Do you think about your eyes? If you don’t, your vision may go wrong. Harbir Sian’s guest is Dr. Jim Asuchak, the Owner and Optometrist at Optical Studio Lethbridge. Dr. Jim talks about the Council for Healthy Eyes Canada’s initiative called Think About Your Eyes. Its objective is to raise eye health awareness across Canada. They also help patients find optometrists near them for easy access. The council strives towards better optometrist engagement for 2022. Join in the conversation to discover strategies to grow your business from good to great. Tune in!
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Think About Your Eyes - Dr. Jim Asuchak
I am so happy to have you all back again for another episode. Thank you so much for all the support. As always, I always have a request right off the top. If you get any value from this episode or any previous episodes, please share it. Hit subscribe and like. Leave a review and comment. All of that stuff helps so much. It means so much to me when you guys do that. Thank you so much in the past for all the support and all the support that will be upcoming. I am looking to bring amazing guests to the show who can bring value from a business and personal growth perspective.
I have Dr. Jim Asuchak, who is going to be able to hit all of those notes for us. Dr. Jim Asuchak graduated from the University of Waterloo in 1999 and opened the Optical Studio in Lethbridge, Alberta. The practice has grown to seven optometrists and they moved into a new space, which is 10,000 square feet. He has been fortunate to sit on the Alberta Association of Optometrists council and serve as the President of the association for two years. He is also the Acting Chair of the Council for Healthy Eyes Canada. That is something that we are going to talk about because that is such an important initiative that maybe not enough people have heard of yet. Thank you, Jim, for joining me. It is great to have you on the show. I am so glad that you agreed to do this.
Thank you, Harbir. It is a real pleasure and thank you for such a warm welcome. That was a great introduction.
There is a lot of information I didn’t share in the intro yet. I love it if you don’t mind me giving your introduction from your perspective of who you are, where you live, where you work and all of that.
It is amazing how fast time goes by. 1999 was when I graduated and how fast we’ve grown. The years go by pretty quickly. Coming home was great. We started on a 1,300 square foot building and then grew to a little larger space. We are in our hopefully final location lasts us a while. It’s been quite an experience and a journey to get here. It is amazing. It Isn’t something you envisioned when you got out of school.
‘99 doesn’t seem like that long ago. There are so many vivid memories from 1999. The most key thing was the whole year 2K thing. That doesn’t feel like that long ago. I graduated in 2010. That feels like yesterday. I shared something on social media about our new associates that started working at our practice. She observed and shadowed at our office years ago. It is crazy that years went by so fast that she is graduated. It was beautiful that it’d come full circle and she’s working at our office. It’s that time. I was hit in the face with that like, “It has been that long already?”
When I was in the role of that past president, we had to bring on new council members and get a little more interest in there. A lot of the new candidates I was speaking to said, “It will be good to get some younger people on there with some new views.” I’m not younger anymore with new views.
Think About Your Eyes: Alberta has always been the push for historical perspectives.
As far as being on the association, I first met you as you were visiting DC because every year, presidents from other provinces come and speak when we have our conference. It was so good to meet you. Looking upon the stage, seeing somebody who is the president of an association for a province, there is immediate respect that comes with that from my perspective viewing you out there. You are a down-to-earth guy. If you could share, how did you get to that position? What came before you? You were part of the association and other positions, but what roles did you have as the president?
With the Alberta Association, I know it is a little different than a lot of the provinces. In some of the provinces, you can move through the chairs fairly quickly. Alberta has always been this push for historical perspectives. Once you get on council, there is a number of different roles you have before you start moving through the chairs. Once you make that commitment, you move through a treasurer chair for two years, then the president role for two years and past president for two years. I was on council for twelve years in total. By the time you start moving through the chairs, that is another six-year commitment. It is a long way through there.
