Helping Optometrists Overcome Business Challenges and Build Strong Teams With Kevin Wilhelm

Kevin Wilhelm is the CEO of Cleinman Performance Partners, a consulting firm that helps optometry practices grow their business operations and drive performance. He also co-founded POD Marketing, which acquired Cleinman in 2025. In his role, he sets the firm’s strategic vision and oversees all consulting, HR, and practice transition services to help independent optometry practices grow. He is an Amazon best-selling author of Click: Transform Your Business Through Digital Marketing. Additionally, Kevin frequently speaks on entrepreneurship and the power of combining marketing strategy with strong business systems.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[01:55] Kevin Wilhelm talks about his career in media advertising and how he learned about the power of digital marketing
[07:22] Why marketing in optometry brings unique rewards
[09:06] How acquiring Cleinman Performance Partners created a stronger solution for practice owners
[12:35] The value of peer learning and HR services in helping optometrists overcome key challenges
[15:48] How having a strong culture and HR systems help optometry leaders become better people managers

In this episode…

Running a successful optometry practice takes more than attracting new patients. It requires building strong teams, creating effective systems, and overcoming daily business challenges. How can practice owners step beyond marketing to grow thriving, resilient organizations?

According to Kevin Wilhelm, a seasoned entrepreneur and marketing expert, true growth begins when owners focus on people and processes. He highlights that patient flow is rarely the biggest hurdle — recruiting, training, and retaining talented staff is. By investing in culture and peer learning, practices can overcome common obstacles and scale sustainably. Kevin explains how his own experience in marketing and leadership inspired him to help optometrists strengthen their operations and develop effective teams that drive long-term success.

In this episode of the Cleinman Connect Podcast, Kevin Wilhelm, CEO of Cleinman Performance Partners, is interviewed by Chad Franzen of Rise25 to discuss helping optometrists overcome business challenges and build strong teams. He shares how focusing on culture and HR practices transforms practices, why peer-to-peer learning drives growth, and how his acquisition of Cleinman expands services for independent optometrists. Kevin also talks about lessons learned from leading a fast-growing marketing agency.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments:

“Working with my team in general is the greatest gift of my life.”
“It’s impossible to market a really bad business.”
“We realized the thirst for what they were looking for was very little to do with his marketing and a lot to do with running their business.”
“Life can be lonely as a business owner and without a peer group.”
“We wanted to always lead with culture, and we have been recognized.”

Action Steps:

Build a strong company culture: A positive and intentional culture attracts top talent and retains high-performing employees.
Focus on people and processes first: Addressing staffing, systems, and operations creates a stable foundation for business growth.
Engage in peer-to-peer learning groups: Sharing experiences with fellow business owners provides fresh insights and proven problem-solving strategies.
Invest in HR training and development: Equipping leaders with HR skills strengthens team performance and reduces operational headaches.
Create clear succession and growth plans: Planning for leadership transitions and practice acquisitions ensures long-term stability and scalability.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Marketing4ECPs!

Working with them is like hiring a full-time marketing professional who knows the industry and understands your goals. Except, instead of one experienced marketer, you get a whole team in your corner.

Whether you’re an optometrist, ophthalmologist, or optician, they can help you grow your business with a plan that’s completely customized for you. Learn more, here.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:07

Welcome to the Cleinman Connect Podcast, where we discuss marketing, ownership, growth strategies, and everything else surrounding the business of optometry. Cleinman is Optometry’s trusted business partner for over 35 years.

Kevin Wilhelm: 00:26

Hi, it is Kevin Wilhelm here, one of the hosts of Cleinman Connect Podcast, where we talk with leaders and experts in the world of optometry. We’re going to start by just getting the sponsorship message to you. This one is brought to you by Marketing4ECPs. Working with them is like hiring a full time marketing professional who knows the industry and understands your goals. Except instead of one experienced marketer, you get a whole team in your corner. Whether you’re an optometrist, ophthalmologist, or optician, they can help you grow your business with a plan that’s completely customized for you.

I know that because I am the Founder of Marketing4ECPs, one of the founders. It is a business that is very close to my heart. We’re going to talk lots about that over the lifetime of this podcast. If you want to learn more about them. Marketing4ECPs.com. That’s marketing, the number 4, ecps.com. I have Chad Franzen here from Rise25. Rise25 is a company that is helping us produce the Cleinman Connect Podcast. They are great friends. They have been great to work with.

