Highlighting Practice Culture With Cleinman’s New Excellence Awards

Amanda Van Voris is the Senior Director of Client Solutions at Cleinman, a consulting firm that helps independent optometry practices strengthen performance, operations, leadership, and growth. With more than 20 years at the company, she provides strategic and operational guidance across people, finance, and systems. Amanda helps owners navigate complex development plans, improve team performance, build leadership resilience, and create sustainable practices through planning, benchmarking, and intentional change.

Meagan Staab is the Director of Client Support and Insights at Cleinman. She leads the development and use of information-management systems, benchmarking tools, client portals, and performance reporting. Meagan helps practices select meaningful KPIs, compare results with relevant benchmarks, strengthen accountability, and turn consistent data review into clearer decisions and measurable growth.

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

[3:20] Amanda Van Voris explains how growth awards recognize intentional action, teamwork, and measurable practice performance
[7:00] Why healthy culture matters throughout a practice’s growth journey
[11:40] How Amanda views career paths, strategic delegation, and employee development as signs of organizational maturity
[14:17] Encouraging practices to self-nominate, gather team feedback, and document their strongest cultural achievements
[18:35] Meagan Staab highlights the value of recognizing daily progress, long-term dedication, and leadership development
[21:26] What the six Cleinman Operating System pillars reveal about building a healthy, high-performing organization
[26:35] Meagan explains the Culture Award threshold, judging process, and possibility of recognizing multiple practices

In this episode…

Strong practice culture is often reflected in the everyday choices that shape how people work, grow, and support one another. Recognition can make that work more visible while reinforcing the behaviors that help teams thrive. What does it take to build a culture worthy of celebration?

Amanda Van Voris, an advisor experienced in practice growth, leadership, and team development, and Meagan Staab, an expert in business intelligence, benchmarking, and performance improvement, point to intentionality as the answer. Amanda recommends creating career paths, developing employees, celebrating shared wins, and gathering honest team feedback, while Meagan emphasizes clear purpose, accountability, measurable goals, employee voice, and daily discipline. Together, their insights show that culture should be treated as a strategic driver of retention, recruiting, patient experience, and sustainable growth.

In this episode of the Cleinman Connect Podcast, Kim Carson discusses practice culture with Amanda Van Voris, Senior Director of Client Solutions at Cleinman, and Meagan Staab, Director of Client Support and Insights at Cleinman. Amanda and Meagan explain why culture deserves recognition, how intentional leadership supports growth, and what makes a strong award nomination. They also touch on employee feedback, career paths, and employer branding.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments:

“And I think it’s only fitting to celebrate people who do that hard work.”
“There’s so much that can be done to develop, for example, career paths for individuals.”
“We would love to be able to give everybody an opportunity to be celebrated. Put yourself in the ring.”
“Over time, day by day, we forget that we’re achieving things day by day.”
“We’re just kind of trying to reinforce those behaviors and values that build those exceptional practices.”

Action Steps:

Evaluate your culture intentionally: Reviewing your purpose, leadership, employee voice, well-being, and future plans helps reveal where your practice is thriving or needs attention.
Ask your team for honest feedback: Involving employees in the nomination process can uncover meaningful examples and provide a clearer picture of the workplace experience.
Use engagement surveys to identify gaps: Structured feedback helps leaders address cultural concerns before they affect retention, teamwork, or practice growth.
Create career paths for employees: Giving team members opportunities to build skills and take on greater responsibility supports both individual development and organizational maturity.
Share cultural achievements beyond the practice: Promoting an award can strengthen your employer brand and help attract and retain talented employees.

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.

This episode of the podcast 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’ll be joined today on the show. We have a little a twofer treat for you. I will be joined by Amanda Van Voris, Senior Business Consultant here at Cleinman, as well as Meagan Staab, the Director of Business Intelligence and Client Support. What a treat. These ladies are so exceptional. We are going to be talking about not only the awards that Cleinman has previously given at our Cleinman Performance Network meeting events, but announced at our spring Meeting. We will now be awarding Excellence Awards. Those are going to be open for nomination. They’re open now. Actually, this podcast will be out by the time that those awards are, you know, able to be applied for. The very first one that we are opening application for is the Culture Award. So as you hear, I won’t spoil anything, as you hear in this podcast episode about the awards and you’ll get more information on it. We wanted to start with this one because people and culture is really where everything starts. It’s how you retain, it’s how you grow. It’s how you, you know, get more clients in. It’s just a wonderful place to start. So that’s why we have decided to start here. All the information you need will be in the podcast. And I really hope you enjoy listening to these very intelligent, very wonderful ladies as they describe our new Cleinman Excellence Awards.