When I first joined the council, it would have been 2009. I get on there and you think, “I am going to make a lot of change.” You are going to move things forward, but you won’t realize how much inner workings or what goes on behind the scenes to make an association successful and move stuff forward for the profession. There is a lot of learning experience before you get into that president’s role. It is amazing how much stuff you pick up along the way. It is fortunate a lot of people hear that commitment and it’s a tough decision to make to sit in that role.
With the amount of professional growth that comes from it and personal growth that comes from sitting in that capacity, I was fortunate to be given that opportunity. By the time you go to their provinces and meet people, the amount of information you’ll learn about from on the way and the type of people you meet. Meeting you when I was in that role and some other people I met along the way. BCDO has some phenomenal people in our leadership. Going to Saskatchewan and hearing some of the challenges they have and the people in their leadership and in Manitoba.
You learn a lot, but you make lifetime friendships as you go. That drives the passion for the profession and wanting to see it do well. Something as a new OD getting out of school, I’d encourage them to get involved in any capacity, whether it’s committees, association board, even with wisdom groups, the amount of knowledge to gain from others. Our profession is still small enough that a person can make effective change in their province. Something you can do to advance yourself is getting involved and making a difference. It was a great opportunity to have.
That is something that I have been echoing over the years. I have been involved in a formal capacity on and off like I was involved in some committees, I still am, but informally, I’m always trying to get wherever I can help. I’m always messaging people whatever different committees. The one thing is it’s a form of giving back. It’s a way of feeling more fulfilled. It’s a way of helping yourself build professionally and personally.
I tell a lot of people that most of the big opportunities that have come to me through my career have come because of some connections I’ve made through being involved in the association. I imagine you’d feel the same way. The amount of networking you do is valuable in building your personal professional development. You did it on this national level. I’m talking about here locally. What would you say are some of the couple of key takeaways that you could share with us from that experience?
Make lifetime friendships as you go.
Even in national, the amount of issues going on. Across the country, everybody faces different issues. There are different priorities. In other parts of the country, there is a little bit of learning you can get from everywhere there. The relationship you build is invaluable. Some problems are a little ahead in their scope. To see where things are coming and upcoming trends. Take those ideas, put them back and implement them into your businesses. It’s an unbelievable opportunity. One of the things, when I was president, was back in 2016 to 2018, a big push for our province was going through an operational board reached the board members were involved in the doing of everything.
Say the chair of conferences and special events would have to book the speakers, make the phone calls and set up a lot of the stuff like that. During that time period, we moved to a governance board. Looking at strategic planning 5 to 10 years out, APIs to do that and then putting in a business plan and entrusting a CEO to do that. Valuating the KPIs in how we can make strategic decisions based on our limited resources. Take that back into your business, the amount of growth that would fuel, and how you run things. Even dealing with staffing issues and how to manage people is a great opportunity.
Once you move to that governance model, you have this real corporate structure that you can learn from and implement into your business. We talked about the value of ODs being involved. It is a way of giving back, but also to help. If we want to succeed, our profession has to succeed also around us. Being involved can make a difference. There are some other initiatives out there that we can get involved with on our provincial or state level.
There are other initiatives out there that are broader and on a national scale. You have been involved in this one since its inception. I want us to talk about this because it’s so amazing. Full disclosure, I’ve been very fortunate to now be part of this initiative. I joined the board of the Council for Healthy Eyes Canada, which has this initiative called Think About Your Eyes. A lot of people have heard of this, at least peripherally or somewhere. Let’s start from the beginning. What is Think About Your Eyes? What is CHEC and how did it start?
Way back, I was on the NPEC, National Public Education Committee. Back then, we looked at how to get a unified voice across Canada for optometry increased awareness, the importance of eye exams, comprehensive care and how it fits into the whole systemic health of the eyes or health of the body. At that time, optometry was funding the whole campaign. Down in the States, it was this rise about this Think About Your Eyes campaign. It was industry and optometry in partnership to grow eye exams and year-over-year increases. We looked at that no burden and said, “Why aren’t we doing that up there and getting the support from industry to help fund this education campaign?”
