.
Have someone watch you and make sure you're doing everything well, too.
This is what I tell people because I've gone into other practices as well. They always say, “We were worried before you got here, but you didn't criticize. You showcased opportunities. You were shining on what's possible.” That's what it's all about. It's doing it with that love and saying that you want someone else to get better. It might feel like it's intimidating, but we're there to support one another.
We should be there to support one another and not trying to compete or compare or judge. We felt that, the love and the empowerment. I appreciated that. That's a perfect segue to the next thing I wanted to talk about, which was KR Consulting. You've been doing this for a while now where you've taken all your experience, knowledge, and intellect. You're helping to support and grow practices and other businesses. I'd love for you to tell me a little bit about how that started and what's been going on with that.
During the pandemic, what was funny is I had a lot of industry call me and ask me what was happening, what's going on, what were my thoughts? I sat back and I thought to myself, “Why is it that they're calling me? What is it that I've done?” It showcased I've created something great in my practice, whether it's with my team and the growth patterns, and they see it. They've got all the numbers of all the clinics that they work with. I thought, “What do I love doing the most? What makes me happy?” It has to do with those values, the love, connect, inspire, and empower. When I started to understand my four values, I thought, “Why don't I translate this to support the rest of the industry? To me, what makes me happy is other people flourishing.
Be happy when other people flourish.
If you do well, if someone else does well, to my core, it makes me happy. In our mind, the way it started was because we had won the best eyecare practice of the year, I congratulated my team and said, “What do you guys want to do next year?” They said, “We want to win best in training.” I thought, “How do you win best in training if we've already won best eyecare practice of the year?” I thought, “Why don't I train other practices?” I was disappointed when I was at the academy that Canadians were not showcased as much as Americans.
My original plan was I wanted to train someone in each province. As a collaborative team, we would all go out for best in training, but then the pandemic hit. I was only able to train two other practices. That's how it all started. I thought, “Why don't I make this an actual business because I love it?” Going into people's exam rooms, even training my own associate, I train someone else's associate. I love that. Seeing them translate what I've done and the numbers that follow it. Do you want to talk about turn-ons? That's a turn-on.
The cool thing is there's such a tangible way to measure it. You can see whether it's contact lens sales or some other conversion or other numbers. You can see clearly the differences. From what I've learned from you and our conversations, the great thing is I saw so much value in that. I've been talking to our associates about not yet sitting in with anyone, but I've offered it to a few of them and said, “I'll sit. I'll be quiet. I promise no judgment.” It'll be helpful for both of us. Maybe I'll learn something from you and the way you do something. Maybe I can share some thoughts the other way around.
I feel the same in that when someone else succeeds. It gives you a feeling you can't replicate. At least as far as I've seen yet from someone with your level of experience saying that imagine, it is not something that you can replicate in any other way. That's pretty cool for you to be able to experience that many times with many different people. Who do you work with? Do you work with optometrists? Do you work with other people as well?
I work with optometrists and industry leaders or companies. Whatever I feel I'm connected to and as long as it's in line with my values, if it's supporting anyone for growth and it's to better anyone and it's something I believe in, then absolutely.
The one thing I for sure took away from our conversations was connect and direct. Those words are ingrained in my brain. Can you share with us what connect and direct mean? How do we apply that?
Connect is finding a way to connect with someone, which in my way, is finding a way to love someone or anyone that's around you. The patient walks in. What's the one thing that you like about them? Their hair, their clothing, the fact that they went on vacation and you went to that same place. There's got to be something that connects you. Once you get that connection, it becomes more authentic. Your relationship and interaction become more authentic. It's simple at that point to direct people to what you want them to do. Without going into all of the details, it's literally that. You connect, but when you're connecting, it's authentic. It's done with love.
Authenticity: Find a way to connect with your patient. You can try to find something that you like about them. Once you get that connection, everything becomes more authentic.
With every person that comes across your way, you should find something that you like about that person. Even if you do not like that person, there's got to be something that you like about them. That opens your heart. It's going to open their heart. You're going to be able to connect. It's simple to direct people to what you need. Some people call it manipulation. No, it's not.
There's the Robert Cialdini book. What's that one called again? I can't remember it now. It is similar concept in the sense of understanding where the person's coming from, what their goals are in life and desires are, and connecting with that. Ultimately, you're using that to develop a relationship with that person. We all have an end goal as far as the relationship that we're creating in the exam room and then direct. When you say direct, what does that mean if you were to expand on direct a little bit?