And Chad here has done thousands of interviews with successful entrepreneurs and CEOs. And we’ve decided today we are flipping the script and he will be interviewing me. Chad, welcome to the show.

Chad Franzen: 01:44

Hey, thanks so much, Kevin. Great to be here. I’m looking forward to learning a little bit more about you and about Cleinman. Why don’t we just get started by having you tell us a little bit about your background?

Kevin Wilhelm: 01:55

Sure. So I’m going to start with, you know, my family. I’ll start there. I always like to start there. I there.

I have a family of three children, two high school aged children and a ten year old. We are a big family of travelers and love to see the world together. My wife is also a business owner, owns three retail stores and so the house is full busy of sports activities and business talk all the time. When I look back at kind of what’s relevant to to what I’m doing today. I started my career out of university.

I took a business commerce degree and started in the world of media advertising with the Canadian Yellow Pages group. Learned how to really connect with small business owners on what they needed, and marketing programs, and how to help grow their business. It was there that they went through this big digital transformation. I learned all about digital marketing and was kind of on the team that really helped lead the transformation of the of the organization. From there, I ventured into corporate marketing and was on the on the.

I was the director of marketing or head of marketing for a publicly traded daycare company child care company. It was the only publicly traded one in Canada. We grew from 50 locations to about 120. And so I, I really sat in the chair of of nationwide marketing for big brand that was acquiring, you know, basically a new child care center every other week, having to incorporate that into the business. And just with a growing family and and an entrepreneurial spirit within me, I decided to take a step away from the safety net of corporate and decided to start my own marketing agency.

I did that with two partners. One is still my partner today, and the other was kind of an investor partner and a client brought to me an idea about what if we focused marketing purely on one industry, and we really got to understand the industry challenges and the solutions. They come up with solutions that solve those industry challenges. It sort of takes you out of the commoditized world of digital marketing and puts us, you know, we like to say we become sought after instead of trying to seek, you know, the next client. So we did.

We built a marketing agency to support specific industries. We actually started in the home services industry. So plumbing, HVAC, electrical really cut our teeth there. Saw early success. And then I met a lady named Trudy Charette.

She is a a kind of Canadian renowned industry renowned optician, probably the best networked person I’ve ever met. And convinced me to create something similar in the eye care industry in optometry. And so I made her a deal. You know, sometimes you meet those people that, you know, can just change your life. And I made a deal with her that if I started an agency in optometry, she has to quit her job and join me as a co-founder.

She did that And for many years it was it was magic. We just, I believe, really flipped the industry upside down. Specifically with the business minded and business oriented optometrists, they were looking for something different, looking for something more. And I truly believe that what we brought to the industry elevated our competitors games. They’ve had to really step up and offer more, which is just overall helped the industry in general.

I started that business about 13, 12, 13 years ago. Trudy has since retired and enjoying her travel time. And yeah, we’re we’re going strong right now. The marketing agency has about a thousand clients across Canada. In the United States, we yeah, we’re making kind of big inroads in optometry and really helping independent optometrists.

And now to circle back to Cleinman. We were in a strategic session a couple of years ago and really trying to uncover how to provide value and support our mission, which is helping support the growth of businesses that exist to help people live better lives. And we realize that marketing was a problem that existed for the independent practice owner, but it wasn’t the main issue and the main challenge that they had. The main issue had to do with people process systems. And so we decided to embark on a search of either building kind of a consultancy company or potentially, you know, acquiring or buying one.

As most people in the industry know, Cleinman 35 years in the industry, really an industry leader with with optometry consulting and business consulting. And so I reached out to Al Cleinman, the founder, and we had some great conversations. And it just alignment from day one. And so now we have an opportunity, you know, to offer a more comprehensive solution set to our clients to really help them thrive in, in in the world of independent optometry.

Chad Franzen: 07:01

Okay. Awesome. So I have a few few follow ups to that. So you have all kinds of experience in marketing. And you’ve been, you know, leading a marketing marketing team for a while now.

What do you enjoy most about that? And then the follow up to that would be what is it about marketing for optometry that is maybe unique compared to some of the other sectors that you’ve done marketing for?

