Matt Hickerty is the Reporting Analyst at Cleinman, an optometry-focused business consultancy that helps independent practices improve performance, plan for growth, and navigate transitions. A University of Lethbridge graduate with a Bachelor of Management, Matt analyzes financial and operational data to uncover trends, clarify key metrics, and help practice owners make informed decisions. His work also supports practice valuations by giving buyers a clear, reliable picture of business performance.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [1:40] Matt Hickerty’s approach to understanding the story behind a practice’s numbers
- [4:44] What clean data looks like and why it matters for practice owners
- [8:21] Why Matt says better data leads to stronger business decisions long before a sale
- [13:11] How practice metrics can uncover opportunities for growth and improved profitability
- [18:13] The role of clean financials in practice valuation and buyer confidence
- [23:26] Matt’s advice for improving financial organization and making data easier to use
- [30:32] Why practice owners should start paying closer attention to their numbers now
- [35:12] Matt’s biggest takeaway on using data to build long-term practice value
In this episode…
Data is only useful when it’s accurate, consistent, and easy to understand. When the numbers are messy, owners can miss problems, opportunities, and warning signs. So what does bad data actually cost an optometry practice?
According to Matt Hickerty, a reporting analyst with a background in quantitative and qualitative analysis, the answer starts with the decisions owners make from numbers they may not fully trust. Clean data can reveal where revenue is coming from, where expenses are climbing, which locations or providers are performing well, and where “leaky buckets” may be hurting profitability. Matt recommends reviewing financials regularly, organizing the chart of accounts clearly, and comparing key performance indicators over time rather than waiting until a sale is approaching. Reliable data also reduces uncertainty for potential buyers, which can strengthen confidence in the business and support a better practice valuation.
In this episode of the Cleinman Connect Podcast, Kim Carson talks with Matt Hickerty, Reporting Analyst at Cleinman, about the real cost of bad data in your practice. Matt explains how clean data improves decisions, exposes missed profit opportunities, and strengthens valuation. He also covers financial organization, buyer trust, and why owners should start cleaning up their numbers now.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Kevin Wilhelm on LinkedIn
- Kim Carson on LinkedIn
- Marketing4ECPs
- Cleinman
- Matt Hickerty on LinkedIn
- Nancy Dewald on LinkedIn
- Alan Cleinman on LinkedIn
- “Adding up the Pieces of Your Practice’s Financial Puzzle” with Annelies Calnan on the Cleinman Connect Podcast
- “Unleashing the Optometrist & the Pursuit of Process in Eye Care” with Dr. Trevor Miranda on the Cleinman Connect Podcast
- “[Optometrist Unleashed] The AI Evolution in Eye Care: From Scribe to Strategy” with Dr. Eric Jennings on the Cleinman Connect Podcast
- “[Optometrist Unleashed] Myopia Management and Going Beyond the Blur” with Dr. Marie Bodack on the Cleinman Connect Podcast
- “[Optometrist Unleashed] Healing the Ocular Surface” with Dr. Julian Prosia on the Cleinman Connect Podcast
- “[Optometrist Unleashed] Leadership and Authentic Connection in Independent Optometry” with Dr. Warren Toews on the Cleinman Connect Podcast
- “[Optometrist Unleashed] Vision, Vines & Remote Communities” with Dr. Davinder Sidhu on the Cleinman Connect Podcast
- “[Optometrist Unleashed] Part 1: Buying Practices, Metrics That Matter, and Prioritizing Initiatives” with Dr. Wes McCann on the Cleinman Connect Podcast
- “[Optometrist Unleashed] Part 2: Buying Practices, Metrics That Matter, and Prioritizing Initiatives” with Dr. Wes McCann on the Cleinman Connect Podcast
Quotable Moments:
- “Dirty data: It creates more questions and uncertainty, especially when you’re trying to sell a practice.”
- “Good data helps you understand your practice and how it’s running.”
- “The lower your risk, the higher multiple”
- “If you want to sell in five years, then you should absolutely be looking at clean data right now.”
- “You want to be able to sell the story of the business, you know.”
Action Steps:
- Start improving your data now: Clean, reliable data gives you a clearer picture of your practice and helps you make better decisions before problems become harder to fix.
