Ashley Newman – Employee Spotlight

[00:00:00.000] – Sam Ridgeway
Hello, everyone. This is Sam Ridgeway, owner of Viking Alternative Medicine. And to continue with our employee Spotlight segment, we now have Ashley Newman. So, Ashley, how are you today?

[00:00:11.120] – Ashley Newman
I’m wonderful. How are you?

[00:00:12.660] – Sam Ridgeway
I’m doing exceptionally well. Thank you. And the first question I like to start off with is tell everyone what your role at Viking is.

[00:00:19.840] – Ashley Newman
So I am the medical practice manager here at the clinic that is located in Chesterfield, Missouri.

[00:00:26.080] – Sam Ridgeway
And what is it that you do?

[00:00:29.460] – Ashley Newman
Well, basically, I have a receptionist who works here with me, and we work with all of the local patients that are located here in Missouri. They come get therapeutic phlebotomy with me. We do their lab work. And basically I just help make sure that everything runs smoothly here and we can help patient satisfaction stay exceptional. Basically.

[00:00:52.580] – Sam Ridgeway
Excellent. And where do you live? Let’s dig a little bit into your life and let people know where you live now again, not specifically because they’re weirdos.

[00:01:02.530] – Ashley Newman
Area. So I live in Missouri. I’ve been born and raised here and I just my whole family is here. I love it here.

[00:01:10.450] – Sam Ridgeway
Okay. And if I were to walk into your house in Missouri.

[00:01:13.800] – Ashley Newman
What is it I would find inside?

[00:01:17.340]
Chaos. I have two mini Aussie’s at home and I have a loving husband at home. And I also have a four month old son named Charlie.

[00:01:28.440] – Sam Ridgeway
And it’s recent, right?

[00:01:30.340] – Ashley Newman
It’s very recent. I’m just not coming back from maternity leave. I’m still getting my musty legs.

[00:01:38.840] – Sam Ridgeway
Alright. So going following with the whole job thing, let’s just discuss maybe some challenges that you might have with your job. And challenge doesn’t necessarily mean a bad thing. It’s just some things that are a little more difficult for you that you if you in a perfect world, you change.

[00:01:56.060] – Ashley Newman
Right. So I think the biggest thing I used to work in a hospital. So I’m used to that patient contact where it’s in person, face to face. And you’re able to have that, you know, that connection with someone. Telemedicine. It’s amazing how many people we can reach. And it’s such an amazing opportunity. But it also causes me to have some challenges just because only thing that I can do is talk to patients over the phone. So sometimes that just causes me to feel like there’s a little bit of a disconnect.

[00:02:27.050] – Ashley Newman
But that just means I’ve worked that much harder to be better at communication and make sure they know what I’m saying so that we can have that relationship. And the rappport that we need to make sure that everybody is on the same page.

[00:02:38.770] – Sam Ridgeway
You know, a lot of people. I would call them people, people, people, person, people or whatever. However, you want to label that in face to face. It’s like you can read body language. You can pick up on signals. And when you’re really good at doing that over the phone, you don’t get that feedback. So it’s a little bit odd. So it’s a learning process as you go along and try to hear the difference in people’s voices and so on on what you would normally see them do in person with body language, you have to put all that stuff together so that that is a challenge.

[00:03:07.850] – Sam Ridgeway
But on the other side of that, now, let’s talk about maybe something that you love about your job. What’s the good part?

[00:03:14.140] – Ashley Newman
Well, I think some of the best parts are the people that I work with, both coworkers and patients. Everybody here, the minute I started made me feel so welcome and made me feel so a part of a family, really. And I love that because I came from corporate world where that’s not really the feeling that you get. And so coming here, I just kind of felt like everybody works so well together. It’s not just one person runs this part. You run this part, it’s intertwined. So everybody’s working together to solve a problem, and you’re not just by yourself.

[00:03:49.210] – Ashley Newman
You’re with everybody. It’s everybody’s problem. It’s not just yours. And so you never feel like you’re by yourself. There’s always somebody there to help you when you need it. And for the people that do live in Missouri that I do get to interact with, that do come in. I love being able to see those patients face to face and put a face to the name and say, hey, it’s so good to see you again. And I do have patients that come back and see me, you know, for people at work and stuff.

[00:04:12.700] – Ashley Newman
So I love being able to interact in the kind of connection that I have with the Viking family.

[00:04:18.770] – Sam Ridgeway
Basically, that’s part of the problem in corporate America. I think a lot of people would agree. You become a number because there’s a bottom line that they have to hit their stockholders. They have to be beholden to. So they just whack people indiscriminately. And really, there’s this whole us and them mentality, from the employees to management management treats employees like they’re just a number. Employees treat management like they do because there’s no loyalty to them and they know they can be gone the next day. In a smaller business where you have 25 employees at Viking, in a smaller business, we can create that environment where it’s family, where we all know where we do things for each other.

[00:04:57.240] – Sam Ridgeway
And I think the reason I say that is because it’s a recurring thing with people. They feel that Viking is a family environment, and it has nothing to do with me. It’s how we all interact together. We all take care of everyone. It’s not a me first sort of thing. It’s what’s in the best interest of your organization.

[00:05:10.860] – Ashley Newman
Yeah.

[00:05:11.530] – Sam Ridgeway
So given that, let’s go with one last question for everyone, which would be talk about one thing about you that people just may not know about.

[00:05:22.440] – Ashley Newman
Well, as I kind of said earlier. I did just have my son four months ago, and I kind of came back, and I said, I want to know what my levels are. So I went ahead and I got all of my hormones ran and kind of found out that my hormones are not optimal. They’re not where they should be. So I actually just started using our tier two program, so I just started. This is my first week on it, and hopefully I’ll continue to see improvement, maybe even keep all of you updated on how my progress goes.

[00:05:51.920] – Sam Ridgeway
You know, that would be an excellent video if we could. You just started. So let’s give you a good run of about a couple of months on it, and then let’s come back and maybe do another video saying, here’s, Ashley. Here’s the other video. She just got on it. And here’s how she’s doing now, if you’re not opposed to that, I think that’d be a great idea.

[00:06:09.620] – Ashley Newman
Not at all. I’d love to do it.

[00:06:11.790] – Sam Ridgeway
All right. Well, thank you so much, Ashley. I appreciate the job you do for Viking, you do an amazing job of running this office. People don’t know I’m in the office. Maybe once, twice a week. And other than that, Ashley is running the entire thing. It does an incredible job. One of the things I love about this is I don’t have to worry about this office. I know it’s going to be run correctly, and I know everything’s going to be taken care of. So thank you, Ashley.

[00:06:34.730] – Sam Ridgeway
And that’s employee spotlight. And next week, we’ll have another one for you. All right? Alright. Bye, guys.