IAM1148- Optometrist Helps Her Clients See Better and Look Their Best

Dr. Sara Varghai grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and after receiving her Bachelor's degree in Biology from Ohio State University, she decided to go to optometry school in South Florida at Nova Southeastern University. She fell in love with the field of optometry because it's a mix of medicine and fashion, not only does she get to help her patients see better, but she can help them look their best. She is so passionate about this, that she decided to open her own practice NOVA Optique + Eyecare which is a concierge optometric practice located in Ballston, Arlington.

• CEO Hack: My calendar
• CEO Nugget: (i) Get started as quickly as possible on the mission you want to do (ii) Have clarity before you start
• CEO Defined: Where everything starts and stops with you

Website: http://www.novaoptique.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nova_optique/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NOVAOptique/

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Transcription

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00:09 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:37 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Dr. Sarah Vargai of Nova Optique and Eye Care. Dr. Sarah, it's great to have you on the show.

00:48 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Thank you for having me on. It's my pleasure.

00:51 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely, the pleasure is all ours. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Dr. Sarah's. I can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Dr. Sarah grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. After receiving her bachelor's degree in biology from Ohio State University, she decided to go to optometry school in South Florida at Nova Southeastern University.

She fell in love with the idea of optometry because it's a mix of medicine and fashion. Not only does she get to help her patients see better, but she can help them look their best. She's passionate about this and that. She decided to open up her own practice, Nova Optique and Eye Care, which is a concierge optometric practice located in Boston, Arlington. Dr. Sarah, it's great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:35 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Yes, definitely. Can't wait.

01:37 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So they kind of kick everything off. I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Here is a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:45 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Yeah, so I knew I wanted to work with people in the medical field so I went into optometry. But the thing is with optometry there are different modalities of practice, you could do private practice retail hospital setting academic research Research and academia were out of the question for me because again, I wanted to work one-on-one with people, and patients, and I've done hospital setting. I worked at a VA hospital before and the patients are amazing there I loved it, but I thought it was missing that fashion piece of it.

I wasn't dealing with the glasses. I worked in retail and I felt like it was a little bit too fast-paced in that I wasn't spending time with my patients, getting to know them better. So I knew private practice was for me. And so I decided to work in private practice. But then I realized, you know, I was working for someone else as an employee. I didn't get to choose what I got to do because it was their practice. So I decided to kind of start my own. So that's where it started.

02:50 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I definitely appreciate you, you know, talking about, you know, the journey and trying to figure out the kind of like, you know, pairs of shoes to see which ones fit, which ones were the ones that you wanted to kind of walk in and run in and do all the awesome things. And I think so many times we don't realize like when we're starting anything, especially like starting businesses, there's a process that goes through finding out where our specific lane is and how we kind of fit well and we can kind of go for kind of run from there.

03:13 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Definitely. Yeah. I would recommend that everyone, try it out and see how it works for you before you jump in fully.

03:21 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And so I know you touched on a little bit in the shoes, quote-unquote, that you settled in. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you're serving your clients and how you're developing those relationships?

03:32 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Absolutely. So with my practice, I like to think of it as a mix of a boutique optical as well as a medical practice. So with optometry, a lot of times it's either doctor go towards, you know, just, you know, treating people medically and they don't deal with the optical side or they deal with the fashion part of it but they don't deal medically with it.

And so I kind of wanted to bring those 2 together. So for me, my patients are important to me and I want to take care of them. So that is of utmost importance to me. But then secondly, I want to bring in customer service. I kind of think of this as almost like a Nordstrom's of the optical world. So people get the best customer service possible, and the best treatment possible. They come in, they're not rushed ever and they feel welcome here. So that's kind of what I wanted to create that type of environment and I hope I have.

04:33 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. I love that. And I love, you know, even hearing your background like we were kind of talking about how you kind of settled in on the type of, you know, a commentary you wanted to do, how you kind of have a blend of each of those. And I imagine each of those experiences probably contributed to everything you've been able to build now.

04:47 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Absolutely, yeah. It's kind of nice, even though it took me a while to get to where I am right now, I don't regret going through that process, that journey, just because it did teach me a lot along the way, and I'm thankful for that, Yes.

05:03 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. When they say the secret to the overnight success is it takes 10 years. So we sometimes forget about or don't hear about as much of that journey. So I appreciate you, you know, bringing that to light and reminding us of that.

05:14 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Definitely. Yep. It helps.

05:16 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So you might have already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for yourself individually, the business, or a combination of both, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart from McSheeny?

05:27 – Dr. Sara Varghai

For me personally, I like to really be one-on-one with the patient and get to know them well. When I'm in the exam room, I try to get to know the person. It's not just, I'm not just examining their eyes, it's a person. And so I get to know everything about as much as they would like to tell me about their lives. And because it does help with how I'm treating them. And so for me, I think they appreciate that as being a doctor that way.

But then when they come out into the practice, all my employees, they do try to, again, get to know the patient as best as they can, get to know their needs. And we try to accommodate every patient as much as we can. If we need to order glasses, if they don't like something we have here, we're more than willing to order something else. It could be a different color. I'm willing to do that. And I think that's kind of what sets us apart from the next practice.

06:29 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I say so often, especially on this podcast that we forget about that human aspect of business. And as you kind of talked about building those relationships, those connections, like you, like I said, when I read your bios, not just being able to see better, but also being able to look and feel better. And I think part of that is being quote-unquote, seen, so to speak, and having a relationship, having those connections, talking about those things, and having that manifest itself in the awesome customer service you all do.

06:52 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Yeah. Yeah, I think that has been the thing that sets us apart because we are in a competitive area as far as there are tons of other practices in the area. So I wanna make sure we are set apart from everybody else.