- Review your financials every month: Regularly examining revenue, expenses, and unusual changes helps you spot patterns and ask better questions about what is driving performance.
- Organize your chart of accounts clearly: Properly categorizing expenses makes your financial statements easier to understand, compare, and use for strategic planning.
- Track and compare your key performance indicators: Monitoring metrics over time can reveal weak areas, identify opportunities, and show where your practice is performing above or below expectations.
- Use clean data to build practice value before you sell: Reliable numbers reduce buyer uncertainty, support stronger valuations, and help you make changes that improve profitability well before retirement.
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.
Powered by Rise25 Podcast Production Company
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.
Hello, I’m Kim Carson, hosting Matt Hickerty, Reporting Analyst at Cleinman, on this episode of the podcast. Every month we have a special episode of this podcast hosted by Dr. Trevor Miranda called Optometrist Unleashed. You can listen to all of his episodes and so many more now at Cleinman.com or wherever you’d like to get podcasts.
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 or ophthalmologist or optician. They can help you grow your business with a plan that’s completely customized for you. Learn more at marketing4ecps.com.
I am joined by Matt Hickerty, a University of Lethbridge grad from Business Management. While he was progressing through his schooling and full time work, he found that he really excelled in the area of quantitative, quantitative, and qualitative analysis. Dang, I don’t say those words very often. Which is, of course, perfect for him to be the reporting analyst at Cleinman. Thank you so much for joining me today, Matt.
Matt Hickerty 01:38
Oh, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Kim Carson: 01:40
Yeah. Thank you so much. What I guess really, you know, reading your bio and you really excelling and liking quantitative and qualitative analysis, what does that mean?
Matt Hickerty: 01:57
I guess it would like. I enjoy numbers first, if you want to say the sort of quantitative portion is being able to sort of identify the numbers and what they’re saying as same as qualitative, although qualitative is more a survey question, for example, but it’s being able to interpret sort of what the numbers are telling you and sort of the story that it tells just by sort of looking at metrics and doing simple math, you know, division, for example, to give you a percentage of, you know, see where spend going or what kind of revenue is coming in or what percentage of revenue is doing this. So that’s sort of where I honed my focus on. So yeah, yeah, a roundabout answer. But yeah.
Kim Carson: 02:46
No, I don’t think that was roundabout at all. I think that, you know, maybe I’ll go out on a limb here and say, but I have a feeling you might agree. Is that all numbers and all data and the financials within a practice that you may look at on any given day are not necessarily created equal. So we have this term and it might even be in this podcast episode of Clean Data. What do we actually mean when we’re talking about clean data or data for anyone British.
Matt Hickerty: 03:23
Data or data? Yeah. So it means the information that you’re relying on and reading, it’s accurate, consistent and complete, you know, so for example, in an optometric practice that would include things like so revenue by location. If you’re a multi-clinic owner, revenue buyer, odd associates or by yourself, it could be operational metrics like exam volume, your capture rate. So for however many clients or patients who have come through, how much are you actually capturing to, you know, maybe go get some new eyewear or frames or something like that or get them on contact lenses.
You can come down to things like revenue per exam, right? And then it gets to the financial stuff too. So your gross margins. So after your revenue and cogs, what’s left over, you know, what are your staffing costs, rent occupancy, things like that. So yeah, when you’re talking about clean data, it’s that it’s accurate and it can give you these, give you these metrics and key performance indicators that you actually can trust.
And if you present them to someone like, say, like, for example, a buyer, if you’re looking to sell and they ask questions about it, you can accurately and confidently give them answers to their questions.
Kim Carson: 04:44
Right? And would you say that someone or, you know, a practice, let’s say, or, or an owner needs to have every single piece of like of their data of, you know, anything that’s essentially a number or a metric, whether there’s a dollar sign before that or a percentage sign after. Do they need to have all of that information? Is that like, if that’s not like a crazy question, they, they probably should, but they should.
Matt Hickerty: 05:15
I mean, like any business, is not going to like be successful off of gut feeling. So all this data and stuff, it’s all useful information. So that’s how you interpret it. And some stuff may not be relevant at the current time, but it could be if you’re doing a future venture, for example, if you want to expand to be multi clinics, for example, like that. So.
