Pearle Vision Licensed Operators and doctors were honored at the Pearle Vision Summit in November in Nashville, Tennessee. Some of the highest awards went to SNAPP members, and in this and upcoming issues of the SNAPP Insider, we will talk to them about their success.
Major awards went to the following.
Carmine and Stacy Mazzarella of Saugus and Burlington, Massachusetts, won the Dr. Stanley Pearle Award.
West Point Optical Group, a Pearle Vision franchise with 50 locations, was honored with the Paul Hans Award for Developer of the Year.
Reza Moazai and Dr. Mahsa Shekar of Mississauga, Ontario, in Canada, received Innovator of the Year.
Milissa Stone, of Grand Junction, Colorado, was honored as Operator of the Year.
Milissa Stone
Stone says the award was a complete surprise to her. “If I had known, I would have brought my team because each of the team members plays such an important role,” she says. In fact, it’s her goal to train people so that they can do the job better than she could. “We want to make them experts, and that has been part of my approach over the past 10 years to make my location the best it can be.”
She began working in this location when she was 19 years old. The owner offered her the option to take over the franchise years later, in 2005. It’s been a consistently high-performing location for years, and part of that is Stone’s ability to hire people who bring their best selves to work every day.
“Each generation of worker has some special attributes, and we have a diversity in our staff. That means we’re very good at pairing patients with team members who will match their personalities. If a patient needs a lot of extra attention in the exam room, we’ll be sure to pair that patient with an optician who enjoys the small talk and handholding,” she says.
Stone adds that she has been able to propel her business forward even more after joining the SNAPP Masterminds program. “I’ve always been able to compare our performance against our own performance the previous quarter or year, but Masterminds has allowed me to study the factors that make other practices successful. If I see that other practices are doing better in key metrics than we are, that gives us a chance to improve our efficiency and productivity,” she says.
Being part of the Pearle Vision brand has been wonderful. “Patients and customers love that they can experience the look, feel and trust of the well-known brand but also get the support and attention from a locally owned business. It’s the best of both worlds,” she says.
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