After graduating from Pennsylvania College of Optometry, I moved to Wyoming and opened up a practice in Jackson. Fourteen years later, I was ready to call it quits. I was under a lot of stress, was becoming extremely burned out and wanted to sell the practice.

I had selected optometry because I wanted to help people but also wanted to have a life, not be woken up by patient emergencies at all hours of the night. But since I didn't know how to manage personnel, it was the staff problems that were keeping me awake.

I would hire what I thought were very good staff members, but after a while, things would start to crumble. They would get lazy, they would run the office the way they wanted and I would lose control over them. The final straw came when one of my employees decided that, since she wasn't a morning person, she wouldn't schedule anyone at 9:00 because she didn't feel like dealing with them. At that point, I knew I needed to either learn how to run my office better or get out of the business.

I was sitting in my office on what should have been my day off, trying to catch up on work that my employees should have done. I was going through a bunch of mail that had piled up and almost threw away a letter from an optometrist in Florida telling about how Sterling had helped him triple his practice while giving him more free time. That letter hit home like a ton of bricks. I called Sterling, watched their free DVD and signed up for the program.

I went to Sterling for training in February and found they had an easy to apply system that works. I couldn't wait to get home and start using it. Once I did, the results were immediate. March is normally a good month for us, but in fourteen years we never grossed over $50,000. This year we hit $62,000. April is considered an off season in our tourist town — in between the ski and summer seasons — and many businesses shut down during the month. My Sterling consultant said there is no such thing as an off season and she was right. We had never done better than $40,000 in April, but with Sterling's help, this year we broke $61,000. The month of May was also our best ever and all of this growth was despite the recession and our decision last year to stop accepting insurance.

It wasn't worth it to me to have a practice that was out of control and easting away at my mental health and physical well-being. I am glad that I made the right decision and called Sterling rather than shutting down the office. I highly recommend that you call Sterling at 800-933-7538 for a free practice management DVD and complimentary consultation. I am well along the way to having the practice I envisioned when I first decided to be an optometrist.

Bonnie Kovacs, OD