Not all data is relevant and useful at the time, but I think you can use a lot of different data to help create strategic decisions.
Kim Carson: 05:53
Yeah. And where would you say something? So for something to be, you know, quote unquote clean data, it should be accurate, consistent, complete. What would be an example of would you say like dirty data?
Matt Hickerty: 06:11
Bad data would be or dirty data too.
Kim Carson: 06:15
Dirty data. I like bad I like bad data better. It sounds like it’s one word.
Matt Hickerty: 06:22
Yeah. Bad data like a sounds like a rapper. Yeah. You know, if say you have your. And most owners of the clinic would be doing this and they have their production reports that their doctors will give them.
I think they have most softwares will track this for you. And that is. So what does the doctor themselves producing through, through the patients that are coming in through exam revenue and through optical sales If that doesn’t match up with your financial statement, for example. Right. And there’s inconsistencies there.
So they work this amount of hours, they generate this amount of money, but all of a sudden that’s not translating back to your financial statement. That’s when it’s inaccurate and inconsistent. And that leads to a lot of questions. You know, when a buyer comes in, for example, they’ll be looking at all this different stuff, right? And they’ll be making sure that this piece of information leads to this one and it’s accurate and, and reconcilable.
So if that isn’t the case and they’re going to ask questions, okay, well, how come you’re saying you produced this much yet you have less revenue over here or vice versa? How come you’re only saying you produce as much, but your revenue is way higher? Like where’s the inaccuracy here? Right? So dirty data, it creates more questions and uncertainty, especially when you’re trying to sell a practice.
Uncertainty leads to more risk, which means leads to a lower capitalization multiple. At the end of the day, that will probably get into what that means as well on this. Yeah.
Kim Carson: 07:57
Well, no. I would love to know though, if someone is not planning to sell right now or even, you know, five in, in five years, let’s say, which, which maybe is the minimum that they should have a plan in place. But why would clean data and, you know, not really preparing for a buyer to come in matter?
Matt Hickerty: 08:21
Well, if you want to sell in five years, then you should absolutely be looking at clean data right now. And I think it gives you the ability to manage your business better starting today, right? You’re going to be able to identify where you’re making your money, where it’s losing, right? Which of your doctors or associates are the most productive, right? If you have two locations, which locations are performing the best, right?
And why are they performing the best, right? How come your margins are changing from time to time? Right? Why are staffing costs so high right now? I, you know, and you know, where are these opportunities that we have to increase revenue, right?
So if you can identify those things 5 or 10 years before you actually want to sell, then you actually have time to do something about it, right? And change it and make yourself more profitable. And yeah.
Kim Carson: 09:13
Yeah, no, I think that that’s great. Yeah. You, you kind of get your score in the game.
Matt Hickerty: 09:18
Exactly. Right. And, and you have an idea of how your clinic’s doing and how your business is doing so that when these questions do come down the line five years from now and they ask you, hey, five years ago, you why was this this you have a good basis and understanding of what was happening then rather than, you know, you’re trying to backtrack for the next six months, trying to figure out what was that spend on, or how come revenue was actually so high there or different things like that, right? Just gives you better information and you’re able to make better strategic decisions too, to get you to a point where when you sell, it’s a good idea to sell because you’re going to get good cash influx.
Kim Carson: 09:57
Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, I think we talk to a lot, especially in your department at Cleinman of Practice Transitions, we talk a lot about, you know, knowing what your exit from optometry looks like. And we also talk about the fact that this sale is likely the fund for your retirement, or it at least is a very large piece of that retirement puzzle. So I fully understand what you’re saying, like just knowing what it is worth and or maybe not even what it’s worth, but where your practice is at and what it’s making is like, I, I can’t even imagine not wanting to know that.
And maybe, you know what? Like, I guess my next question for you would be like, when you look at the financials and, you know, data and metrics of a practice and they are dirty or bad data. Do you ever understand why it was like that? Like, is it, you know, I, I don’t like to think that anyone that might be listening and is a practice owner is negligent with their numbers, but do you ever kind of get clarity on that? Like, why haven’t they been tracking these things?