Hello, I’m Kim Carson hosting the incomparable Amanda Van Voris on this episode of the Cleinman Connect Podcast. You actually were my very first guest. Amanda, you were so gracious in saying yes to me when I was like, I don’t know what I’m doing. I just need to talk. So thank you very much for joining me again.

Amanda Van Voris: 02:43

Kim. It’s always a pleasure to talk with you.

Kim Carson: 02:47

You are our Senior Business Consultant here at Cleinman, and you’ve been here for, you know, 20 some years helping independent ODS conquer business development challenges I wanted to bring you on today. We are talking about the awards that Cleinman has and, you know, kind of the awards in general. I wanted to pick your brain on, you know, everything, awards and celebration. So if you would like to get us started, I think our growth awards are a perfect place.

Amanda Van Voris: 03:20

Sure, sure sure. Happy to. So handing out awards to our member practices has been a key part of our events for several years now. And, you know, basically those are awards that are geared towards celebrating growth and revenue. And it’s very empirically based.

It’s very much based on key performance indicators and it’s, you know, based on growth and money and money in the bank, if you will, when we hand out the awards. I’ve watched this over the years. It’s funny, sometimes folks are a little bit embarrassed. Like there’s a little sense of, oh, I don’t know if I want to get up on stage to be celebrated. But then, you know, most often folks are quite proud.

And I think it’s really important to highlight that when somebody wins a growth award that has happened as a result of their executing on very specific actions they have with intention, pulled the levers that have helped them to grow their business. And I think it’s only fitting to celebrate people who do that hard work. Now, it’s not just the practice owners that are engaging in this work. Of course, the whole team is involved in helping to manage change, to focus on performance, to begin to understand how they participate in helping the whole practice to grow. One of my favorite stories and this was really cool, actually, this is very recent and this was very cool to see and also really cool to hear after the fact from folks that were in this mix.

We had a lady from Iowa who won a growth award and was playing. We were planning to celebrate her at our last network meeting. And as it happened at the last minute, she couldn’t attend. But and that happens from time to time. It’s rare, but it happens.

We still present the award and make a public presentation about this person and the fact that unfortunately, they couldn’t be with us. What was so wonderful to see was instantaneously, her group members who were in the audience started blasting her phone with text messages. And I heard about that from her and from others after the fact. And she was just so. She was so tickled to to get all those messages.

And that really highlighted for me what happens when people come together in their peer to peer groups and they form those really tight bonds? That was really cool to see.

Kim Carson: 06:09

Yeah. It’s not just us celebrating our members. It’s your group that you meet with that you, you know, are vulnerable with. They are celebrating you as well.

Amanda Van Voris: 06:19

Right, right, right. It’s powerful stuff.

Kim Carson: 06:23

Yes, very. I would like to know, you know, I kind of asked Megan Staub this as well. But we, you know, have growth awards. We have kind of our ten year awards as well, like our, our five, five year members, ten year members, even a 20 year member. I know we have one this year and a couple more upcoming.

But why the introduction of, you know, an excellence Award? Why the introduction of highlighting people’s culture specifically with this new one that we’ve opened the nominations for. Why do you think that that is important?

Amanda Van Voris: 07:00

You know, so growth in the business, measuring collections growth is is like the outcome. I’m excited about these new awards, especially the culture award, because that really connects back to the importance of bringing teams along on growth journeys. And, you know, everything in business development success should be celebrated because at the end of the day, it is real work that goes into helping businesses to grow, helping teams to flourish, helping individual team members to grow in their competency. And, you know, when we see when we see a healthy, productive team that is working with and owning doctor, and they have very clear understanding of the goals and the objectives, and they’re leaning into the process and they’re being rewarded for their participation in growth. That to me is that’s a demonstration of a very healthy culture.

And that’s a big part of what we encourage. That’s a big part of the work that we do to help help teams to flourish and grow and become more mature work groups.

Kim Carson: 08:30

Yeah. Do you think that there is any like emphasis put on culture in, you know, other ways? Like, is there anything that someone could do, like, let’s say that they win one of these awards? Do you think that there is like a proper way to kind of share it with the team? Because that’s really what it’s about, right?