Back in 2017, we met with some leaders of TAYE US and see if we could modify that and adapt it and bring it up to Canada. We are fortunate that they were collaborative, offering collateral and helping us get our feet on the ground and get running with it. We also had a number of industry partners. It was Essilor, Nikon, Shamir, Alcon and J&J who got on board and helped support the program. We started off as a very small pilot project in Alberta and it was an unbelievable success.
We formed the Council for Healthy Eyes Canada, which is the board whose sole purpose is to run the Think About Your Eyes committee, which develops and implements a whole marketing communications campaign. One of the big things about the TAYE campaign is data collection. In the past, you always looked at impressions and how many people it’s hitting out there for this campaign. The thing about TAYE is that we wanted to be smart about the dollars we’re spending, look at the data we’re getting from it, and then analyze it to positively influence consumer behavior to make sure we’re running an effective campaign.
Think About Your Eyes: Make strategic decisions based on your limited resources.
It was very cool collecting the data from it. Some of the stuff we even did was a football study where we used digital devices. People are served up an ad. We can track them to see if they visit an optometry office. We had a 12% increase in those who served an ad walking into an optometry office. It was a very effective campaign. For the 2018 year, we ran it in Alberta. For 2019, we had BCDO signup as well as Saskatchewan Manitoba. It was a Western campaign from the success we built on there. It moved to national. Unfortunately, in 2020 COVID hit. We had to put the brakes on for 2021. It wasn’t our ambition to take it national for 2021. We had all the Atlantic provinces and the Western provinces signed up.
You saw what was happening in the US and you thought, “Why not do it here?” It started small in Alberta, but there was such a recognizable increase. The goal is to get patients coming through the door across the board. It’s not to benefit one region or one type of practice. It’s across the board, increased comprehensive eye exams. That was a 12% increase. That’s pretty amazing.
An actual footfall traffic study. We’re still waiting for 2021. It’s exciting. The neat thing was we created all the bilingual collateral so that whole Canadian messaging has taken on its own.
In the short time I’ve been involved, I’ve seen some of that. Each part of the country has a different voice. In Canada, different languages are being spoken. Different key messaging will resonate with people in that area. I’ve seen that that messaging has been tailored to different parts of the country. We live in this time, it’s a little creepy, but we’re using this to our benefit that we can track people that closely. Other companies, businesses and industries are doing this where you click on something and that company is going to follow you and know exactly what you’re doing from that point forward, but we’re able to use it to the advantage of this industry and our patients’ advantage as well.
It’s the effective use of the dollars for the campaign to make it as useful as possible that is pretty significant. Another exciting thing, too, that we’re striving towards is a little better optometrist engagement for the 2022 year. We are looking forward to generating a whole tool kit that is available on the Council for Healthy Eyes website so that individual optometrists can go on there and use all the marketing collateral and make use of it on their website and social. Getting that better engagement is what’s going to drive 2022.
That is something I wanted to touch on. All this hard work is gone, and you’ve got multiple provinces involved. You have these key industry-leading organizations and companies involved in Al Qantas, Lauren and so on putting money and effort towards this campaign to ultimately get more patients in the door. This is to benefit any working OD in Canada. There is a lot of people behind the scenes putting in their time and effort.
Number one, I want to raise awareness for this initiative that has been around for a few years and it’s doing so well, but so few people are actively aware and taking advantage of it. Number two, how can people get involved to make it bigger? How can we spread the word? First off, there are resources for us to use. One of the first things that I remember you talking about when you were in BC was that there are all these resources like content and collateral that we can use on our websites. Where can we find that?
Your mission statement is your company’s guiding north star.
Council for Healthy Eyes Canada is the one website on which all this information is. Under the member section, you click on there and there is a toolkit. Another thing is making your association aware that you want to use this information and even give feedback on what you want. Check the reason for existence is to increase awareness. Optometrists know what will increase their awareness. There are such regional differences in each area. We do have a group. We have the information. We have the collateral and the resources available at CHEC to help individual ODs out.