Why haven’t they paid attention to this?
Matt Hickerty: 11:26
Yeah, we do get that. And, I asked myself that question too. If you’re going to be a business owner, why aren’t you paying attention to your business? And I think a lot might even stem from, you know, you go to school as an optometrist to learn and be a doctor. You don’t get business courses.
But at the end of the day, your clinic is a running business and it’s you’re paying yourself a salary out of that business. So you should really be paying attention to what it is and what the metrics are running and what the story is telling you. Because at the end of the day, when you’re going to sell it, like you said, it’s a, you know, a big piece of your retirement. You want to be able to sell the story of the business, you know, so clean data is going to be able to tell you about, you know, maybe your optical optical capture rate is way, way lower than where it should be, right? Or that your revenue per exam is it’s actually kind of higher than you thought it would be, but you’re still not having money come through the door.
So or keeping money and being profitable, right? So like, where’s the other issue going to be? Right. And that’s what the clean data helps you do is help you identify, you know, your leaky buckets, if you will. And right.
And I’m like, oh, we’re actually losing a lot of money on this one service. Maybe we should just get rid of it type of thing. Yeah.
Kim Carson: 12:49
Yeah, I think too. On that same kind of note, I think Nancy Dewald has a couple times said, you know, when you look at the metrics of your practice, like they don’t tell you necessarily what the problem is, they just tell you where you should be looking for it. So your, your leaky buckets is, is that.
Matt Hickerty: 13:11
Yeah. It’s yeah. And then just, you know, coming up with strategies to plug those leaks, for example, right. And so you hold more in your profitability bucket at the end of the day, you know, and speaking of Nancy, she always has the low hanging fruit analogy, right? And it’s when you look at metrics, you can.
Right. And when you start getting clean data, there might be there usually is low hanging fruit. You’re like, oh, that can instantly increase our profitability by 5% if we just tighten that piece up there. So it really just it paints a really good picture for you on how you’re doing currently and where do you want to get to? And it helps you just sort of develop those plans, obviously in conjunction with our consultants too.
At the same time. You’ll definitely get to a way better position where you can retire on the sale of your clinic and your profitable moving into it too. So now you have more money even before you sell.
Kim Carson: 14:10
Yeah. And you know, I think the timeline is also important, like you said, like five, if you’re planning to sell your business in five years, you should be having clean data now. But even you know someone who is fairly new to eye care, what you know, what is Al always say, like more people die on the way down the mountain than up in their exit. I’m like, I don’t think anyone’s gonna die in their retirement of optometry. I don’t think we’ve had any cases like that.
But yeah.
Matt Hickerty: 14:45
Al’s got a million of them. Yeah, but I think I have that one too.
Kim Carson: 14:53
So, you know, I’m kind of curious to know in all of the analysis that you’ve done on practices, is there a metric or an area of measurement that is consistently dirty or bad that you see? Like if, if anyone listening right now is an owner and they wanted to fix the biggest issue that you continuously see, what would that be?
Matt Hickerty: 15:30
That’s a good question. There is no blanket like clinic. Every clinic’s run differently. Yeah. Now, there are lots of cases where we get their income statements come through and their chart of accounts is just alphabetical.
And there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it. Which sort of tells me that they’re not correctly bucketing things to see, you know. Okay, well, how much are we spending on staff or how much are we spending on occupancy? So that would include rent and utilities, security, property maintenance, stuff like that. So when I see a financial statement that’s not sort of categorized like that.
That’s kind of a telltale sign that they’re not paying as close attention as they should be. But, you know, going back to your question, is there one thing that I always see that I’m like, oh, you need to change that right away? Not really. It’s kind of All around, you know, depending on your expenses, depending on where you even located and like patient volume and stuff like that. So there’s a lot that comes into play.
So that I think that’s why the data is so important is because once you start getting your metrics and KPIs back, then you can start comparing them to yourself in the past. And, you know, if you’re part of the peer to peer here at Cleinman, you can actually compare them to like minded and like clinics around you. And then you can really start benchmarking and understanding like, okay, you know, this metric here is much lower than it should be. What are you guys doing differently type of thing, right?
Kim Carson: 17:23
So yeah.
