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Honest conversations with the engineering leaders, CTOs, founders, and engineers building real software with real teams. No fluff, no hype — just the messy, human side of getting great products out the door.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (00:06)
Hello and welcome to this podcast of built by humans where we talk about the human side of things. We talk about what it takes to build products, but not from the technical tools point of view. There's plenty of people that do that. We talk about people, communications, culture, running teams that are not collocated, be it remote overseas or remote and sometimes even the same cities. And just sort of what it takes to
build a great product. Today we have a guest, Brianna, I'm gonna turn it over to you, introduce yourself and we'll go from there.
Brianna Rhue (00:40)
Thank you for having me, Zhenya I'm excited to really get into the human component of technology and what we've built. So I am an optometrist by trade and eye doctor. see patients and help them with their vision, lot into kids' vision and what we can do there. And then turned tech entrepreneur, founder, as we saw a need in our industry and built it. And so now I wear those two hats and also a boy mom of
two little boys and a wife and everything in between.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (01:12)
That keeps you busy. So to be honest, you know, when I usually do this, I never reference previous conversation. I talked to everybody before we do a podcast, right? So I want to meet them. I want to know what things are, but I absolutely never reference the prior conversation. I would go in pretending this is the first time we're talking. Well, in this case, I can't do that because our first conversation was so engaging, so interesting and so different.
And what I find unique, you are optometrist by trade, by training, and turned tech, but you're also running both practices. So you see this from both sides. You could be a customer of your own tech business. mean that's what it is. You actually are. My background is similar. So I run a company, Mirages. We are a team augmentation company. Our business is to help.
Brianna Rhue (01:54)
actually am. The one thing I can't love is
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (02:03)
our clients hire amazing engineering talent in Latin America and Europe. But a bit of a background, I spent 30 years being a tech leader, right? Being an engineer, being a CTO, being a founder of a startup, multiple startups. So I've seen it from both sides of the table. And even now that I run this company full time, I actually ran it for a while. I was doing both, right? I
I was somebody that was using the services of similar businesses, not on my own because of conflict of interest, but similar businesses and then running my business. Well, now, know, I'm 100 % focused for the past 11 years, 100 % focused on running this business, but I still do it from the same point of view. So one interesting thing that you touched on when we were talking is the
if you will, of U.S.
employees and you see this I'm sure in your own practice and you definitely see this again I'm referring to what we talked about before and your clients right you call in you're trying to deal with the client and what you're what you're seeing so let's jump into that let's talk about what are you seeing what's your experience why is it difficult for people to run our businesses
Brianna Rhue (03:10)
Yeah, I think when, when we were talking, I was just coming off the Inc 5000 conference, which is our company has made the Inc 5000. It's a business magazine three years in a row. And when I had just gotten back to that, they were talking a lot about four words kept coming up. One was obviously AI and we can. I don't want this to be an AI podcast because I still think what they were talking about is we're just so many years away from that. This is such a foundation.
that's being laid and it's a buzzword and it's overkill and it just doesn't work guys like we think it's working. It's right now it's if then statements, you have large language models that are just that. Then there was this agentic AI, which in a Tesla, right? You want it to know not to drive off the cliff. We're not there yet. And I've been, it's funny, cause all these movies, it's like, Xenia, what movie are we living in right now? It's like,
Ready Player One meets Wally meets her meets all these things, right? Cause this, this has been written before. Then you have the word upskilling, which was just a fancy word for training, which no one's doing anymore. And you had a big part was culture. And what I've done and I've learned this, you know, the hard knocks. have so many side hustle MBAs over here. Pick one.
on all the mistakes that I've made, but it comes down to pouring into yourself first as the leader and setting that path, setting that floor, setting that focus. So then everybody else knows where to row. And we're not taking enough time to do that because you're having to move so much faster on lesser and lesser resources, but there's no focus. So I think it's just a matter of
you know, 2020, there was a focus and you saw your numbers go up and it wasn't really that hard. And now you have to look at all these finite things in between all of the other stuff that you're doing. And we're all caught in that more and more and more for less.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (05:13)
Absolutely. So I definitely don't want to take this conversation AI, but I do want to bring one interesting thing. And I had a conversation, I have a great friend, Don Cooper, who is actually a mentor of mine. And I learned a lot from him and our conversations. And we had this chat and he said it, think, the best. People are afraid that their job will be replaced by AI. We're years and years away from that.
