 here with Dr. Jen Stewart, the famous, very famous Dr. Jen Stewart. And we wanted to get on a talk nerdy to me because I was talking to her just the other day, and we were talking about this whole idea with virtual assistants inside the optical and kind of dovetailing off a very great podcast that we heard from Dr. Adam Ramsey and Steve Vargo on I own a business. Jen, go ahead and tell me your thoughts on the virtual assistant talk that we heard through iDoc and I own a business. So one of my friends actually sent me the podcast and she said, Have you heard Steve Vargo and Adam Ramsey talking about virtual assistants? And I was like, I haven't. And she said it was the best podcast she heard and actually listening to that podcast made her sign up with one of the organizations and she actually just onboarded her virtual assistant a week ago today. So she was so inspired. And I actually went and I downloaded that podcast. I was traveling to a meeting. So I downloaded that podcast. It was the first thing I listened to on my plane ride. And it was so good. I also just recorded another video with Dr. Adam Ramsey for independent strong, which will be shortly talking about the same topic. So it was something I found really interesting, really exciting. So I had to have him on myself and talk to him. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And I found it so real with Dr. Ramsey and how he really laid out like real expectations. And one thing I wanted to really highlight is, you know, he said that, you know, you go through a few different virtual assistants and you, you can hear different conversations, you know, with, you know, you basically get paired with a perfect virtual assistant for you. And you were telling me about one that Perry did, right? Yes. Yeah, tell me about that real quick. Perry Braille has I help you E Y E help you. So I was actually on one of the webinars he did where he was live and he was interviewing, I think me I think I listened to probably eight to 10 virtual assistants that he had on live talking to them about their background, the skills they have, what they like about working in an optimistic practice, what their dream practice would be. So just like we would interview these people in person, he was asking the same questions, thousands of miles away, these were virtual assistants in the Philippines, South Africa, and it was really, really interesting. There were two that I probably would have hired right on the spot. They were that good. Yeah, like, so so the honest questions, like getting down to the real nitty-gritty. Yeah, so so sometimes you my concern would be, you know, even, you know, in representing spexy or representing an optical, you want them to represent you and sometimes I feel like accents can really get in the way. So what had you or what what have you learned or noticed from all that? So I think some practices just don't have that person interacting with patients through the phone. So a lot of the the ones that I've heard they're using them to answer email or do admin tasks like billing, answering jobs, other things that might not be patient facing. So they, the patients might not even know that when they're emailing your office that they're emailing virtual assistant because that that accent doesn't come through. But I've heard other practices say they have, you know, maybe a virtual virtual assistant from South Africa. And patients are really interested and they ask good questions like, Oh, where are you from? And, you know, where do you live? And I think the world now people are more accepting of virtual assistants and kind of find it unique and intriguing, but also part of our new world. I think it's location dependent. I think, you know, people know their patient demographic and their patient base. So that might not be what they want as kind of the first base of their practice. But I know a lot of people are using them more for admin tasks that might not have the patient interact with them over the phone. Right. Yeah. And then some of the calls that I've been on with virtual assistants, even for Spexy, when we're, you know, trying to find our right one, we just actually got off a call this morning, where we were entering interviewing, excuse me, a few of them. And in the interview process, there was there were they were all from the same place. I believe this was Columbia that we were talking to this morning. And but some of them, like their accent is just so refreshing. And then others, their accents a little too strong, I think, to really educate and teach people about something. So that was my only, you know, kind of hold back with those. But some of them, like they all were from the same place with the same accent. And it sounded really lovely, like, Oh, where are you from? I think it helps to find your practice. Maybe it's something unique that you have somebody that answering the phone that sounds a little bit different. And it's a way maybe to get another patient demographic, like in my practice, we for a long, long time didn't have anyone who spoke Spanish. You know, I, I was the, I was, and while we didn't have a huge speaking population, we did have patients who came in and I would fumble through that. But we did hire a front desk person who could translate for me. But if there was an opportunity where that wasn't available, this could be an opportunity where you do have somebody that you can turn on a camera and have a dialogue and maybe have somebody a thousand miles away and they can translate for you. So it can open up an opportunity for a patient base or a patient demographic that you aren't serving at the moment, because you just don't have that person in your office or your Spanish is not as good as mine. I love it. Well, and that that's a perfect segue into the different areas