To me, direct is making sure that they get what you feel is best for them, but also their mind, what their needs are based on what you've connected with them. Let's take, for example, I had a patient come in and we connected on the fact that he has the cottage and he's out there during the summer. He came in for routine eye exam. He's an older gentleman. He wears glasses. People would never think to put this guy in multifocals. In my mind, I'm thinking, “I know what's best for this guy. He's in multifocals. He's out at the cottage. He wears his sunglasses. He can read outside. This is phenomenal.” The guy was on cloud nine. That's what he got. Directing them to what you think is best for them and what they need. It becomes simple once you've connected.
The Cialdini book is called Persuasion. I remembered now.
There's a nicer word than manipulation
That's what he says in the book, too, is like, “People will say that this is ways to manipulate.” We all have goals in life. Let's be honest about this. We're running a business. As long as you're doing it from the right place and the things that you're offering your patient, like you suggested, multifocals are going to help to make the person's life better. You're not just trying to swindle him, then it's okay. Also, now I know that I'll find you at a cottage in the summer. Is that correct?
Not me. That guy.
I thought that was the thing you connected with him on.
You'll find me in lots of places in the summer. I connected on the fact that he likes being outdoors.
The other thing that I was learning a little bit about is what you call the Sixth Senses. I imagine that the sixth sense is not like the movie, The Sixth Sense. You're not seeing dead people. If you could share with me what the sixth sense is.
Your five regular senses and then your subconscious. Sixth Senses is a team-building event that I created with one of my vision therapists. I love hosting different types of events. Even for my birthday, I like to have different extravagant ideas. I showcased this one event for my birthday and it was successful. I tried it on my team for a Christmas party. The beauty of it is working with all your senses, you realize the importance of the visual sense. You understand. You become connected with your team and you get to explore the subconscious that we might not be aware of and understand the patterns of why people are the way they are within your own team. It went well. We decided to do it for team-building events for other people.
We went out of our way and I even do it privately to anyone and anywhere. I picked sixteen complete strangers and put them in a room and had this event. It was phenomenal. Honestly, before I started, I thought I was going to cry because I thought, “What the hell am I doing? These people are never going to get connected.” They were from all walks of life, completely different. It was phenomenal. I ran into one of the guys a couple of months ago. He was like, “Do you remember me?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “If you ever want to host another event, you can do it in my backyard. I have this oasis out there. It was the best event I've ever been to.” It's a lot of fun.
That Sixth Senses thing is a team-building event that helps people connect, learn more about each other, I suppose, connect on a deeper level. Is that what you'd say?
It opens up your eyes to who all of you are and gets your team connected, so you are more than just colleagues and friends. You become a family.
It's funny how sometimes the topics lead into one another. Talking about subconscious and less tangible parts of ourselves. One of the things I love about you is your energy. This is something that I notice and I respect in certain people I feel it in. You can connect differently with somebody with who you feel their energy. It's funny because several years ago, I thought that was all fufu stuff. My wife is the one who's helped me understand.
Now you get that feeling that you can feel somebody's energy or sometimes you can say the energy left the room or energy got stepped up. You could feel that. I've become a lot more aware of that. I feel like there are two different ways of looking at energy. There's the get up and I got energy to physically hit the day. There's the other energy where you feel somebody's presence. I'd love to hear your thoughts on both of those. How do you keep both of them firing on all cylinders?
This is something I teach my children right now as well because I want them to understand the power of energy, the power of your thoughts, the power of positive thinking, the power of you can create anything you want. It’s funny because we were on vacation with a bunch of people and my daughter says to me, “Mommy, are you a witch?” I said, “Yeah, I am. Why?” She goes, “You seem to get everything you want whenever you want it.” I go, “It's simple. You truly want something, you have your heart wide open, you're going to get it.”
They see it and sense it. How do I keep my energy up? One of the biggest things is you need to be seriously true and authentic to yourself. I don't ever try and get myself in any place. I don't ever try and do something. My heart's wide open to what I want to do and how I want to support people. Things show up. You need to create a path and try and get somewhere. It's always done from a positive way. What my parents taught me when I was younger is that the more you give in life, the more you'll get. Following principles like that, it keeps my energy up. I have more. We talked about the internal. The internal can be so many things.
If you want to keep your energy up, you need to be true and authentic to yourself.
It's you as a person, but it's also you and your family unit. Same thing at the office. It's you and your office unit. I make sure I'm always taken care of. I am always number one, which yes, I have my children, but I always made sure I made time for myself and my husband. We always had date night. A lot of times, people are like, “It's all about the kids.” That's how I keep myself energetic. If I need space, I need to go somewhere. I do it for me. People say, “You don't bring your husband to your conferences?” No, that's my time. It's important to always make sure you have time for yourself. Whatever calls to you, you go and do that.