Amanda Van Voris: 08:48

Yeah. Oh for sure. So I think there’s I think there’s sharing with the team. I think there’s celebrating with the team, which is very important. But I also think there’s great opportunity to to look at an award like this as an important part of an employer brand.

So if a company is recognized for something so powerful as being the leader or a leader in their business development activity, just a cultural award in particular. What a wonderful recruiting and retention tool. It’s absolutely something worth sharing. Beyond the four walls of the practice. An employer brand is a is a is always a very important factor of building your team and maintaining and growing a team.

Folks know what it’s like. It’s. It’s interesting how in local communities it becomes a, you know, a known quantity, if you will, in communities. Your your brand is a part. Sometimes it’s a subtle part, but it’s an important part of how you attract potential employment candidates.

Kim Carson: 10:11

Yeah, I think you’re totally right. It ties back into even, you know, the core values. Like I, you know, we can go to, to our website and we can see accolades that we’ve won and, and even our parent company POD, you know, accolades that they’ve won. And it definitely makes people want to look at open positions or hit apply on the jobs that they’re seeing when they see stuff like, we want a culture award for the amazing people we have and the amazing culture that we built. Do you think, you know, when I talked to Meg as well, and that’s upcoming in this podcast, so stay tuned.

But we do talk a little bit about some of the, not necessarily the exact questions, because we want to leave that for the nominees to find out when when this is open for submissions. But we talk about some of the categories. We talk about culture and people, and we talk about leadership within the practice. We talk about employee voice. But the last one we talk about is kind of the future, kind of the future of like, what is next for growing culture in practices?

Do you have any, you know, hearing from when you’re in these consulting meetings with our members? Do you hear lots about not necessarily what’s happening in the today, but what they maybe have planned for tomorrow?

Amanda Van Voris: 11:40

So part of the very often part of the journey in working with us starts to Reveal opportunity to get very specific in how to elevate the competency within the team. There’s so much that can be done to develop, for example, career paths for individuals. There’s so much that can be done to work with individuals to delegate non-essential functions. Well, strategically, one of the things that I think is often the moment for many of our practice owners is the fact that they can choose to, to look at positions within their practice as being really career positions. Sometimes we tend to think, you know, the folks that are going to work in an office practice, they’re going to be very early in their career.

Very often they are. They’re going to be young, you know, very often they are. But there are so many opportunities for individuals to grow into higher levels of certification. And there’s another interesting philosophy here that sometimes makes people a little bit uncomfortable. But one of my favorite end points with with employees.

And when I’m talking to a leader, one of the one of the most positive end points is when a doctor comes to me and says, Susie has grown beyond a role that I can create for her, she’s ready to fly. And here’s a doctor who has developed somebody along a career path, has done as much as the business can do to help elevate their skills, and actually takes this employee to a level that they are so competent that they have to go in a different direction. And when a leader comes to me and celebrates that, that to me is the absolute pinnacle of a healthy culture.

Kim Carson: 13:54

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more. What’s the the cream rises to the top or something like that. Yeah. Absolutely amazing.

No that’s a great way to put it. Is there anything else you would like to mention about, you know, our current awards or this new award that you’re particularly excited for?

Amanda Van Voris: 14:17

Oh you bet. So I am, I would like to just kind of make the general statement. I would like to encourage everybody to consider participating in this award. And this is a little bit different because historically we have done the nomination, but now we are asking our partner, our partner practices to excuse me, to nominate themselves. And, you know, again, that that shyness factor, you know, some people are just wired to say, oh, I’m not so sure about that, but I would really like everybody who’s engaged with us to take a take a close look at, boy, what are we doing really well within our cultural environment and take a chance and put some thoughts on paper.

We would love to be able to give everybody an opportunity to be celebrated. Put yourself in the ring.

Kim Carson: 15:11

Yeah for sure. And you know, this the way that we’ve kind of designed the actual submission process is that all of the questions are on the same page. So I, I’ll just go ahead and throw out to, to anyone listening that is interested in nominating their practice that you can copy those questions and you can put them in a document and you can sit on it. We have a six week window for submissions, so you can add to it. You know, as things come up over the summer that you realize you do in your practice that adds to the culture.