Kevin Wilhelm: 07:22

Well, working with my team in general is the greatest gift of my life. They are a creative, ambitious, collaborative, smart, fun people. We’ve done a really good job kind of curating a team that is unlike any other that I’ve ever seen, so working with them is great. The industry of marketing in general is exciting. It’s always changing.

You know, every quarter we’re having to look at what is the next product, how are you? It’s user behavior using phones and social media and, you know, video and emails and all of that. And so it’s never the same day twice. When we look at optometry, the world of marketing, optometry, it’s the benefit of being able to lift some of these practice owners out of the day to day and really see their business for what it can be. It’s, you know, it’s impossible to market a really bad business.

Luckily, independent optometry is is an incredible business ran by incredible people. And our job is to shine a big spotlight on their business so more prospective patients see it. And that’s what we get to do every day. We get to meet our, you know, meet great business owners that are optometrists that happen to be business owners. We really dig into what makes them unique and makes them special.

And we put together a marketing plan that just lets more people know about them and tell their story in a unique way. And honestly, seeing the results and seeing the stories that come from that have been so rewarding. And so that’s the best part of of working in the industry that we do.

Chad Franzen: 08:58

You talked a little bit about your acquisition of Cleinman. What kind of made that like specifically attractive to you?

Kevin Wilhelm: 09:06

Well, like I said, I, I think putting butts in seats patients in chairs is like the eighth biggest issue of any of any practice. One through seven are always, always to do with people you know, or systems or process. And so we started, you know, you know, the marketing agency has a really consultative approach. We have account managers. They really get to know their client’s business.

And what happens from, you know, in an hour call, 20 minutes might be marketing and then it turns into other consultation. You know, what would you do about recruiting staff and how do I keep staff and how do I, you know, potentially do performance plans or things like that? And so we realized the the thirst, what they were looking for was very little to his marketing and a lot to do with running their business. And we had to look in the mirror and say, well, we have a lot of interior expertise, or is there someone better than us? And Cleinman has set the benchmark for decades on really elevating independent, independent optometry, elevating the practice owners out of the business, so they’re working on their business and not in their business.

And so it made a lot of sense to me to to make them, you know, my first phone call and after a quick due diligence, it was just so it was so quick to realize that we were value aligned, we were mission aligned, that we saw the industry the same way. The team that that, you know, has is incredible. And just it just seemed to fit like a puzzle. And so that was really what excited me early on.

Chad Franzen: 10:38

Can you tell us anything about the process of acquiring Cleinman and maybe what how it’s been since since that happened?

Kevin Wilhelm: 10:45

Yeah. You know, I will say that if anyone has ever met or knows Al Cleinman, the founder, you know, that he has represented clients in their sales. You know, hundreds of times he’s done so many transactions and negotiated deals, and we have done acquisitions before. This was is our fifth. And so I have a little bit of experience for sure.

But sitting across the table from an experienced negotiator who really you knew that this was meaningful to him? I was expecting a I was expecting a lot more conflict. I will say, just based on the experience and expertise. What we found is a true willingness to form a partnership. Early on in the process, we both wanted the same outcome.

We both have the same core values. And so it became a very collaborative process, clearly stating what al was looking for, you know, in the business and him personally, I stated what we were looking for and what needed to be true after the transaction detail closes. And I think we both were willing to be flexible to be, you know, adjust to the others, really listen, use active listening and and understand what the other person wanted and come to the table with a desire to really get a deal done. That worked for everybody. And so it was a really enjoyable process, and working with al and working with the team has been equally enjoyable.

On the other side, which is which is not always the case, but it has been a great partnership from from honestly the first the first day we sat down. It’s been amazing.

Chad Franzen: 12:25

I could see how that that would make, you know, this new, this new kind of adventure exciting. What about the future of Cleinman? Are you most excited about?

Kevin Wilhelm: 12:35

So I one of the things there’s a lot of overlap between what clients of Cleinman are receiving and what I’m receiving from being part of two groups. So I’m part of both EO, which is Entrepreneurs’ Organization, and YPO, which is Young Presidents Organization. I’ve been part of those organizations for nine years and and one and a half, respectively. And the things that really stood out to me were the level of detail that the consulting our consultants go through. Cleinman set the benchmark early on with or set the kind of led the industry with, with practice benchmarking.