Matt Hickerty: 17:25
Yeah.
Kim Carson: 17:26
Yeah, absolutely. I one thing about me, I love and it depends question, I hate to get them, but I love to ask him.
Matt Hickerty: 17:38
Yeah, he made me really scrape the bottom of the barrel on that one. But yes, it all depends.
Kim Carson: 17:43
I won’t apologize. Instead, I might just ask you, you know, how do you find that clean data affects the valuation of a practice? You know, I think we’ve already maybe learned that it gives people a clear snapshot. But is there like another, more deeper benefit to having like books that are organized and just like, yeah, clean?
Matt Hickerty: 18:13
Yeah. It makes the entire selling process easier for me and the team that I’m on. When we get clean data that’s easy to interpret, we can do our job selling it much better to potential buyers. It, you know, when we get to an EBITDA, which is you did this with my director analyst before earnings, before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization. I went and listened to that podcast action just to make sure.
It makes it easier for us to identify maybe one time expenses. So like legal fees, or if you were to relocate your clinic owner specific expenses, owners are allowed to take a draw on their dividends, for example, right? They own the business, they’re allowed to take money out of it. Maybe they have an automobile running through their discretionary expenses like vacation meals and entertainments, travel and stuff like that. Right.
And even non-operating expenses. So a loss on a sale of asset, for example, you’re using this equipment, it’s run its course of its life and then you want to sell it. And it’s below what the book value is. That’s a loss. That’s an expense, right?
But it’s not going to happen all the time. So it lets our team identify those things and essentially normalize what your EBITDA would look like, which means just add back those expenses and stuff like that, which at the end of the day increases and bolsters up your EBITDA. And then when it hits that valuation, multiple cleaner data on the buyer side, for example, when they’re looking at the data and they understand what they’re looking at and they don’t have a lot of diligence questions revolving around it because it’s clean and it makes sense and everything flows. They’re not uncertain with this, with this clinic and what they’re buying, right? And so their level of risk is lower.
And so the lower your risk, the higher multiple. So for every dollar of EBITDA, you might have a six times, right. So you’ll get $6 back. And so yeah, the clean clean data will affect your valuation just on like a sort of trust level, right? Because at the end of the day, either your, your buyer buyers going to trust the data and, and the, you know, the supporting documents or they’re going to trust you and your word like, oh, no, it’s a really good business, trust me type of thing, right?
They’re not probably not going to go for that, especially when it’s such a large sum of money, right? They’re going to want the hard evidence to actually back it up.
Kim Carson: 20:52
Yeah for sure. This might be a silly question. Love em and I’ll ask it anyways. How far back are we going? Like if I’m a practice owner of 40 years, and it was only in the last ten years that I decided to clean up my books and have clean data.
And I’m going to sell now. Will I be on the hook for the past full 40 years?
Matt Hickerty: 21:26
No, you would not. I would be dumbfounded if the Evaluator went all the way back 40 years to look at what the business looked like when it first started. That would also take a lot of time. And typically you’re going to look at the last like three years, maybe 4 to 5. But really like when we’re looking at it, we look at the last three and we look at the trends.
It’s interesting you ask that actually, because when Covid happened in 2020, there was a big change. We’re just sort of coming out of it now. But you would have noticed, right, if you’re trying to sell in 2021, for example, revenue, everything would be way lower because of 2020. So we’re out of it now because it’s 2026. I would have said you would probably want to look at it before Covid and then after to see what the differences are.
But now I think we’re further far enough along that it’s fine. I was thinking about this the other day.
Kim Carson: 22:23
Yeah, we have a big enough sample size now, right? Like post Covid and where like the on and off restrictions that different provinces and states and countries had in place are no longer affecting all of the day to day. So yeah, that’s a great point is that now that we’re, you know, six years past the inciting incident, there’s more time in our sample size to, to only look back at three years and not necessarily pre Covid anymore.
Matt Hickerty: 22:54
Right?
Kim Carson: 22:55
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well thank you. Yeah, I’m, I’m thinking, you know, of maybe some of the owners that didn’t necessarily place the emphasis on their clean data when they started their businesses. And now it’s been 20 years and now they understand the importance of it.