Brianna Rhue (05:18)
No, I don't either.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (05:40)
What people should be afraid is their job will be replaced or they will be replaced by somebody who knows how to use AI to help them get the job done faster and better. And this is where we're talking about training and upscale, want to, whatever fancy word you want to use today. But what I find, people just don't care. They more and more, they don't care. They show up, they do the minimum required and they go home.
Brianna Rhue (05:51)
Yeah.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (06:06)
I see this with our clients. I see this with my company. I see this. I just see this. And I think we're losing that.
Brianna Rhue (06:12)
is
it's an accountability phase. I think for so many years, you didn't have to hold anybody accountable because the numbers were just there. And now more than ever, it's, I have a sticky note on my desk right now if you're looking at this, it says you witness consistency only when you are consistent yourself. And so if you have a million focuses going on, no one around you can be focused either.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (06:15)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Brianna Rhue (06:36)
You're going to have to figure out what, and I have a whole game for this on accountability and the people that you can have around you that make, hold, you have to hold your silent commitments accountable. And then now people see that you're accountable and now that goes into it. And so, so much of this is on yourself. And remember, there was a, there's a great saying, the smaller you are,
the more hats you get to wear. The smaller your business, the more hats you get to wear. Not have to wear, get to wear, because you're small. As you grow, and growing a private practice is way different than a tech company, right? Because small businesses, you're only as good as your last sale, right? In tech, it does scale, and you're going to go on these really high highs and really, really low lows. But so much more can be done in that
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (07:06)
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Brianna Rhue (07:28)
scaling a private, or scaling a tech company versus a private practice. So it's understanding, not getting like down this rabbit hole of LinkedIn or Instagram and these shiny objects, stay true to your core business and focus on that. Focus on what you can control. Because there's a lot you can't.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (07:46)
Yeah, yeah.
So I actually want to two there are two completely different areas, completely different questions that I want to ask. So like I'll start with one and then jump to something else. You are probably in the most unique position among everybody I've talked to. You're running two businesses. One is 100 % local, meaning everybody's in office, right? Your front desk is in office, your back office. Everybody's local. You see them. They talk.
The client is standing there, right, in their face. They have to smile, right, with all of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you're running a tech business that is remote. How do you ensure, so, you know, there is culture that you built in your local office and there's culture that you built in your remote. How do you do that? What works for you? Like, what's your experience?
Brianna Rhue (08:15)
I have to be helmet.
Mm-hmm.
So, and when I bring up the book, it's, we've done this at Dr. Contact Lens, we do run traction, right? And so it's knowing where everybody is focused and that works really well. We've kind of scaled it down a little bit. And then right there though is accountability. And so one of my coaches, I'm in Dan Martel's coaching program, which has just really opened my eyes to a lot of processes. You don't fail.
to the level, and that's an atomic habit. So you don't fail to the level of your goals, you fail to the level of your processes. So it's keeping your pulse on a lot of different things. And so one of it is what can, what metric, what one number, and he's like, you get one, and I've scaled this into like two or three for the both practices, for both things. What is one number? And you're not responsible for it as the CEO or the owner of the company. What's one number that
you would look at every day that would tell you where you are, where you were, where you are, where you're going. And when you start to measure that, you will start to see the issues and the growth and the opportunities and the problems. So managing the two cultures, when I'm at West Broward Eye Care, right, it is every patient, every time, every encounter.
That's what our motto is. And we say it over and over again. just, you will sound like a broken record when you actually start to do this, right? And you're gonna get sick of yourself saying it. But remember, in order for somebody to see it and penetrate their brain, they have to see it eight times, which means you have to say it 80.
80 times in order for someone to process it eight in order for it to stick. And then the philosophy of Dr. Contact Lens is, you know, the whole reason that we built this was to help them compete. And so what we have to go into is we have to go into these offices that don't want to change, that have developed really bad habits, really bad habits. And now I'm the bad guy to want to help them succeed.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (10:11)
To realize it, right?
Brianna Rhue (10:37)
It's really strange to live in both of these environments on both being a doctor and then now selling into these things. It's been, wrote a book on it here.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (10:47)
I'm curious,
you mentioned I am also in a coaching program called Strategic Coach, probably similar. Have you done your Kolbe profile?
Brianna Rhue (10:54)
Mm-hmm.
My what, profile?
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (10:58)
Kolbe. No? Okay. It's an interesting thing that as entrepreneurs we could do that shows our initial reflex on how we deal with things. Like whether it's, you know, do we tend to go after a lot of data before we make decision or do we, you know, how we're gonna follow through? Like it's a really, really cool thing. And it's not...
Brianna Rhue (10:59)
No.
