Practice Management
June 2022

by Ellen Stodola
Editorial Co-Director

Laurie Guest, CSP, CPAE, gave the keynote speech at the ASOA Monday General Session of the 2022 Annual Meeting. Her presentation was titled “Life in the Espresso Lane: How to be Smooth, Bold, and Balanced in a Fast-Paced World.”

Ms. Guest, a former administrator, started in ophthalmology in 1986, as a receptionist at a cataract specialty practice. She joked that when she interviewed for the job, she didn’t even know what a cataract was, and when she asked her mom, she told her it was a “tumor of the eye.” She transitioned from receptionist to technician to surgical counselor before finally joining the administrative team.

Ms. Guest described her analogy of seeing life as a three-lane highway. “When I started, I was in the far-right lane, the slow drip,” she said, adding that she just had to show up to work on time and treat the patients right. “The rest of the day was my own to do what I wanted.”

Working with a number of other women who had “moved to the middle ‘latte lane’” and were getting married and starting families motivated Ms. Guest to do the same. She shared that she and her husband are celebrating 31 years of marriage this year.

Somehow that middle lane slid to the left “espresso lane,” where the days go by so fast you don’t even know where your time went, she said.

Ms. Guest shared a number of behaviors to make changes in life both personally and professionally. One thing she highlighted was the “praise formula,” which she described as using a person’s name followed by what they’ve done that’s praiseworthy (the more specific the better) and why it makes a difference.

Another important suggestion she made was to “forsake the mistake.” Make other people’s mistakes easy to correct, she said. There are some big mistakes that are hard to correct, and you can crisis manage those, but the majority of mistakes that we blow up into something big are for entertainment value. “Let’s not make mistakes a show,” she said. “Let’s fix them quietly behind the scenes.” You have to be a leader that others can bring mistakes to, she said.

Ms. Guest shared a personal anecdote about how she used to sell sweet corn as a child and how she “became an entrepreneur at age 5.” Her father told her three things to do to make the stand successful.

1. When every customer pulls up, look them in the eye, smile, and thank them for coming.
2. Think about what your customer needs from you and do it differently from everyone else. In Ms. Guest’s case, she would give customers 13 ears of corn when they asked for a dozen and would walk the bag directly to the customer.
3. Use a splash of creativity or innovation. Ms. Guest would get grocery bags from the store the night before and color the side of the bag, so each customer had “an original piece of art.”

She said that one important thing to embrace is to respond to a variety of situations with four easy words: “I’d be happy to.” When I entered the practice, there was always someone better than me, but not when it came to this, she said. “When someone asked me to do something, I would say, ‘I’d be happy to.’” She joked that this caused more work to come her way, but she added that having this type of attitude can make someone invaluable, especially if there is downsizing.

When a staff member started at the practice, we taught them the one lesson they had to do for their entire career with us in order to stay—we call it showtime, go time, all the time, she said. When the lights go on at the practice, it’s showtime. “We hired the best people and taught them how to be great,” she said.

One of the last points that Ms. Guest emphasized was to ask for what you want. She suggested that it’s better to find an opportunity to sit down with someone when something is on your mind or bothering you rather than acting out. Put some words to it, she said.