But do they need to feel this guilt or this pressure to go back, you know, five, ten, 20 years plus? So that’s great. I’m hopeful to give any reassurance to those people listening.
Matt Hickerty: 23:26
Know, if that’s like I said, just start cleaning your data now. Or year end even. Just look at your chart of accounts. Make it make sense. We have good resources here too, of how you can structure your, your accounting or your income statement.
And then just make sure like the things we see are like when there’s just a lot of random line items with like $50 in here and they’re just sort of shoving expenses wherever they think they’ll fit. That’s what you want to start avoid doing. And when I say clean data, it’s just it’s very easy to read. There’s not when you read a line item, for example, you’re not questioning what that even is or where it sits or something like that. So yeah.
Kim Carson: 24:13
I would like to know if having clean data or, you know, this kind of accurate, consistent, concise snapshot of a practices, financials and metrics. Does it help? You know, I think like we talked about, it helps instill some trust with buyers or potential buyers. But does it help in the finding of buyers? Are there higher caliber buyers looking at practices that have clean data?
Matt Hickerty: 24:47
Yes, I think I mean, finding a buyer, for example, for someone who’s interested, I don’t actually do any of that. Yeah, but at least I’d be reaching out to potential like people that she knows or other PE firms, for example, that’s private equity. They want clean data and they have whole teams of people that will comb through in their diligence stages. And when they’re not finding issues and when they’re trusting the sources and they say, yeah, no, this all makes sense. This flows correctly. That just creates more confidence in the buyer knowing that there are no, you know, little black corners of the clinic that are like, oh, what’s in there type of thing.
Right, right. So I’ll go back to what I said before is like the buyers taking the risk of buying this clinic from you, right. They’re gonna, they’re essentially saying, I’m going to pay you a significant amount of money based on my belief that this business will continue to generate what you’re saying is generating right now. And if there’s inconsistencies in your income statements and in your productivity reports and operations metrics and everything like that, then that creates uncertainty. And one, like I said, uncertainty creates risk.
And then they might just be so off put by it that they just end up saying, no, we’re not going to buy it because we can’t trust anything that’s coming out of this.
Kim Carson: 26:17
So okay. Yeah. I think too, it’s probably more enticing to a buyer to say like, you know, we have instead of saying, you know, we’ve been growing in the last few years to like put a hard number on that as well and say like, we’ve been.
Matt Hickerty: 26:37
Yeah.
Kim Carson: 26:37
We have grown X percentage amount in patients in revenue in our rates on stuff. So yeah, I can see that that would be it just is building trust. Basically, it’s like buying a house and getting an, an inspection on it just right. A bigger deal.
Matt Hickerty: 26:57
Exactly. Yeah. Depends on how you’re buying. But yes. Yeah.
Kim Carson: 27:01
Fair. My house is also an optometry practice. So then, you know, we talked a bit too about like finding some of the things that could be tightened up when you’re going through some of these practices data. But what, what else happens if a practice isn’t performing correctly? What if their data isn’t great right now?
How do they solve that? How do they, you know, kind of correct themselves out of something like that?
Matt Hickerty: 27:37
When the data is not good. Just start like having that not at the forefront of your mind. Obviously, you got to do your patient care, but keep that in the back of your head. Just that we need to make sure we have good data and metrics. Right?
Kim Carson: 27:54
You hesitated when you started answering it and you just said start. And I think that that might be the answer. If you don’t have good data right now, the best thing you can do is start.
Matt Hickerty: 28:09
Start getting good data. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Start making sure that it flows correctly and that everyone’s tracking their time correctly and write whatever software you’re using to help with that. Make sure it’s being utilized. And honestly, like if you’re a just a sole owner, right?
Every month, just look at your financials, right? And start questioning things and poke around. Right. And it may not, it may be, you know, a little nerve wracking, but like, it might be scary because it’s all these numbers you don’t really understand, but just you can break it down. And that’s why our consultants are here too.
But like you said, just start doing it. Start keeping an eye on it. And then, you know, quarterly or even every half year, you can start making plans and strategic decisions like, hey, how are we going to generate more revenue? Well, this is what the revenue, right? We had a really good month here.
What happened in this month, right? You can just start asking questions around it to really start looking to the future using the snapshot of what you have today.
