 Hello and thank you for reading my article in this month's Envision Magazine. Now many opticians have been placed into their opticianary role without being given the tools to become fully confident in our full set of optical duties that we have as opticians. Now some of you as opticians are technically genius algebraic ninjas that know literally everything about optical and glasses and cutting and edging, but have not been given the opportunity to learn the techniques of being able to confidently sell products to patients without feeling like a snake oil salesman. There are also some opticians out there who have kind of you know scooted into their role, right? They've been trained on the job and and learned to do things the way that the opticians before you did things. And this is great and all, but really this leaves the opticians in a role that they're secretly wishing they had the foundational technical training that the other group has. But both of these leave an optical world of opticians that are desiring more that maybe want to learn more but don't want to look like a fool to ask for more or or maybe don't know even where to start. But I got you. I'm going to lay out a few different resources including my own so that you have access to learning that suits you. Now start by cautioning you with this. If your current learning taps out at sponsored lunch and learns by the labs or companies that are trying to sell their own brand and what they are teaching you, you need to reflect. Lunch and learns are necessary and great for what they are, but if you're not offering your team more, you have greatly fallen behind. Now there are also online learning resources available by these big corporate company monsters in our industry that are teaching you how to basically regurgitate their marketing BS and real learning will come from understanding this industry and the techniques and the products that make it great without the branded BS teaching your team to understand the functionality of different progressives and how they benefit certain prescriptions is much more powerful than having a team that only pushes one brand name for the sake of the brand name and maybe it's a certain type of progressive and that's all great and good because the marketing says it's the best but look for teaching that is foundationally sound and opticianry not teaching that needs to be relearn once that branded name is discontinued. You get what I'm saying? Now I'm going to discuss three resources for learning that are rather popular and fabulous resources in our industry. Now the first is Kerry Wilson's Optigal Consulting. Now Kerry has created a resource for opticians that helps guide opticians through the licensing process and masterfully teaches them on the topics that must be learned in order to you know properly complete the testing. Her services range anywhere from a testing study study guide that's a downloadable PDF that's absolutely beautiful by the way up to classes with personalized coaching with Kerry Wilson herself. Kerry is an amazing resource and has helped so many people in our industry gain confidence in fully understanding the technical part of our trade. She's downright brilliant. Now you can't go far with talking about online optical learning without talking about Laramie Kay. Laramie Kay has resources as part of their program but also has quite a bit available for free on YouTube. They go very deep into explaining the concepts to really get you to understand all of the points and and all the different ways that they work. Now Laramie Kay certainly has a style that kind of laid back chill goofy but smart approach to their things but they certainly know their stuff. The third resource that for those of you who don't know is my company Spexy. Spexy is a darn near free optical online resource for your entire team to have access to an online learning video library that is beneficial for every position of the optical. Now where the other resources that I listed really focus on the technical component of opticianry a very necessary part of our trade. The Spexy trainings are for every part of the team from those who know nothing about optical to those that have been doing this optical thing for a bit. The 101 foundational training can take a new hire coming into any position in your office with absolutely no understanding of optical and give them the tools and confidence to become an active contributor as quickly as possible in the office. And for the more tenured on your team there are leadership training sales courses billing and coding lessons and even entire courses to help your whole team learn how they play a role in preventing walkouts and teaching them how to prevent them. Yeah no joke and earlier I told you that it's practically free because your entire team can have shared access to the entire platform for $34 a month. Alrighty there are your resources as promised please feel free to reach out with any questions that you have. I hope you have a fabulous month and I will see you in May's Envision Magazine. Bye.