– Pat Deakin is the Economic Development Manager for the City of Port Alberni. He can be reached at 250.720.2527 or Patrick_deakin@portalberni.ca.
PORT ALBERNI – Recently a conversation between a small group of Chamber, School District 70 and City staff about the Alberni Valley Tourism Training Program touched on the WorldHost component. Someone asked if that was the evolution of the Super- Host program.
Bill Collette, Chamber Manager, said yes, and then asked “Did you know that Shaun Golemba at Valley Vision paid for his entire staff to go through the program?” An optometrist paying to have his staff go through a customer service program designed for the hospitality industry is probably rare.
In fact, the business closes one afternoon each month for new training. Their employee recruitment is rigorous, a 10-stage process. He is an externship site for the University of Waterloo and a proponent of the delegation model of practicing optometry.
He belongs to the Cleinman Performance Partners Mastermind Group and the Eye-Recommend Co-op which focuses on best business practices as well as competitive product pricing. He has presented at conferences in Spain and the Bahamas as one of the first test sites in Canada for new diagnostic equipment.
Since taking over a clinic in Port Alberni 12 years ago, he and his team have done an award-winning remodeling of the building, grown the number of diagnostic rooms from 1 to 4, the exam lanes from 2 to 4, the staff from 9 to 12 and developed a collection of frames specifically for the west coast!
He invests heavily in new diagnostic technology and training to make sure everyone gets maximum benefit from their visit to Valley Vision. Dr. Golemba has also turned his focus to becoming a vision therapy clinic, and a practice that addresses low vision problems and dry-eye issues. This has attracted clients from all over Vancouver Island with some coming from elsewhere in western Canada.
He derives a huge amount of satisfaction from helping someone who has been told they can’t be helped. He reminds one of a renaissance man. He is an accomplished businessman, speaker, an avid surfer, snowboarder, cyclist, runner, kayaker, soccer coach and piano player. His quest for better vision extends beyond the personal level into the community and his team approach to running a business is inspiring all of us in Port Alberni.