Or when you have these moments of specific examples, you can have an ongoing document. Don’t sit on it for too long, but you can absolutely take your time in writing out your nomination. And it’s not full essays. It’s not anything crazy like that. But if you need a bit more time, you don’t have to just come up with whatever’s in your brain and hit submit.

You do have time to have fully fleshed out answers for this process.

Amanda Van Voris: 16:15

So I here’s a question.

Kim Carson: 16:18

Yeah.

Amanda Van Voris: 16:19

Because we got like six weeks of time frame here. Would it make sense for. Practices that are considering getting into this award nomination process to maybe ask their teams what they think about their culture?

Kim Carson: 16:37

Absolutely. I love that suggestion. I think that they absolutely should. They can again take those questions out, or they can tweak them a little bit to make it apply to the individual and send them out to their teams and, you know, kind of get feedback that way. Use a compilation of those answers to then complete the submission.

Absolutely. I think that that is a great idea. You know, kind of goes hand in hand with also a topic that is near and dear to our HR services, which is engagement surveys. Yeah. And if you, you know, get some feedback on your culture, that’s not so great.

Well, maybe, you know, pin that out of the submission process, but keep it top of mind to know that you have to work on that if you want to continue to grow your culture.

Amanda Van Voris: 17:24

Absolutely. That’s a great idea.

Kim Carson: 17:26

Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for saying that, Amanda. I never thought of that.

Amanda Van Voris: 17:30

Well, and I love your idea about if you identify, if you find if a practice owner were to find that, that maybe the, the culture is not where you’d want it to be. What a terrific idea to consider engaging with a survey.

Kim Carson: 17:47

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know, thank you so much for having the time for me today, Amanda. You’re welcome. I always appreciate it.

I know our members always love hearing from you, and I cannot wait to see all of the wonderful nominations that are going to come in for this new Cleinman Excellence Award.

Amanda Van Voris: 18:08

Great to spend time with you again, Kim.

Kim Carson: 18:11

Thanks, Amanda. We are going to be talking about awards and kind of the culture of awards. So when I first joined Cleinman and I was able to go to one of our performance network events. There was, you know, a half hour, 45 minutes, an hour dedicated to handing out awards. Why is that important, do you think, Meg?

Meagan Staab: 18:35

Yeah. So we are awarding our clients who have been with us for an extended period of time, we’re awarding tenure because they’re showing us that they’re dedicated to business and leadership development. And over time, day by day, we forget that we’re achieving things day by day. We’re taking it one one bite at a time. So we want to make sure that our clients know that they’re seen, we recognize their efforts and what they’re doing is going to make an impact.

So we’re just kind of trying to reinforce those behaviors and values that build those exceptional practices.

Kim Carson: 19:14

Nice. And just for anyone who maybe, you know, has taken an early flight out of a performance network event or they’re not familiar with it, what are some of the awards that we recognize?

Meagan Staab: 19:28

Yeah. So we are doing, we do a five, ten, 20 year for tenure. And then we also do a growth award. Clients come together. I’m calling them clients.

Our partners come together every six months, and they come to the table with issues and commitments to resolving those issues. They’re soliciting feedback from their peers, and they’re working on those in between meetings. So based on that work, we’re typically seeing some sort of growth in their practice. We do award based on growth. Collections growth every year.

So our practices who grow the most in growth in collections are recognized at each of our meetings.

Kim Carson: 20:10

Okay. Is there like a per capita growth just like, you know, in deciding who gets that award? Like, I think, you know, $1 million practice with 10% growth would be different than a $2 million practice with 10% growth, right?

Meagan Staab: 20:25

Yeah, absolutely. So our group, our groups are put together based on practice size. So typically there are variances, but typically you’re in a group around the same performance level as you okay?

Kim Carson: 20:40

Oh, amazing. Okay.

Meagan Staab: 20:40

So whoever in their group performs highest in growth and collections earns that overall growth award.

Kim Carson: 20:48

So we have a new award that we introduced at our spring event. And the first, I guess nominations, the first like recipient will be named at our fall event. And that’s for the Excellence Award. Do you think that the introduction of this award like firstly, I would love you to to tell me a bit about it. And I, you know, I, I’m aware of it too, so I can speak to it as well.

But, you know, I would just like to know kind of why this award is getting introduced. Now, was there something else we wanted to recognize in our clients and celebrate them for?