Any feedback you want to give us will help create the collateral to do that. When COVID first hit, there were a lot of people asking for different things to help them out for their office. We created a lot of COVID material when it first happened. There is a lot of resources that we can provide. We are more than willing to help out with that. Manitoba is one where their members were asking for things. The association relayed it back to us and we are more than happy to create collateral for that stuff.
What is the website?
Visit that website, go to the member tab, look for the content there. Once you have gotten up to speed on what CHEC is, therefore, speak to your association to let them know that this content was valuable or maybe you’d like to see. CHEC is working in concert with our provincial associations to help us succeed.
It is about leveraging the member dollars. The associations are supporting it through their members’ dollars and then the money they are providing is being leveraged with the help of industry. It is a great value. You see value in it is a huge thing.
That answers the second thing I was saying is how can people get more involved? Would you say that is it to give feedback, talk to your association, or do more others?
We have a committee on there. The TAYE committee is the one that deals with the marketing company and provides feedback on where the direction the campaign wants to go. Anybody who has an interest in this area with social media, we have some great OD members on there. Some of the provincial associations have their communications marketing people on there. We are getting great feedback from that. The CIO has a marketing person who sits on there who is fantastic. Having associates input individual members’ input is huge. Anybody who wants involvement, we are more than open to that.
Think About Your Eyes: We're striving towards better optometrist engagement for 2022.
As a professional, we want to continue to grow. I can only do so much as an individual, so get involved with your association. Knowing that there is something on a national scale to help across the board is valuable. I would love for people to learn a little bit more about CHEC. If anybody follows me on social media, feel free to shoot me a message. If you are looking to get more information on how this initiative works, I’m happy to chat with you about it because this is something that we should all be more aware of. Let’s narrow the scope a little bit.
We went from provincial to national. We are going to come back down to the Optical Studio, this fantastic clinic that you’ve built. You moved into your new space. 10,000-square feet is mind-boggling to me. I’m trying to think about what you do with 10,000-square feet, but I’d love for you to tell me. I know you said it’s been a long road there. There are a lot of things that happened that you can’t exactly remember. How did you get here? What do you think you did to take whatever it was in 1999 to where it is?
The book we have been reading is Good to Great and talked about that flywheel. You start off pushing the flywheel and how difficult it is, but once you get it moving, there wasn’t one push. It was a number of different pushes. Along the way, a lot of little things built up to it. From our last location, our clinic patient-facing is probably about 6,500-square feet. The staff area is about 3,500-square feet. At first, they look at that and like, “We need a boardroom this big doing this many admins off.” It has been a huge thing.
That was one of the things I started noting and seeing the value in. I always have the right people on the bus and the proper staffing there. We’ve found that we empower our staff and do the things that they do best. We have a boardroom for staff meetings. It’s no longer huddled in a lunchroom that’s a multipurpose room and a bit of a mess. We can have proper functioning meetings where we have boards that track our KPIs and strategize on improving things. We can have Zoom meetings with reps, especially with the way things have been.
Those in-person visits have been a little more limited in the last couple of years. We found that facilitated moving ahead and following through on our strategic direction. Admin offices to make sure our accounts receivable is up to date, make sure we are in the right inventory to have meetings on the right frame selection is on the board. We found that it made a big difference to make sure all the things that happened behind the scenes happened.
That has been a huge change for us and a part of that growing-up experience and making sure people aren’t caught in the whirlwind. They can concentrate on growing the business rather than being caught down and growing the business in between, running around and getting all the things done down on the dispensary or the exam rooms.
Investing in technology builds loyalty from your customers.
The phrase, working on your business versus working in your business. That is a tough distinction to make like, “If I’m not seeing patients, my business is not growing.” If you’re only seeing patients, your business will also not grow the way it needs to. I’ve had a challenge seeing things differently that way. I’ve always been that go in there and do the work person. Fortunately, I have a business partner who sees things that way and can help me understand that side of the business a little better. You are talking about the governance model that you were talking about with the association and you bringing that in it clearly is beneficial to you.