Kim Carson: 29:24
Yeah, I can understand numbers being scary or nerve wracking like you said. But the the best thing to do is to start. And ultimately anyone listening like it’s your business. It is your business. You’re allowed to ask questions about it and you’re allowed to know everything about it.
Matt Hickerty: 29:44
Yeah. You should know everything about it. Yeah. Your baby. Right.
You grew it from, you know, if we use a 40 year example that’s been yours for 40 years. You can’t sit there and not understand what’s happening in something you’ve had for 40 years. You got to pay attention to it. Yeah.
Kim Carson: 30:04
I certainly have kind of danced around this question. And maybe we’ve, you know, accidentally answered it already, but just to make sure that it does get answered in this podcast. How early should an owner start thinking about stuff like this and start thinking about the selling, the valuation, the clean data of their practice yesterday. Yeah. Start.
Matt Hickerty: 30:32
Start. Just start doing it. Yeah. No, you have all these plans for your retirement, but you need to have a good roadmap to get there. And this will help you get there.
It helps you make informed decisions for your clinic. Maybe you’ve been understaffed this whole time and you’re driving all of your workers into the, into the ground, right? And just having two more staff members might alleviate all that pressure. And then more ideas come up. I was like, hey, we should probably try to do this or we can sell this or, you know, or maybe you’ve been stuck in a lease for a long time and you just didn’t realize how expensive it really was on an annual basis.
And there’s some immediate savings you can do when you go shop around, or you even just try to renegotiate the lease. But you never know any of this stuff until you actually start paying attention to it, right? So now is the best time to do it. Yesterday was even better, but now is the second best time.
Kim Carson: 31:31
Yeah, the way, way, way back was probably the best answer. But the second best answer is now.
Matt Hickerty: 31:37
Yeah, exactly.
Kim Carson: 31:40
So in order to kind of get there, what questions do you think an owner should be asking themselves today?
Matt Hickerty: 31:53
In order to get to clean data.
Kim Carson: 31:56
Yeah. In order to get to selling their practice and hitting their retirement goals and funding their retirement goals, maybe what questions should they start asking themselves?
Matt Hickerty: 32:13
Do I know what I make on like, what’s my revenue over the year, for example, or what was my revenue over this month compared to last month or this quarter compared to the quarter last year? What am I doing differently if it’s higher? What am I doing differently if it’s lower? You know what expenses are coming out of this practice right now. Do we have room to add another lane?
I mean, there are tons of questions they can be asking themselves to get themselves to a better and stronger EBITDA and a higher valuation. At the end of the day, you need clean data in order to ask those questions and to have a good idea of what’s going on. So, you know, and you said it before, like there’s so many different numbers and metrics, right? It’s all valuable information. And I can guarantee that a lot of people will, they might be afraid of what the numbers are going to find when they start cleaning it and they start having good metrics and stuff to go off of that they trust is, you know, they might be afraid that like, oh, this is super low.
Like, what am I going to do type of thing, right? But it’s all valuable. And if you’re looking to sell in the next 5 to 10 years, then you can start making those changes to get yourself up to the next level and the higher tier. So you can sell it for more profit at the end of the day. Right.
So it’s all valuable information. And, and I know your question was about what question should they be asking themselves? You know, it’s. Until you have the data in front of you, you don’t really know what questions you should be asking, I guess is my answer in a really roundabout way. Yeah.
Kim Carson: 34:05
So maybe, I mean, maybe the actual question is, do I have clean data?
Matt Hickerty: 34:09
Right? And do I trust the numbers?
Kim Carson: 34:11
What am I gonna do about it?
Matt Hickerty: 34:16
Exactly. What am I going to do about it? Like, because it’s either you’re asking these questions yourself. You’ll be sure that the people looking to buy your company will be asking those questions, right? So it’s better that you have an answer already.
And you’re confident in your answer and you can defend it and support it. Rather than just being sort of blindsided and be like, oh, I never thought about that. Like.
Kim Carson: 34:44
Yeah. And you know, we’re kind of in the wrap up here. I would like to know, do you have a biggest takeaway for any practice owners listening? And you know, that takeaway could be about clean data and cleaning up maybe any data that they have right now. Or it could be about when they go to sell or what they should look for if they’re buying.