07:07 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

07:20 – Dr. Sara Varghai

I would have to say this could be something very simple, but my calendar. So I absolutely live by it. If it's not put in there, I'm going to forget it. And so, the second I get an email or I try to schedule something, I definitely put that into my calendar. I think that's where we do kind of lose relationships away because people feel like you might not care as much if you miss an appointment or a phone call or things like that.

So I make sure that I put that into my calendar. I do check my calendar daily, hourly maybe even and I set reminders for myself. You know, as everyone gets busy they do forget things. So I don't think, you know, I'm not superhuman so I'm gonna forget it. So I do, that's the best thing I can say is that helps me as my calendar.

08:14 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I'm Absolutely the exact same way. And I know that I sell over, you know, less than ideal experiences where sometimes, you know, you think you can hold onto everything, but you know, we're top of running a business, serving clients, and being present. You gotta make sure that you have one place to put it. You can just make sure you know where to go to kind of find everything.

08:32 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

08:33 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So what would you consider to be what I call a CEO nugget? So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you would tell your younger business self.

08:46 – Dr. Sara Varghai

I would say get started as quickly as possible on your mission, and your vision of what you want to do. I think I did but didn't do maybe early enough was kind of have that vision of what I wanted crystal clear in my mind and not kind of waver from it. I think that's what kind of can make things difficult in decision-making if you don't really know exactly what you want.

So Having that clarity that a lot of people talk about, even before it's time to open your practice or business or anything like that, just knowing what you want exactly is very key. And then again, as I said, if I had, obviously I didn't want to start in the middle of the pandemic, it just happened. But if I could have started sooner, that's kind of what I would have done.

09:39 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I appreciate you sharing that. And did you have to like, always say I'm really big into like creating space so that you can have time to do that? Sometimes we're going, go, go, especially in this area, go, go, go all the time, and we don't really create that space, that time, that energy to kind of put towards like figuring out what that is. Is that something that you were able to do?

09:59 – Dr. Sara Varghai

I was able to do it previously, but now in the middle of things, it is difficult. It's more difficult, but I try to do it as much as I can. Sometimes it's just you know when you're going for a run and your mind is clear and you're thinking about those things sometimes that's when you know it's the time to do that Sometimes it's coming in early before people are in here. I can sit down and kind of think things through, but you definitely need that alone time to be able to do that, yep.

10:27 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, well, I appreciate you sharing that. I think so many times you hear, and I read so often about people getting up and being, I'm not in the 4 a.m. Club, but I hear a lot of people about the 4 a.m. Club, they're getting up because you get that space, you get that opportunity before the world can kind of take hold of you.

10:43 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Yeah, I do appreciate people who can do that. But again, yes, I'm not, I don't get up at 4 a.m. I do think getting up earlier and getting a head start does help in that sense so that you're not just kind of in the mindset of just putting out fires. But again, anything that would help, I think it's different for everybody. Whatever can help them, they should definitely do that.

11:08 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. Find out what works for you and then take hold of that and run with it. So I absolutely appreciate that. And so Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quotes, quote CEOs on the show. So Dr. Sarah, what does being a CEO mean to you?

11:25 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Well, I think being a CEO is, you know, where everything stops and starts with you. It's, you know, the famous quote of the buck stops here. It's kind of what it is. It doesn't matter if an employee made a mistake. It's because of you. You either didn't train them well or you didn't give them the instructions to do what they needed to do. It's not the employee's fault, it's yours.

Now that's a lot of weight on everyone's shoulders, but I think that's what it falls on the CEO. At the same time, if you have big wins, the CEO creates that space for the employee to be able to do that. So I think it's just, they're at the top and anything that happens, it's really on them. So I think taking the blame or even celebrating the wins, it's important for the CEO to do that. So.

12:20 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, it's an incredible amount of, you know, responsibility. Like you said, you know, starts and ends a lot of times with, you know, the leadership and the CEOs and what they decide to do or don't decide to do. And a lot of times our decisions, the decisions that we make, serve as leaders, can manifest themselves in so many different ways.

So you have to be very aware, not just for our employees, but also for the customers we serve, the people that might be investors, just so many different, you know, clients and people that we're serving, it's so important to be cognizant of that responsibility.

12:47 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of times I have to step in just because I feel like, you know, you don't want to get too far. Obviously, you want to give them room to do things, but at the end of the day, it's kind of on me.

13:03 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And this is definitely that balance beam act, so to speak, where you have to make sure that you're creating that atmosphere, that space so that they can be creative, they can grow and they can expand. And of course, do awesome services, but at the same time, you have to make sure that it is in alignment with that vision that we kind of talked about so well.

13:20 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Exactly. Yes. Exactly.

13:22 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Well, Dr. Sarah truly appreciate that definition and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

13:38 – Dr. Sara Varghai

Yeah, of course, the one big piece of advice I can give anyone trying to venture off into something new is to get involved as much as you can in your community. Networking is just so underrated. Do it as early as possible as much as you can. It's really important to do that. As far as reaching out to me, You can email me, that's actually the best way. My email is drdoctorvargai, V-A-R-G-H-A-I at novaoptique.com.

And I can give this to you so that, you know, if you wanna create a link, or they can go to our website, novaoptique.com and there's a contact page that will send us an email directly as well. They can follow us on Instagram and Facebook or just stop in anytime. You know, we take in browsers or anything. With great glasses and sunglasses, they can see.

14:33 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, they make it even easier, Dr. Sarah, we will have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can click through, come and visit, and see your website and all the awesome things you're working on. So truly appreciate you for, you know, of course taking some time out today, but also for helping people to look good, feel good, and then see better, of course, as well. And how important that is and having that vision and in so many different ways in our life is huge. So thank you so much for embodying that and doing that as well. And I hope you have a great rest of the day.

15:00 – Outro