What would you say out of that? I’ll use myself as an example. We have a practice that’s about 1,400, 1,500-square feet. It’s fairly new. Two exam rooms, it’s starting to slowly get busier. We have a lunchroom where we hold our meetings. We don’t have a boardroom. How does someone look at it working on the business? Off the cuff, I know we didn’t have you set up to answer this question, but whatever you could think of that might be helpful.
It’s dedicating that time to do it. It’s always putting that time aside to get it done. You always think, “I see 2 or 3 more patients in a day.” The biggest thing we did was come up with what is our why, sitting down and discussing it. As an association, that was one of the things that were at the mission statement. It’s your guiding North Star to look at. It was creating that memorable patient experience. How do we do that throughout the whole journey throughout the office? Taking time aside, we have weekly staff meetings and have those staff meetings. It’s not just used to be where my business partner and I dictate, “This is what we want to do. This is how we’re going to get there.”
We are not always the front desk realizing there are pinch points there and how they can create a better experience. It was transferring that power over to them to make it happen. Some of the stuff they bring to us are pretty unique and different. We have upstairs a call center, taking those phone calls coming in off the front desk. When people come in, somebody can greet them rather than being on the phone. That was one of the huge things that made a more memorable experience for patients coming in.
We have a concierge at the front door to greet you. Sometimes people don’t need to talk to the front staff to greet them and say, “I need my glasses adjusted.” The concierge can take them right over. Someone who might take a little more time or getting their glasses edged while they wait can bring them coffee, juice, or little kids get snacks. That is where there is a lot of input and what they see going on. Empowering staff, getting the right people in the right positions and a strong org chart to make sure everybody knows their role made a big difference for us.
So much of what you shared is going to be instantly applicable for me in our practice. I’m sure others are reading. I’ve read that book, too. It’s a great book. Having the right people in the right seat position on the bus is important. There are a lot of good lessons there. Thank you for sharing that. The other thing I wanted to ask you about your practice is specialty care. Do you offer different specialties? Which ones do you offer at this time?
We had seven optometrists. One of the ones we brought on has taken an interest in specialty contact lenses. It’s a niche area that we do that will hopefully grow quite a bit in the next few years. Another one I’ve taken a big interest in is dry eye. That is a big growth area. I’ve been fortunately part of a wisdom group with some real go-getters out there. A lot of mentors in that group have helped steer me in that direction. Some of the exciting things are having a little more room like that has given us the opportunity to have dedicated rooms for certain things. Our dry eye rooms are a little more spa-like. You throw that specialty wallpaper up, a little nicer cabinet.
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't
We have the massage chair, a flat table and an RF center sheriff in there. The Lipiflow is something we had a few years ago. We brought in a skincare line. We’re trying to differentiate a little more. Our IPL showed up, so it will be up. Another big thing we’ve done is TVs in every room. We have a 42-inch TV in every exam room. We’ll be implementing it right away, which we’ll have ads running on what we offer.
Some of the time, patients are looking for services, but they don’t know what you offer. We’ve got 5 or 10 minutes where they’re waiting for you to pick your head in. We are serving them based on the demographic and why they’re there. We can put ads up there for them and let them know what we offer.
Specialty contact lens, dry eye, what else? Do you do any myopia control or has that been integrated generally?
It’s a little bit of dabbling. Some specialty lenses, a little bit of ortho-K with our new fellow, joined on with us. We’ve been lucky. One of the other optometrists that joined us did a little more vision therapy where she came from her last practice. We’re excited to get that up and go. Hopefully, once she gets settled into place, we’ll be doing a little bit more of that, specialty areas to people who know what they’re doing. Dabbling isn’t always the best, so I was glad somebody else came on with a little better grasp on that stuff.