I've always made sure that when I'm at home, I have time to always have dinner with my children. Wednesday night's the only time I work late. That's the only time they have dinner without me. I ensure that my family unit is secure. When I first had my baby, I stayed home for an entire year. I'd work, but I never went out in the evening. I never went out because I wanted to make sure that they knew what their bedtime routine was, whether it was me or it was my husband. If one of us was missing, they were secure. They felt secure. If I know my internal is secure and my home is secure, I can be doing whatever I want to do in my life. I have the energy to do it because I'm not worried about those other things.
Same with my office. I make sure my manager knows what's happening. My team's taken care of. Is my internal secure in the office? I can leave. There was a point where I was traveling twice a month. I was not in the practice, yet it was still growing. Why? It’s because that energy that I would bring back and the energy I leave with, it was always up there. People feel that energy. It's magnetic. It makes you want to be part of it. It makes you want to grow.
That's important. For me anyways, what I'm taking from what you're saying, that same kind of analogy maybe gets overused a little bit, but the airplane analogy. You put your mask on first, then you put the other person. You need to make sure that you are feeling fulfilled and healthy and that everything that you need in your mind and your body and so on. You can share that with other people. I feel like that's true.
Let's say somebody's feeling like they don't have that magnetic. I know it's maybe it's hard to say, “Here's step 1, 2, 3,” but what's an easy low-hanging fruit to get your energy to a point where you think people can want to connect with you a little bit more? To that energy field positive there. Would you say meditation? Would you say exercise? Would you say something else that you're doing that is helping?
All of the above. We all know exercise is natural endorphins. You need to do that. Meditation, I don't do it. I try. It goes up and down. It quiets your mind. It helps you focus. Personally, for me, what I feel like I'm attracted to when other people come in or I gravitate towards people, is when they're themselves. For every person, if they feel they want to be more energetic or have that magnetic feeling with others, you need to ask yourself, “Who am I? What are my values?” Going through your own values is a huge learning. That was one of the things I did a few years ago. Once you know what your values are, you start to understand who you are and what your purpose is. I'll give you an example. This might work. One of my values is friends versus family.
Friends and love. When I did my husband's, his was family. There's a reason why I don't have family as one of my values. It started to click for me. If we have an argument, when he's talking about his family, why it's important to him, I don't get that. For me, I don't value it the same way. For a person to understand their energy is to understand who you are and your values are and live and abide by your values. Just because my values are love, connect, inspire, and empower, that doesn't need to be yours, for example. You find out what your values are. Once you start to live and breathe your values, people automatically are connected to you because you're no longer trying to figure out who you are. You're you.
When we spoke on the phone, I said the same thing, “Be your authentic self, honey.” Those are the exact words that you said to me on the phone. What’s great is that you said the exact same thing but in a few more words here. It makes sense. If you're being true to yourself, then you do shed some of that weight and that excess energy that you're using to try to be whatever the other thing is maybe that you're trying to be.
This can even go back to the business, when you're being your authentic self, you're running by your own values, people trust you. Why do the industry come and speak to me? My numbers show that I'm doing well, but also, they trust me. I'm not going to say one thing or another to another person. I am who I am. I'm going to say it the way I am. You build that trust.
Thank you for sharing that. I know those are weird. Sometimes it's hard to tap into some of those because it's such an intangible thing. I feel like it's hard to put it into words sometimes, but thank you for doing that. That's a topic that when I start having that conversation with people, even people that I don't know that well, it feels like people want to talk about that. Everybody wants to understand that better. It's a topic that people think about more than maybe we used to.
Collectively, they understand the power of that having energy and these types of things. I usually ask two questions at the end of every episode. Before I go onto that, how can people connect with you? Where should I direct them? If people wanted to connect with you, how would they do that online or wherever else.
You can email me at Kiran@KiranRamesh.ca. That's probably the best way. I'm on LinkedIn, Kiran Ramesh. Yes, I have an Instagram. Social media, for me, again, that's not me being authentic. That's why you see posts for me every three months. I don't like to be near my phone at the end of the day. You can connect with me there and send me a contact and then I'll send you my phone number and my email. That'll be the best way to chat with me. I love chatting with people. I don't like to sit there and message. Call me. Come see me. Let's go hang out. Let's party. If there's a good party, you'll find me there.
That is you being true to you. I like that. On that note, an easy way to connect is to come to Vegas.
Vision Expo, I’ll be there.
The first of the last two questions. If we could step into a time machine and we could go back to a point in your life where you felt like maybe you were struggling. If you were comfortable sharing that particular moment, please do. If not, at least if you could tell us what advice you would give to yourself at that difficult time.