Yeah.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (11:23)
how you act, or it's not how you're trained to act. It's how your instincts are, right? In different things, we do a different way, but this is your instinct. Like my instinct is I make decisions really quickly. I need very high level data, and then I'll make a decision. I'll go there. And if it fails, it failed. It's fine. I'm very comfortable with that. We tried it. worked. Let's try something else. Where somebody else is like, need to analyze, analyze, analyze, and then make the decision that's right.
It's very interesting because it does.
Brianna Rhue (11:50)
So I'm you
and my husband is the latter that you just said.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (11:54)
Okay. Yeah, I am, you know, take a look at it's called the KOLBE. It's a whole thing. It's really, read about it. You're gonna love it. Like seeing you, you're gonna love this. Like my quick start is 9 Like, you know, I run, I run. Yeah, it's like, don't waste my time. Just do it, do it, do it, do it. Interesting when we deal with.
Brianna Rhue (12:03)
Yeah.
Yeah, talk fast, let's walk fast,
let's get where we're going. Yeah.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (12:19)
Yeah, I have an employee and she just did what we just did one for her and she is very opposite of mine. And so we will learned that when I tell her just go try and see what happens, her brain blows up like she just doesn't function that way. And it's not it doesn't talk at all about like what's right and what's wrong. It's not there's no.
There's no you're better at this or worse. It's just this is how you function. so anyway, a bit of a sidetrack.
Brianna Rhue (12:45)
Well, you said something interesting
in there that I'd like to go into, right? So there's another quick test that you can take called positive intelligence. It's like a two or three minute test and it talks about these 10 sabotage that all of us have. And so when you rate these questions, it shows you what got you here isn't gonna get you there. So it's a book, it's a course, you can do it. That was eye-opening because I did it and then I had my hubby do it.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (13:05)
Mm-hmm.
Brianna Rhue (13:10)
and my top three were his bottom three and reverse, right? And so that's also when you're looking for business partners or team members, right? Your strengths are going to be their weaknesses. Your weaknesses are going to be their strengths. And that's what the beauty of being human is, is we all can't be doing the same thing or we're not all good at the same thing. So you as the owner, it's getting a lot off your plate. And so the other book too,
buy back your time was really become my life changing read as a busy entrepreneur. Cause everyone always asks me, how do you do all of this? Guys? I don't, I have gotten so much off my plate cause I was running on fire on fire. So I don't touch my email anymore. I don't touch my calendar anymore. I don't, I'm not even in charge of it. My shot a is my chief. We've all heard my chief sole officer.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (13:52)
Yep, same thing. So I.
You delegate.
Brianna Rhue (14:04)
she protects my soul from all that because there as a when you're running this and you're trying to grow if you're dealing with all this crap all day how can you show up and be the best it's impossible no matter what mindset you work on
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (14:05)
Right.
I think that's a huge thing to be able to delegate. It's also being able to tell people you work with how to work with you. I actually, this is people laugh at it. I have a one page, it's one page, you know, that says manual on how to work with Zhanna. Every person that I hire, every person that I work with a lot, I give it to them. And I said, this is how you work with me. Don't like little things.
Brianna Rhue (14:31)
Mmm.
I love it!
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (14:44)
If you're sending me an email and you're asking me to do something where you send me a text message and it's not done in 20 minutes, it will never get done. If you need it to get done, just remind me. That's okay, right? That's how I operate because if it didn't react to it, my follow through on the same Kolbe profile, my follow through is a two. I just don't do it. So don't be angry. Don't be surprised. Just...
Remind me. I don't take offense of it like ⁓ okay. Yeah, let me do this or better yet And this is what my people know get on a call with me and make me do it while you're sitting there because that'll actually do that
Brianna Rhue (15:20)
Yeah, yeah. Well, that also too, when you're looking at the differentiators is understand this, and this is for your marriage, it's for your friendship, it's for your team members, it's for partners, is understanding your core values. So there's another exercise you can do. It's in the Back of the Business Outside book, and he has 50 words, and your 50 words become 10.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (15:22)
So yeah, that's a huge.
Mm-hmm.
Brianna Rhue (15:44)
10 become five, five become three, and the three are your core values. So as entrepreneurs, we tend to be very risky, very risky, right? And my three core values when I say them, right, is joy, heartfelt joy. Just you can feel it and being there. And that comes from me being a big pleaser. And then risk, like throw me up as high as you can. I'm a cheerleader. Just make sure you catch me. I'll jump off cliffs. Love it.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (15:51)
Yep. Yep.