of the office that it would be beneficial. So, you know, Dr. Adam Ramsey talked about, you know, you know, someday in the near future, it even being, you know, very feasible that, you know, the front desk position is, you know, that person who's serving that purpose is doing other things because a virtual assistant usually can do a lot of the things that the front desk person does. And so that, again, frees up that person to do, you know, way more beneficial and maybe even make more money in the office doing other things in the office. So where, where do you see, so you already mentioned translator, do you feel the same way with, I guess, the front desk? I think so. You know, I think the traditional front desk may be a thing of the past. If we can, depending on the way that you envision your authentic practice, you know, what is, what do you want it to look like? Do you want it to look high tech? Do you want patients booking their appointment online and not using the phone to call? Do you actually have to have somebody standing there to greet them or have they done all that work first? Have they uploaded their insurance information, you know, entered all their information in their patient portal? We don't hand them a clipboard anymore with paperwork. So do we actually need a person sitting there? Do we need somebody there to answer the phone? Adam was saying his virtual assistant actually answers the phone. So when they, they set up a phone tree that if somebody's calling to make an appointment, it gets pushed to her. So he said that eliminated about 80% of their phone calls in their office. So gosh, freeing up a massive amount of time for the rest of the staff to be able to do way more important things. I mean, not saying that not entering the phone is not important, but, but yeah, does it have to be somebody sitting in your office? And if you have a front desk, we always felt, you know, our front desk, we're trying to do multiple things, you know, they know they have to answer the phone, but there's a patient in front of them. So how do you choose and how do you choose the right option? Do you put the person on hold? We don't, none of us love being on hold, or do you put the person in front of you on hold and go, you know, hold on, I know you want to pay all the bill that you owe, but can you just one second and and then that phone call turns into 15 minutes? How do you prioritize and balance that? And it can, I think it leads staff to feel overwhelmed, stressed, never making the right choice, you know, who do you pick? So if you can eliminate most of those phone calls and have that done through virtual assistant, you might not even need somebody you could have might not be a front desk, it could be a concierge or a greeter. And their only role is to welcome a patient to your practice, you know, really talk up. I'm so glad you're here. This is, you know, we're really excited to have the opportunity. Can I get you, you know, a glass of water or the coffee that you've requested or, you know, really make them feel comfortable more as a concierge and not just, you know, name, address. Right. Yes, I think I think the modern practice is going to reimagine that front desk and not have any that, you know, window that you slide and they slide back. Because who likes that? So really a person that's more of a concierge or a greeter who is 100% of the time fully available to work with the person in front of them and not be trying to manage the phone. So yeah, yeah, you brought up a good thing because I mean, and, you know, even in our, you know, spexy trainings, we teach them, you know, okay, that person is right in front of you, that person matters. So you need to make sure that, you know, if the phone starts ringing, that somebody else needs to step in on the team to pick that up. But at the same time, you don't want to lose that either. So, so, you know, do you stop that person? And so this allows for offices to give more dedicated time to the person that's dedicated to that patient, whether that patient is on the phone or right in front of them. So I love that analogy because you're totally right because we have to train on it because it's such an issue. So if somebody is already set and that's all that they do, you know, not all that they do, but that's their main purpose is when a call comes through, they're going to be addressing those patients and that patient gets their full attention and not, you know, they're getting sidetracked by saying, bye, Mary, you know, I'll call you and collect your credit card over the phone. Or it doesn't make that person feel special. And also, we do have those patients who, you know, want to call and talk to Judy in the office. And that doesn't mean that the virtual assistant, you know, is the only person that talks to them, they now might be able to triage that and say, yeah, I'm happy to get you over to her. Let me transfer you over, but it eliminates all of those calls coming through the front desk. If that's how you choose to use a virtual assistant or trying to really get people to engage with you online and do as much possible through scheduling online or using, you know, email or text. So but that also could be the virtual assistant who's the one answering the text. And I would never know. I mean, how do we know when we're making appointments? You know, I try and choose practices that I can make appointments online that have the text feature. I don't like being on the phone. I don't really want to pick up the phone to call. I'll let it for days and be like, you just have to pick up this phone. You could do this. So if I can text, but how do I know that the person I'm texting actually is in the practice? We have no idea. Yeah, yeah, this might be outsourcing that, you know, your primary care. So we don't actually