I do not put my hands anywhere near specialty contact lenses or buy ocular vision-type stuff. That is not because I don’t think it’s important. It’s because I don’t know it well enough that I don’t want to mess around with it. Dry eye and myopia control, I’m happy to give those a try. Would you say that those have been important areas of building your practice as well?
Dry eyes make you think, “You want to make this investment in the technology.” When you start, you’re a little apprehensive. “Do I recommend this and the costs involved with it?” There is no better feeling than you always having those patients say, “Have you done your hot water?” “No, but my eyes hurt.” It gives them something that can give them some relief.
It’s a way to build the practice and loyalty to the practice and word of mouth. That has been phenomenal. We have probably been running it for maybe 4 or 5 months. The growth we have experienced there and the confidence you feel. When you have a passion for it, it’s exciting to go into work and you got something new and different that you know you feel confident recommending. That has been a huge growth area for us.
You create your own luck.
This is a question that I ask a lot of ODs who have these special types of equipment. You have the RF, which is a fairly expensive unit, your IPL. It’s a big investment for you, but it’s an investment for the patient. You’re charging $1,000, $1,500 or $2,000 for a set of treatments. Do you get a lot of pushbacks? If you don’t mind sharing, how do you overcome that or present it to the patient to make it feel like that investment will be worth their time?
It’s having a passion for it, knowing what you’re recommending and getting confident in it. Having the information that goes behind it. It is one thing to say, “We are going to try this or we will try this.” If you feel confident, you have the knowledge. I found it’s been an easy transition. I’ve been lucky to be part of a wisdom group that is probably early adopters of a lot of this technology. I have been hearing about it for quite a while.
I had the opportunity to attend the Dry Eye Summit out in Toronto. I feel confident with the information, science, technology and studies that have come with it. When you are making that recommendation, you’re not selling the patients something, but you’re making a recommendation about which you can feel confident. That comes with confidence.
In your case, that confidence comes from knowledge, science and feedback expertise from your colleagues. Even before you’ve had the machine in your office or only you’ve had it there for a little while, you feel like that information you’ve obtained from other sources brings you enough confidence to share it with your patients.
It’s been in the office a while to see the results of it has made a difference. It’s not just the doctor’s recommendation. It has to be that whole journey throughout the office as well. Everything has to be cohesive. Your website has to display the information that you know why it’s going to work. Your staff has to have bought into it, why it works, be knowledgeable and the information you send out to the patient, that follow-up care. What we’ve found too is the baseline measurements as well.
There are a couple of computer programs that report all the dry eye treatments. We use one CSI dry eye. Even the baseline measurements. A lot of people are familiar with the OSDI, speed and DQ, but a lot of the other things to look out for, we have the LipiScan to look at the structure of the glands, MMP and we have the eye pen to measure osmolarity. The noninvasive tear breakup time is getting all those baseline measurements and then showing the patients after the care. Sometimes it takes a little while for the symptom to resolve, even though you’re noticing the signs are improving. That helps quite a bit as well.
That has been a consistent theme amongst colleagues I speak to who have this equipment, more importantly, having success with the equipment. It’s having those baseline measurements, myography and the noninvasive tear breakups. These things are key because, a lot of times, the symptomatic relief is delayed. It’s not right away. There are times when it feels worse because the corneal sensitivity is coming back. If you can show them, this looks better than it used to, at least. Patients feel good about that. When I tell them, “I know you don’t feel necessarily better, but it is looking better.” That is enough for patients to feel good about what they are doing and then stick with it.
Dabbling is difficult. It’s an investment in technology, but once you have it and have the confidence to show the results, that was a huge step forward for us.
Think About Your Eyes: Grow for what you want to become: increase your stuff and buy equipment.
Before we move on to wrapping up with a couple of last questions, I would love for you to share if there are any topics in general that you would like to talk about? More importantly, if people wanted to get in touch or learn more about your office, where could they do that?
