Chris Faul The R65 Million Question: Why South African Optometrists Must Escape the Mall Trap and Own Their Premises The traditional preference for mall locations among South African optometrists is a habit rooted in a bygone era. It is a strategic convention that is now actively eroding the long-term profitability ...
Chris Faul Give Your Practice a Boost - Future-Proof it by revamping your patient database The patient database is one of the practice’s most valuable assets. Optometry is fortunate in that other retailers do not have the luxury of routinely collecting every customer’s personal details. The...
Chris Faul What is the true value of your software? I have been involved with optometric management software for a few decades, with the development of the Total Optometric Management System (TOMS). It always amazes me how practice management software ...
Chris Faul The question of Practice valuation (From the book Navigation the business of optometry) Each practice valuation will be unique. For this reason, it is impossible to develop a formula to value optometric practices across the board. Ask ...
Chris Faul The Power of Price Increase The goal of a business is to maximise net profit. After all, it is the net profit that will buy the lifestyle we are after. There are only three ways that one can improve the net profit: The levers of...
Chris Faul The biggest threat to the success of your practice: What you don’t know you don’t know True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing” – Socrates As a graduate, you probably feature in the top 10% intellectually in the world. Yet, there is so much we don't know about the world w...
Chris Faul The importance of understanding Gross Profit Percentage A sure way to jeopardise a business is to neglect the gross profit. Likewise, the easiest way to improve your business is to enhance the gross profit. To manage gross profit, one must understand the m...
Chris Faul Staff Incentives I have never favoured staff incentives. To me, it doesn’t make sense to pay a worker an incentive to do a job they were already employed to do. The only idea behind paying incentives is to motivate pe...
Chris Faul Set up your practice right, and make more money It has always been a mystery to me why it is so difficult to convince so many optometrists to embrace the business side of optometry. There is a general tendency to abdicate responsibility for the pra...
Chris Faul Planning the optometric year ahead Pre-amble Why would an optometrist want to plan the year ahead? It provides a target to aim for, inspiring the whole team to grow the business year on year. Inflation is a constant threat to everybody...
Chris Faul Patient communication translates into practice growth One of the most unpleasant experiences in healthcare takes place in a doctor’s waiting room when he is running an hour late, and you have no idea how much longer you are going to wait. A simple explan...
Chris Faul Optometric Business Entities and Professional Indemnity In a nutshell, when it comes to ownership of an optometric practice, there are two fundamental issues at play. The rules are intended to protect the public against persons or entities not governed by ...