know who's on the other end of that text message and your patients won't know as long as they're trained properly and how you want them to reflect your practice. So they still are reflection of your practice. So making sure they're trained appropriately is super important. Yeah, yeah. And, and let's go to where you and I ended up having this conversation. When you were talking to one of your friends who was bringing on a virtual assistant, and you made the which I appreciate you made the recommendation that they utilize Spexy. So yeah, what first off, what made you think of us? It was a moment because this friend is the one who was the one who brought up virtual assistant to me and she reached out last week and said, I know that you love Spexy and you're going through the training yourself, which I am. I go through I'm slowly, slowly making my way through every every course. But she said, you know, do you think it would be great for a virtual assistant? And this lightbulb went off my head and I went, oh my gosh, it's absolutely perfect because we I think the downside or the hesitation of bringing on a virtual assistant is, oh my gosh, now it's one more person to train. How am I going to make this work? I don't have the time to train my in office staff, just all the things when you're bringing a staff member. And now you can't even have that person move with you, right? You're like, come with me, come with me, Brandon. You have to have the time to follow me. We're going to do on the run. Now you have to say, okay, now I have to sit. When do I ever sit in my practice and talk to somebody? How am I going to do this? Having a dedicated preset amount of learning for them that they can just log on to just as another staff member. It was like this lightbulb moment, like why couldn't they go through the entire specC program every course or the courses that you decide are for them and do it on their own time before they actually are released into into the world, just like you would do a staff member. And that's what Dr. Adam Ramsey said, his virtual assistant, he actually spent more time, significantly more time training than any staff member he had. I think he said she did about six weeks of training before she was allowed or, you know, to do anything where I don't know anyone that spends six weeks with an in-person training before the, you know, it's kind of like six minutes, okay, you've got a pulse. Later, and then we never have the time to train them. But I think, you know, that's what made me think, oh, my gosh, specC would be perfect for these virtual assistants because you're no longer having to do that homework and piece together through, you know, maybe your lab or your contact lens vendor or searching YouTube and maybe not even giving them the right information. If you're not watching those videos, it takes that burden off of us as the business owner to say, I'm going to create a library of resources for my virtual assistant. When it's already been done, it's already created. Here you go. As a staff member, I can monitor your progress. And then once I feel like you're ready to go, then I can kind of release you into whatever role it is. But it was this, this moment to me like, oh, my gosh, why are we making this more difficult than we have to? Why are we trying to create all these, these playlists and course content and looking for content for these people to train on when it's already available? Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate that so much. And it's 100% true because no matter if this person is answering emails or texts or, you know, are answering phone calls, the eye care world is so darn dynamic that you need to know in order to have an adequate response and all to all these different things, you know, when a patient calls and I like, hey, I was wondering with my glasses and they have kind of this general question, maybe about, you know, the prescription seems a little off, you know, maybe they can have a conversation with them about, well, have you had, have you come in to have it fit properly? Because we really, you know, stress that that's important. And they know the reason why, right? This person is not going to be an optician. The virtual assistant is not going to be an optician. They're not going to be necessarily scanning in insurance cards. They're not going to be, you know, necessarily there are some that do billing, but maybe they're not doing any billing. But if they have a general knowledge and general understanding, that's everything that the Spexy 101 courses, but just a typical understanding of the foundation of optics and understanding what the independent optical goes through the conversations that they need to have and the proper answers for patients is super important. And if that virtual assistant comes equipped with that, they're just going to be so much more powerful for you. Right. And they can get started even sooner. You're not having to hire somebody and then fill their time trying to train them, but they'll be ready to go and they work, you know, I mean, Adam was saying, you know, they can work 30 plus hours. So you could really set them up to do. How long is Spexy 101? 