Brianna Rhue (16:11)
Right. And then personal freedom. I'm to come and go as I want. And then when you do this with your team, make sure they read theirs first before you share yours, because they're going to try to match yours, especially when you explain things like personal freedom, because those nine to five people, you're going to have the ones that are going to come and give you their all. And then you're going to have the ones that just come and collect. And I'm not going above and beyond because I'm not getting paid to do so.
And those are the expectations that you set. So then you need your core values to your office or to your thing. we always say it, but I know when you're down staff and you want to add a butt and a seat just to get there, you've got to ask really good questions. And this is where things like chat come in. Give me three questions that are going to search for this core value.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (16:37)
Absolutely.
Mm-hmm.
Brianna Rhue (16:59)
And then you can really add to your team because I'm really fortunate at West Broward Eye Care. I have team members that have been there 24, 25, 26 years. And when you ask them why they're there, it's because I let them in. I expect a lot from them on innovation, not being a gatekeeper, bringing me ideas, being part of the growth, sharing in the growth.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (17:08)
That's amazing.
Mm-hmm.
Brianna Rhue (17:23)
And same thing at Dr. Contra Lens. We've made so many mistakes there.
but it's the transparency that you need.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (17:28)
I
was running an engineering team, I VP of engineering and I was there for maybe a year, year and a half. We hired a new director and there was like three or four people that reported directly to me and one of the guys used to work for me before, so I brought him over when I joined the company. And so we hired this new director, we're sitting in the meeting and I'm saying stuff and the guys that were there for a long time are arguing with me and they get emotional and I get emotional like, eh, you know.
This new guy is just asking, so what do you think? Tell me about your experience. What do you think about this? should we do this? And he's just nodding his head. And apparently I was told later, he walked out, like after I walked out, he asked the guys and specifically the guy that worked with me before, are you not afraid he's gonna fire you because you keep arguing with him? And the guy replies, you shouldn't be afraid he's gonna fire you if you don't argue with him because if you're just gonna agree, he doesn't need you.
He needs you to tell you that he is wrong and it needs to be done. There are other ways to do it. People don't have this, right? They don't get that concept. For example, I'm an explainer. When I ask somebody, can you please do this? Or somebody comes in and says, can we do this or we should do this? And if I say no, I will spend next 10 minutes explaining why I think it's not gonna work. Because I don't want it to be no because I said so.
My kids hate it. Sometimes I go, yeah, I've got two kids and my younger one is 12 and she loves to argue. She loves to about anything. I'm gonna tell her right now is, I don't know what time it is, 9 a.m. She's gonna argue. It's not 9 a.m. It's 9.01. Like literally that's what she'll do. And every once in a while I lose it and go just because I said so.
Brianna Rhue (18:44)
You want to understand they're understanding your thought process, right? So you're very vocal in your thought process.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (19:05)
That's where she loses it because that's not on her brain. Like what I mean, because you said, you explain everything else. Why didn't you explain it now? Because I spent the last half an hour. Yeah. Anyway, I do want to ask something else, completely at a different angle. And this is about health, health offices, health care. So I used to have, I ran a startup in a health tech space. And our clients were small.
Brianna Rhue (19:13)
you needed.
Yeah.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (19:32)
I'd say small to medium-sized offices, usually one to five doctors, six doctors. And one thing that I found, and this is true today, the health medical offices, doctors' offices, are their biggest enemies in terms of process, hiring, and technology adoption. My primary care physician, who I love, she's amazing, they don't have email. Like no email, like, guys.
Brianna Rhue (19:47)
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (19:57)
What do mean? We can send it to you by fax or you can come to the office and pick it up if you need something or we can send it to you by mail.
Brianna Rhue (20:05)
That's the HIPAA compliant police that are out there. So a lot of offices have disregarded that. I bet there's ways to do it, but you bring up a really critical point here. So a dentistry school, dentistry school, medical school, right? We go to school to become great technicians. And my profession and dentistry specifically too, is there's a whole side to our business that's related to sales. In most medical offices, they're not.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (20:13)
Is there a way to do it?
Brianna Rhue (20:31)
So in optometry specifically, I get to sell what I prescribe, which means you are a consumer first in my practice before you're a patient. And when a patient hands you their health insurance card, everything behind that seems like it's going to be covered or free. And then I ask you for a credit card, and now you become customer. We don't like when patients become customers. But on that side of it, in
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (20:40)
Mm-hmm.