Meagan Staab: 21:26

We rolled out the Cleinman operating system last year, and within our Cleinman Operating System, there are six pillars. And you can think of these almost like stars being awarded to a, you know, a hotel. Five star hotel. And what we’re looking for is to create awards for each of these pillars, for our practices to show that they’ve achieved excellence in the area. So these areas are clarity.

Do they have a long term vision that they share with their team and inspires their team? Culture is our people pillar is their organization and accountability charts defined? How do they motivate their people and how are they growing culture within their practice? Scorecard has always been a main a core philosophy at Cleinman, our benchmarking and key performance indicators. We’re using them.

Are they using them for goal setting, and are they reviewing them and using those that scorecard to identify opportunities and achievements alignment. How are they discussing issues? How are they identifying them and resolving them with within their teams to solve root causes, not just symptoms. For execution, where we’re trying to identify practices that have processes that are documented, followed and agreed on by all, and then momentum. How are they translating their long term vision into daily discipline?

So this is really the framework that we’ve created for optometry, private practice optometrists to kind of keep momentum with their performance. And just drive a really overall healthy organization. So what we want to do with these awards, our first award is our culture award for this culture award. We understand that cultures don’t happen by accident. Everything that you have that you’re doing in your practice, it has to be intentional in order for it to be impactful.

So that’s what we want to recognize within our practices, those practices that are really driving towards a culture that enables growth, leadership development, a positive patient experience, and then overall long term success.

Kim Carson: 23:54

Yeah. And just to go over there’s, you know, there’s a couple, I guess I won’t name the questions just for anyone who wants to go and, and nominate their practice and, and the hard working people within their practice. Yeah, we have culture and purpose questions for this leadership questions, well-being, employee voice questions, and even a future thought question. You know, like, I think that’s all, like you said, like culture doesn’t just happen. It’s not just a pizza party once a year or there’s a couple like clicks in your practice.

It is something that you have to be intentional about and think about now and into the future. So I absolutely love this. You know, maybe this culture award is coming first is because that is something that our parent company, POD Marketing, has, you know, held near and dear to their hearts. And we did win a couple awards in this past year. We won the, you know, best places to or best places to work and most Admired culture award, which was amazing.

Also won Inspiring Workplaces award. So we thought, you know, a lot of those awards that you can apply for, they are for certain sized businesses and businesses in certain areas, not necessarily in independent optometry. And I mean, somebody smart once said, like, you got to be the change you want to see. So now we’re rolling this out. The window for this award submission.

And please correct me if I’m wrong here, Meg. We’re doing a six week submission window for this. Nominations open on Monday, July 20th, and they close six weeks later on Friday, August 29th, 28th. Friday, August 29th. So please make sure that you are getting your submissions in by then.

So yeah, so we have, you know, a panel of people who are kind of invaluable to growing the culture at POD and, and I would say very responsible for the awards that we have been so lucky to win. They will be this panel of kind of unbiased, independent judges to read over the questions and the answers that are submitted by Cleinman practices. But how many practices can look forward to getting this first of many awards.

Meagan Staab: 26:35

So anyone who submits for the culture award will, if they meet a certain threshold of points, will be acknowledged and receive the Culture award. So yeah, hopefully.

Kim Carson: 26:49

We can be.

Meagan Staab: 26:50

A ton of.

Kim Carson: 26:52

Yeah, we could be just tossing out awards.

Meagan Staab: 26:55

Yeah, absolutely. Our partners have been working on their culture and their people for a really long time with us. So I do expect to see a few people practices acknowledged.

Kim Carson: 27:06

Yeah. I think that this is honestly a really great, you know, new kind of award that has been announced. I think we do focus a lot, rightfully so, on data and on the scorecard and on tracking our metrics and making sure that things are moving in the way that we want them to. Culture alone cannot make you money. Culture alone cannot get you out of the red.

But also being not in the red is not necessarily the most important thing. Always. And it doesn’t retain the right people always. So I think that this is a really good award that we’ve introduced. And yeah, our practices are working hard.

I think they deserve a little love.

Meagan Staab: 27:49

They do.

Kim Carson: 27:51

Yay. Well, thank you for chatting with me today. That is our episode. If you would like to hear more of the podcast, you certainly can at Cleinman.com. And we’re we like to listen.

Thanks for joining me, Meg.

Meagan Staab: 28:03

Thanks for having me.

Outro: 28:08

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.

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