So understanding business analytics KPIs, understanding the levers that you can pull to drive performance. That’s really exciting. But it was the peer to peer side that intrigued me the most. And nowhere else is this happening in optometry, where professionally facilitated conversations between peers and when you are a business owner and I can speak from experience your network. Unless they are other business owners, you feel pretty isolated because you can’t have the same level of conversation with your friends or your family.

With non business owners, you know, if you’re talking about potential cash flow issues or people issues, or on the flip side, maybe you had an incredible year and you’re able to pull out a dividend that might be life changing, or you’re able to promote somebody that really deserves it and changes their life. And there’s all these, these highs and lows that, you know, in the EO world, we call the top 5% in the bottom 5%, and life can be lonely as a business owner and without a peer group. So the peer to peer side really excited me because it is a community of non competitive doctors that are going through the same things, facing the same challenges, and now can bring those problems forward to their peers of 8 to 10 people and say, you know, my biggest challenge right now is trying to find an office manager or my biggest challenge is trying to get that office manager aligned with my vision. And then for the next 20, 30, 40 minutes, we’re going to hear from my peers about what they’ve done to attack that same problem. And so I’m walking out with 7 or 8 great experience shares wisdom sharing from people that have sat in that chair.

And so that is exciting to me to really expand on that. And then I think the opportunity to also provide transaction services. So helping the business focused optometrists are looking to acquire, providing them support and acquiring new practices, but also those that are looking for succession planning and helping sell their practice and making sure their practice kind of lives on. That has excited me. And then lastly, Cleinman has been a conduit of launching a new division, which is HR services, which has personally been really close to my heart.

Something that I knew I wanted to create a couple of years ago. And knowing that that is probably the biggest issue and challenge that we can help solve with our clients.

Chad Franzen: 15:43

So yeah, yeah. Talking about HR, why did you launch HR?

Kevin Wilhelm: 15:48

So throughout the last 12 years, I think our organization has gone through every HR issue that is there. It’s building core values, building strong performing teams. We’ve gone through acquisitions. So integration. We have had to go virtual during Covid time and having to move from an in-office to virtual.

And along the way we have been so intentional and so invested in making sure that our culture is. Honestly, just just nation leading. Like for us, we wanted to always lead with culture and we have been recognized. We’ve won some awards for the corporate culture that we’ve built. And in our city we’ve become pretty renowned for our culture.

And so I saw an opportunity to take a lot of those lessons and the things that we’ve learned and put into action and just help share that with our clients, whether that’s creating, you know, proper policies, you know, that institute great culture or performance management or hiring practices. There’s so many things I’ve learned over 12 years that if I went back when I started the business, it’s probably 100 times more effective as a as a people leader than I was. And I want to just bottle that up and be able to share that and help our clients put in processes and and empower them to become great people managers and people leaders and build great cultures that that attract great talent, that train them and retain them. And so for me, that was the opportunity. Honestly, I see as a truly being able to change the industry.

I think a lot of people see HR as the I have to contact a lawyer. We’re not really taking that approach. For us, the approach we’re taking is training and the succession planning and how to one on ones happen. How do team meetings happen? To, you know, do you do annual strategy planning and retreats and just inject knowledge and experience and put together, put together infrastructure that allow practice owners that have never gone to school for this really understand how to elevate their so many headaches for them.

And then we’re going to bring in some of their clients that are implementing it really well, and find out how they’re implementing these services really well. We’re going to have optometrists come in and explain their story about how they’re acquiring businesses, or the stories of how they’ve sold their business. And so it really is going to be broad, but all focused on the business of optometry. And so we’re really excited about this new direction. And we’re also welcoming feedback.

So as you listen to these episodes, you want to hear something or hear from somebody or want us to talk about a topic, please email us, give us that feedback and we’ll throw it into the agenda and we’ll make sure that we cover it. This all the content is for you, our listeners, and so let us know what, what you like and what you’d like to hear moving forward.

Chad Franzen: 18:41

Okay, awesome. Can’t wait to check out future episodes. Hey, great to talk to you today, Kevin. Thanks so much for having me.

Kevin Wilhelm: 18:46

Thanks, Chad. Really appreciate the reverse script.

Chad Franzen: 18:49

Awesome. So long everybody.

Outro: 18:55

Thank you for listening. At Cleinman, we take pride in helping our partners unlock their full potential. Subscribe to get the newest episodes or visit us anytime at cleinman.com.