Boutique Optician Sees Revenue Grow 20% With Smarter Business Moves

Destynee Turner became an optician because she loves helping people see. But growing The Optical Experience, her boutique optical shop in West Palm Beach, Florida, demanded business skills no opticianry program taught her.

A local business group led Turner to an in-person Verizon Small Business Digital Ready event where she learned more about the program and its online platform. The program’s events and courses gave her new strategies to tackle her biggest challenge: working too hard in her business, not on it. The changes she made, especially around customer retention, drove an approximate 20% increase in revenue.

“It’s really cool when you implement the knowledge from these courses and can actually see things changing and growing,” says Turner, who’s also a Verizon Business customer, using business internet and phone services. “Having tools like Digital Ready, with all these experts willing to share this information, is gold.”

From frames to game plan

The in-person Digital Ready event she attended not only introduced Turner to other local business owners, it gave her a budgeting framework she now uses to manage her business finances. Before, she had accounting software but was just logging expenses without knowing how much of her profit should go to operations, inventory or her own pay. The event showed her how to categorize spending and apply general rules, like taking 20–30% of profit as owner pay. From there, she built a custom budget, which helped her see where she was overspending, particularly on networking events that weren’t moving her business forward. Now, she only invests in opportunities directly tied to her growth.

Another new strategy Turner learned was automating annual checkup reminders, instead of managing them manually using spreadsheets. This shift saved her about three hours a month and increased revenue by keeping existing clients coming back. Turner also refined her social media approach thanks to Digital Ready courses, shifting from unfocused posting to purposeful content creation, which nearly doubled her engagement.

Building it her way

Working with clients was Turner’s motivation for launching her own business. After years in large-scale optical retail, where the fast pace left little room for personalized attention, she wanted to practice the kind of care she believed in. In 2018, she started a mobile eyewear service, visiting clients at home and bringing the equipment to them.

In 2022, Turner opened The Optical Experience, where she implemented the practices she’d always wanted to see in her previous roles. For example, when clients come in for their appointment, they fill out a lifestyle questionnaire, she pre-selects frames based on their preferences and eye exams are conducted on-site, via a telehealth appointment with a licensed optometrist. The entire appointment is one-on-one—just Turner and the client in the shop.

“I’ve literally created my own lane,” Turner says. “There are people who have mobile opticals and there are other opticians who have shops, but they’re nothing like mine.”

Part of creating her own lane meant exploring tools she’d never used before, such as artificial intelligence (AI). When a shipment of frames arrives, Turner snaps a photo of the SKU numbers and uses AI to generate an inventory spreadsheet in seconds—work that used to eat into the time she’d rather spend with clients. “I wouldn’t have been as comfortable with AI if I hadn’t taken the Digital Ready courses,” she says.

Seasonal planning was another shift. Early on, the shop’s slow summers caught Turner off guard. “Digital Ready helped me to strategize and think, ‘Okay, these are my off-months of the year. How do I plan for this?’” she says. Now, she launches promotions that help drive business in the summer and also uses that time to recharge with her family.

A bigger vision

Now pursuing her doctorate in optometry—with about five years of schooling ahead—Turner plans to keep her shop open while she studies and to eventually open a second location in her community. The business skills she picked up through Digital Ready helped sharpen that ambition. “I want to grow as a business owner,” she says. “I might not have a million stores, but the people I help, they love what I do. That’s what carries me.”

Verizon Small Business Digital Ready is part of Verizon’s goal to support 1 million small businesses by 2030 with free resources to help them succeed. To sign up, visit Verizon Small Business Digital Ready. Visit CitizenVerizon.com to learn more about the company's responsible business efforts. An individual user’s experience may vary and results are not guaranteed.