Brianna Rhue (20:57)
in optometry school, dental school, whatever you went to, medical school, they are, you are beaten to you to be so risk averse with patients, right? Be clear, confident, concise, first do no harm. It's in our oath. So you don't get sued. And on the business side, you have to take risk, but risk is just a series of questions.
that when you ask them of every vendor and when you put someone in there behind you as an operator, it will get done. And so I'm a big advocate that in the healthcare space, which is the biggest business in our country, our GDP, it's like crazy, the amount of healthcare. This is my soap box. Cause this is the book I wrote called the I pitch book that you want to copy. can find me on LinkedIn. Cause I talk a lot about this for physicians to get out of their own way.
And you have to wear both of those hats, your business hat, because you have to make money in order to invest. But then you have to also take pair of patients. And so we're behind this really slippery slope on running an effective, efficient business, charging appropriately for our time, which we're all told to give away for free. It's very weird.
And then we have that soft spot because we want to take the best care of you. But then a lot of people take advantage of it. So in that you are now you're not just a private practice that takes care of patients. You're a business first that takes care of patients. But I'm going to push it because I know we're on this podcast. You're a tech company now. That practices, I care or practices medicine. That's where all this is going.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (22:27)
No, of course.
Mm-hmm.
Brianna Rhue (22:36)
And so the adoption curve has got to change.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (22:39)
You actually touched on something interesting. You said, we don't want our patients to become customers. And I understand why, so I get that. I take from being a patient and a customer, I actually take the opposite view. I think every patient, from the patient point of view, not from doctor, needs to think of it as I am a customer first.
Brianna Rhue (22:49)
Yep.
Yes!
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (22:58)
because that's what broke our insurance industry. We go to a doctor's office, we don't care about the cost, we don't care about services, we don't care about what we get prescribed, we don't care about anything because the insurance will pay for it. And then we're surprised when our insurance gets raised by a couple of hundred bucks a month, an annual year to year. No, you gotta be there, right? You gotta shop around, you gotta understand that, hey, you can do this, you can do this, there are different options.
And just that's my soapbox.
Brianna Rhue (23:26)
And it's a big one because I think people forget that, right? We're all so human trying to do the best for you. But we also, if you want us to invest in you, and this is where patients, when they come into my practice, we're always adding things. And my thank you to them is like, my gosh, Dr. you have this in your practice and you've added this. Well, you've invested in me. So that allows me to invest in you.
So when you walk out with these things and you walk out with my recommendations and you come back in a year and you haven't done it, I'm sorry, man, that's on you.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (23:56)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's interesting. It seems like my video got frozen, but my voice is still coming through. love having technical difficulties. Well, Brianna, thank you so much. This is incredible. I I love this conversation as much as I loved our first one.
Brianna Rhue (24:12)
leave you with one thing too. So it's a, this is our accountability game. And I learned this at a really vulnerable point. I was four weeks postpartum with my second baby. I was walking outside. had my clinic running a million miles an hour. And then I had Dr. Contact lens in this high growth phase. And I was looking for an operations person to come help me and really scale and take a lot off my plate. And he goes, Brianna, do you, and I mean, I'm like, the baby wasn't even supposed to be here yet.
Right? So here I have made another human trying to run around with a head cut off. And he was telling me like, you're going to be out of money before you know it. You've got to fire all these people and away you go. But he said, you ever walk in in the morning and do three things you need to do that day? I was like, you think my list has three things?
Well, that sparked something. And when you actually look at the three things, it's not just a list of three things, but three things to move your business forward. And if you have that on everybody's table that day and you understand what they're working on, you can get so much further. So if we bring it back, it's about consistency. It's about getting back to your core values. Everything really is built by humans.
and bringing back that human component in everything that you do is a critical piece.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (25:27)
Can you hear me? Can you see me?
Brianna Rhue (25:28)
I did. I kind of ended the podcast for you.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (25:31)
No, it's, yeah, it's thank you so much. I will see what came out. I don't know. This has never happened to me. I love technology. just all of sudden my screen said we're having trouble accessing your camera. We stopped recording you, but we're recording everybody
Brianna Rhue (25:46)
But if we could end it here, what's one thing you're taking away from our conversation?
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (25:50)
I think the biggest thing that I'm taking away is you gotta be able to see it anytime you do anything. You gotta own it. You gotta take responsibility and you gotta drive through and understand why. Not what, but why. It's very easy to say, go do this, without understanding why I'm doing this, it's a nine to five job. I came in, they told me to do X, and Z, I went home.
Brianna Rhue (26:16)
I love that.
think it ended up pretty good.
Zhenya Rozinskiy - Mirigos (26:18)
Yeah, I think it's awesome. Thank you.