Feel free to email me anytime. It’s JimAsuchak@Gmail.com. I’m more than happy to have a conversation with anyone about anything. I’m a big advocate for joining their professional association. We have always been very fortunate in Alberta. They are all volunteers who want to make a difference and make things better. A lot of people are like, “I don’t have the experience or knowledge.” Everybody has experienced knowledge. It’s your profession. You also develop a big passion for it when seeing what you can do to advance the profession. As I’ve seen, the change while I was on the council was significant and can have a big influence on that. It will expand your passion for it.
I don’t think it can ever be overstated how valuable it is for the individual and profession when people get involved. If you’ve read the previous show, you might know this already. There are two questions I ask every guest at the end of the show. The first one is if we get a hop in a time machine and head back in time to a point in time that was difficult, perhaps you were struggling in some capacity, feel free if you would like to share that moment that comes to mind. More importantly, what advice would you give to yourself at that time to help him get through that point?
Everybody experiences difficulties with growth and finances. It seems like I’m always delayed. You are growing for what you want to be, so you increase staff or debt and buying equipment. You are always behind. Financially, there always seems to be a lag until things catch up. I always get distracted and start on a new project. You never seemed to get caught up. I probably wouldn’t do anything. I am very happy with where I got to. If anything, I wish I had gotten involved in the networking aspect sooner. The associations, the wisdom groups, sitting on boards, I waited probably ten years after I graduated to join in on that stuff. That’s huge. The camaraderie that comes from charity organizations that you join from board work to you do and the amount of knowledge and stuff that comes with it, and building those friendships and the network is huge. I wish I would’ve done that stuff earlier.
That is still super valuable, even though you say you are happy with where you ended up and I wouldn’t change anything. That’s something to give people some advice on what they could maybe do better. The lag is so true. I’ve shared that with so many people. You do something and we live in this place of this instant gratification in our society. It’s like working out. If you exercise for a couple of weeks, you are not going to see a difference, but it is making a difference.
It is going to be months until you see it. The same thing happens with business. It goes the other way, too. You worked out for a long time and you get fit and then you stop working out. You’ll still look good for a long time because of those effects, but you know you are heading in the wrong direction. It can be deceiving if you get a little lazier or complacent. There is that lag period that discourages people sometimes. The last question I have for you is, everything you’ve accomplished, president of the association, this big part of CHEC, your success in your practice, and everything else, how much of all of this would you say is due to luck and hard work?
People create their own luck. You have to get out there. You got to meet and talk to people. You got to always be looking for opportunities. I’ve been very fortunate with who I’ve been associated with. I’ve been lucky with my business partner, the people I went to school with, and the friendships I’ve had. That has helped to drive me to where I am. You can’t get too far without those networking opportunities. You got to go out there and create your luck.
Thank you for sharing all that information about CHEC. Everybody who is reading, please look into it. All our Canadian colleagues look into the Council for Healthy Eyes Canada and Think About Your Eyes. Get those resources. Reach out to your association to give them some feedback. See how we can make it better. If you have any questions for Jim, all his wealth of knowledge, feel free to reach out to him as well. Thanks, Jim. Much appreciated.
I appreciate it.
Thank you, readers. Once again, if you got any value from this, I’m sure you got multiple pieces of value from this. Please do share it, take a screenshot, throw it up on Instagram, hit like and subscribe, do all those things. I will be back with another episode. Take care.
Important Links
About Dr. Jim Asuchak
Jim was born and raised in Fort Macleod where his parents still operate a small farm. He later attended the University of Lethbridge and then onto the University of Waterloo to earn his Doctor of Optometry degree. Jim returned to Lethbridge in 1999 and opened Optical Studio soon after. The practice has now grown to 7 optometrists and recently a new building as well.
He has been fortunate to sit on council for the Alberta Association of Optometrists and serve as President for 2 years. He has also been acting as chair of the Council for Healthy Eyes Canada since 2018 and on the board since it was founded.
He has enjoyed his time volunteering for Canadian Vision Care and attended mission trips to Jamaica, Malawi, and the Philippines. Jim is looking forward to future adventures with the group as well.