Like, do you have a big takeaway for practice owners listening?
Matt Hickerty: 35:12
Yeah. Don’t think of your data as something you need to clean up. When you do decide to sell, think of it as a tool you can use to build the value of your business. So the data and the KPIs that will be generated from this, it gives you a snapshot of the successes and the failures throughout your year. And then you can look at those historically, right?
You know, one of the key words I think of this entire podcast was start. There’s something we do in Cleinman. It’s start, stop and keep. Right? What do we need to start doing?
What do we need to stop doing and what should we keep doing? You’re not able to answer those until you have the good data and KPIs to back it up, where you can make informed decisions. You know, good, good data helps you understand your practice and how it’s running. Understanding your practice helps you make better decisions moving forward. Better decisions ultimately improve profitability.
And at the end, when you’re ready to sell, you have clean, reliable data that helps a buyer understand and trust what they’re buying.
Kim Carson: 36:18
Perfect. Couldn’t have said it better myself. So I do have one more question for you. Kind of a fun question. Before I ask it, I will point people to our sponsors website.
Again, that is marketing and the number for seo.com. And my final question to you, Matt, is, you know, as proud glasses wearers, I think we’ve had an eye exam or two in our lives. If you were to pay $10,000 for an eye exam, what would you expect it to have included in it?
Matt Hickerty: 36:57
Okay. Well, funny is these glasses are actually just blue light. I don’t actually need glasses. I know.
Kim Carson: 37:03
Oh my gosh.
Matt Hickerty: 37:04
I was wondering if I should drop that bomb.
Kim Carson: 37:08
Hey everybody.
Matt Hickerty: 37:09
This guy I know, I just wanted to be part of it. I look smarter with them on so. Yeah I know. You didn’t have to agree.
Kim Carson: 37:19
So, so fast too.
Matt Hickerty: 37:21
Yeah. Whoa. So it’s funny, and I can guarantee you a lot of optometrists listening to this are going to hate this answer. But so before a year ago, I hadn’t seen an optometrist in probably 14 years. What’s even worse is my best friend and best man in my wedding, both his mom and his sister, both optometrists.
So those made for some quite awkward dinners. Whenever we went to them, they’re like, oh, when’s the last time you did an eye exam? I’m like, I, I actually can’t remember. But I had thought I was losing my vision. So I went last year and I did an eye exam.
And it turns out I have 2020 vision, which I learned is just a benchmark, if you will. It doesn’t actually mean you have perfect vision. I actually had better vision before that. So to answer your $10,000 eye exam question, I think they’d have to, like, do some bionic thing to my eye to make me be able to like, zoom in on stuff or. Yeah.
So I could see a lot further maybe or maybe see an infrared. I’m a hunter, so that would be quite useful. But ten grand for an eye exam, I would expect to come out kind of like a cyborg.
Kim Carson: 38:38
So it might not be an eye exam. It might be like a procedure. A procedure where they replace like the aperture in your eye with a camera one or a heat sensing one.
Matt Hickerty: 38:53
Exactly.
Kim Carson: 38:53
I think, wow.
Matt Hickerty: 38:55
I couldn’t even because I, I went a year ago and they, they did a couple like they did the old spoon over the eye thing.
Kim Carson: 39:01
Yeah.
Matt Hickerty: 39:02
But that couldn’t cost ten grand. Right.
Kim Carson: 39:04
So no, no, it’s gotta have something extra in it.
Matt Hickerty: 39:07
Yeah. It’s got a. Yeah. That’s my answer. It would have to be some sort of surgery to make me have superhuman seeing.
Kim Carson: 39:19
Okay, you know what? I really wasn’t expecting that answer, so. Thank you.
Matt Hickerty: 39:23
Yeah. I told you it would be a weird answer.
Kim Carson: 39:27
Okay. Well, thank you, Matt, so much for this episode today. And that’s our show. So if you would like to hear more episodes of the podcast, you certainly can at Cleinman.com and wherever you like to listen. Thanks for joining us.
Matt Hickerty: 39:41
See you later.
Outro: 39:46
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.