If I went back to a point in my life where I was struggling was when my parents were not on board with who I was and pretty much abandoned me, or I was in a house where I felt like I was suffocating and had to make a decision on whether I was going to live and be me or if I was going to follow societal norms. I'm someone who practices what they preach. Would I change anything? The advice that I give to myself is, you are doing the right thing because you're choosing to be you. I made the right decision. I chose to be me. I chose to forgo what society says and made the decision that I wanted to make.
Everything worked out in the end. Everything's positive no. Everyone came back into my life. The great thing was learnings that happened after the fact were the thanks that I got for people saying, “Thank you for opening the doors to something bigger for us.” To put some context behind it is I married someone who's Indian, but they're of a different religion. My parents were strict on we want the same religion, we want the same area of where you're from. In certain ways, it can get pretty scary at times. For everyone to come back and say, “Thank you for teaching us,” it's love that matters. It's not anything else. It's the same thing. Be authentic.
You don't have to worry about this box. Society created this box. Think about what you want to do and what you want to create. Find ways to maneuver around the box. It's the same thing that happened with the pandemic. You can choose to be controlled by what you hear, or you can choose to say, “There are all these opportunities that happen versus now we're stuck.” Try and look for those little holes and go beyond and create your own world.
Authenticity: Choose to be you. Forgo what society says. Society tries to trap you in a box, so you have to find ways to maneuver around that box.
Thank you so much for sharing that. I bet that's a message that many people need to hear regularly. Be you, stick with it, do what feels genuinely right and true for you. That’s amazing. Being from the same background, I can understand. I've witnessed it. As a guy, obviously, it’s a little bit different, unfortunately, in our culture. Thank you so much for sharing that. The final question is everything you've achieved in your career, in your personal life, everything that's going on, how much of it would you say is due to luck and how much is due to hard work?
All of it's due to hard work. How much is due to luck? I don't know. That's a hard question. Here's how I'm going to answer it. I look at people who do well and hear them say they're lucky. I look at them and I think to myself they've worked hard for this, and they're genuine, and they are who they are. We like to use that because we assume we're lucky and we think we don't deserve everything we get, but we deserve it. None of us are good at receiving.
The reason why we deserve it and we're good at what we do is because we work hard, but because we're also true, and we have that path and we follow. How many times I have to repeat myself, there’s genuine to who we are. Those big leaders are always who they are. They don't try and change themselves, but then they also work hard, too. I don't think they're lucky. They're authentic and they work hard.
Do you think the saying you're lucky is a form of humility?
Yes.
Being humble?
Yes. I would've never thought about it until if I look at people that say they're lucky and I'm like, “No, you're not. You're sweet. You work hard. You don't understand how amazing you are.” They're humble. They don't realize it, too.
My guess after getting to know you and seeing everything you've done, I would say it's all hard work, too, from your perspective. You've worked hard to achieve everything you have. Anytime I say the word success, I do this because everybody's got a different definition of what success is. Congratulations on all the good things that have happened and continue to happen for you. I hope there's so much more. I'm going to get the warm and fuzzies every time I see you achieving something. It's going to help me feel good. Please, keep doing more. Any last things that you'd like to share before we wrap up?
Thank you for having me. This was great. It was nice to spend some time with you. Optometry world, I hope this helps you out. Reach out to either me or to Harbir. Let's grow this world and make it stronger and better.
That's the best way to end it. I love it. Thank you, everybody, who's been reading. Thank you for all the support. Again, don't forget to share it. Take a screenshot, throw it up on Instagram, put a post on LinkedIn, whatever you do. Hit like and subscribe. Leave a comment. Thank you so much. Thanks for tuning in. I will see you in the next episode.
Important Links
Instagram – @DrKiranRamesh
About Dr. Kiran Ramesh
Neuro-visual Optometrist, Clinic Owner, Speaker, Consultant, and Coach
Dr. Ramesh lives her life based on four main values, love, connect, inspire, and empower. She connects with patients, her team, colleagues and industry to better understand their goals, and in turn inspires and empowers all to discover opportunities, push boundaries, and understand their full potential. She operates a successful multidisciplinary clinic and supports the growth of others within the optical industry with peer to peer consulting and team building. In every area of her life her judgement and her actions are solely based on her heart.
Dr. Ramesh is the proud recipient of 2020 Best in Training at Transitions Academy and 2019 Canada Best Eye Care Practice of the Year. She completed her Doctor of Optometry at the University of Waterloo in 2004. She served on the board of directors for VTC (Vision Therapy Canada), is an associate member of COVD (College of Optometrists in Vision Development), clinical associate of the Optometric Extension Program, and is a member of the OAO (Ontario Association of Optometrists). She has 2 beautiful daughters, and a husband that always makes her smile.