101 is five, a little over five hours. If you were to like Netflix, I was one day, you know, you can monitor that they've done it, but they could be ready to go in just a few days if they know kind of the basics of how to be in an office. And they can even go through those additional courses if you really want them to be as knowledgeable as anyone. Yes, they're not selling glasses. They're not doing adjustments themselves. But then they even understand all of the verbiage we use and all of the things that the opticians know and be able to really have good conversations. And how would people know that they're not sitting in your office at that point? Right? Yeah, you would have no idea that it's something in South Africa or the Philippines that's asking these detailed questions that you don't have to come up with. And you don't have to put the flow of how to triage each question and think about that. It's already done for you. And one other thing that Adam Ramsey said as well, was that when the when the virtual assistant was going through their courses and doing their things granted, you know, we don't train on each individual EHR, but that he referred to an EHR course that she was going through. And she was like, she knew the course better than or she knew the EHR better than the rest of the staff because she actually went through all of the dream world, everyone that we hire would go through, you know, the onboarding and play in the sandbox of the EHR. At this moment, we are all understaffed. I think as long as somebody can type and breathe and talk, I think we're like, just we got to go. So we, yes, and I bet that that person could teach the in-person staff a thing or two about all of the features that the EHR has that we just don't maybe utilize because we just do what we have to do to get through the day. So yes, I mean, and when we when we when we added EHR, we did go through all those videos. And I don't think after that initial time that any staff member that we hired, everyone threw them again. So you're 100% right. But that also takes the burden off your staff. It takes the burden off your staff, you know, and you always talk about who do we have trained our staff or our new hires are best performing. Best person. Yeah. So you're you're avoiding having that person even now have to go sit in the back and not even train somebody in person. But you know, if we're not doing it this way, you would now maybe take that person off the floor completely stick them in a dark room, teaching a virtual assistant or managing them where they could just be kind of set up with great tools and learn and then maybe come back with questions or feedback or yeah, the end of the day. Here's what I've done. Here's what I know. Here's what I feel comfortable doing. What's next? You know, what do you want? Yeah, yeah. And I think that, you know, looking at it this way and having the proper resources turns it into more of an exciting conversation than a oh, gosh, it's going to be more of a wait kind of conversation. So the other thing too, that we were talking about the other day was and this is why we decided to record the starting things were like, this is great is, you know, the offices that have spexy, at least, you know, the spexy plus membership, it's $34 a month for the entire office, right? And each individual user, you can add more users. So like three users can be added for $5 a month, and you can add more and more and more users, right? So if you think about it, if you're already a spexy office and you're training a virtual assistant, it's $1.66 a month. A $1.66, yeah. Just like to give them access to the resources and, you know, from the virtual assistants that I've been talking to, at least for spexy, because we're using some for some of our email communications and stuff like that, that we're looking to you, some I should say, but the conversations that I've been having with them is that they're hungry, hungry to learn. And so even just giving them access, like to learn all of the things, even though, you know, wanting them to do spexy 101, they're going to have access to the trainings. I mean, and they're hungry to learn, they're going to be such a valuable asset to your office. I mean, it's amazing to me. I mean, I think especially with the, I think the virtual assistant position will be one that once people feel comfortable, how to add them, how to manage them. Really, how is the patient perception going to be? I think that's one that I hear as kind of a pushback. Well, my patients wouldn't like that. It wouldn't fly here. But I think once, you know, we're chronically understaffed and we're all having trouble finding in person staff and that that's an additional burden on our on our staff that we have in person. So we're trying to manage that culture and keep our current staff happy when they're feeling stressed and we're getting squeezed by insurance. So we need to see more patients. It's this perfect storm. I think that lends to bringing in somebody who, you know, doesn't have a physical footprint. So we don't need to build bigger offices, maybe, you know, we're not going to be really running into each other. We can add a number of virtual assistants without changing how we all fit in one space. I my first face was 1,100 square feet. We would not have, you know, we had a max of four employees any more than that. And we would have been tripping over each other. But thinking back to that space, you know, I mean, we could have had a virtual assistant who could do a lot of the admin work without being there. And that would allow us to not feel so cramped and tight, have more patients in the office instead of more staff and just really free up that the feel of a very small space. You get a lot more work done with less people as a benefit, but, you know, also solving a need of we need more people in general. So I think as people feel really squeezed and feel this pressure of finding people or the people that they're finding are not good quality or, you know, the things I read now, it's unbelievable, like people don't show up to interviews or they just stop to work. Or like tax like, no, I think I'm out today. I'm going to like trained for two weeks. Like so. So then you start all over. So what's the cost of rehiring another person going through the indeed postings and the interview time all of this time that takes us out of our practice when we could have somebody virtually a lower cost, you know, typically from what I see a lot of these are lower costs, depending on where you live. I live in Connecticut. I have not seen one virtual assistant that even comes close to the even comes close to my lowest paid employee. I mean, it is significant savings and costs, you know, you don't pay for benefits and insurance and retirement. So they're they're truly an hourly rate. And they there's a range of companies and hourly pricing based on their skill set and what they can do, whether they're your employee, whether they're there with you full time and that they're only working for you or part time they might be shared between multiple offices, which if somebody just needs somebody a few hours a week, that could be a great a great solution as well. Right. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think the best way that they also talked about in the podcast as well was the best way to, I guess, introduce this to the team is the I think they did absolutely brilliant. And it's the same thing that I did with my team. As I said, OK, guys, go ahead and list out all of the things that you hate doing, you know, I honestly like, what are the things that you don't like doing? And if there's if we can find a virtual assistant who is willing to do that, then they're like, yeah, awesome. I mean, you're not replacing. Right. I think that's also what people feel is that our staff are going to feel, oh, my gosh, if she hires one person, is she going to clean house and let us all go? And the reality is, I think in our practices, there are there are things you can't outsource. There are things that needs to be done in person value to in person. I think, you know, I think absolutely outsource. There is stuff we want to keep in person and that depends on your practice. Well, and depending on what you outsource, it makes that in person more more valuable because they can focus on being there with that person rather than hearing the phone ringing in the background. Yeah. And I think, yeah, so if your staff know you're not trying to replace them, but you're trying to enhance what they do and take the burden off of them, I think it really is in how you approach that just to, you know, I'm trying, yeah, I'm trying to lessen your load. Help me help you. What don't you like? Let's get that off your plate so you can focus on doing the things you do like. And and I think that the way you approach that with staff is important versus I hired somebody who's going to be doing your work virtually, your shoes. That's a little bit different of approach of give me the things you don't like doing. What if I took those off your plate? What could you focus more on? How would that? How would that help you? And how would that help patients? Because it always comes down to the patients. All everything we do is for our patients. So if I took the five things you dislike doing from you and allowed you to focus on the five things you really do like doing, could I get you more education? Are you asking for more knowledge on billing? Are you looking to do more in the optical but you don't have the time because you're doing 10 jobs? If I took that away, what could you learn to better serve our patients and to give them a better experience so then everyone wins? Yeah, absolutely. I love it. I love it so much. Well, I'm actually really excited that you did an interview with Dr. Adam Ramsey as well, because I want to see even more after after his podcast on I own a business. So tell my people how to find the interview that you did. So it's part of Independence Strong. So Independence Strong is a jobs and publication focused on independent practices. So we should have that out sometime this summer. So look for it's called independent practices with Dr. Jennifer Stewart. So Adam Ramsey is my guest this summer. Once we get that out, we'll be really excited to hear his take again on how he implemented a virtual assistant as practice, what the challenges were, and where he's where he sees it going. And does he plan to add more? The answer is probably because it went so well. And he felt really confident that it's helping his practice that you know and really he agrees with me or I agree with him that this is the future and that again, when anything new comes out, it can be the hesitation to be one of the first to do it. But we're definitely not the first. There have been people that have been doing it for a long time. And there are just more companies there now, I think that are being making it easier to be more specific. So it's not just hiring somebody unknown, but they're either you can be as specific as you want and even hire somebody who was an optician or was a biller and and come on board to have knowledge of VSP and IMED and are truly ready to go. Or is it somebody you bring on you teach them the way you want it done? And the great news is you can do either or both and be very successful. Yes, I love it. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you. I love how our talks turn into like, wait, we should record this. All of our brilliance needs to be recorded, but it was really this aha moment for me. I was going, oh, my gosh, you know, the question about I want to do this, but how do I get this person started? I'm like, we've not already exist. It's there. We have it. It's already there. And we just think about it. I think we I always think about Spexy as in person, Trina. How do I get my in person staff on board as quickly as possible? But now there's this whole great use for it for onboarding a virtual assistant to. Yes, I love it. Well, thank you for thinking of us and for recommending us. And yeah, everyone, check out Independent Strong. If you haven't yet, Jen's doing a great job with that publication. And that's it. We're out. Thanks, everybody.