For Destynee Turner, becoming an optician was driven by a desire to help people experience better vision. Building her own business, however, required a different set of skills. As she expanded The Optical Experience, her boutique optical business in West Palm Beach, Florida, she encountered business challenges that her opticianry education had not prepared her to address.

Turner found an opportunity to develop those skills through Verizon Small Business Digital Ready, a free program offering more than 60 courses, along with mentoring, networking opportunities, and access to grants. The program introduced her to practical strategies for managing and growing a small business, including ways to improve customer retention.

One of her biggest realizations was that she needed to spend less time simply working inside the business and more time developing it strategically. Applying lessons from the program helped contribute to an approximately 20% increase in revenue. She also expanded her understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it could be incorporated into everyday business activities.

Turner’s experience demonstrates how practical digital and AI knowledge can help entrepreneurs reduce administrative work, maintain stronger customer relationships, and identify new opportunities for growth. Small-business owners can explore Verizon’s free AI courses and resources, as well as its 12-week Verizon Small Business AI Accelerator, to learn how AI can be applied to their own operations.

Turner’s focus on personalized service was a major reason she decided to establish her own business. After working in large optical retail environments, she felt the pace of those businesses often limited the amount of individual attention she could provide to customers.

In 2018, she launched a mobile eyewear service that allowed her to meet customers in their homes and bring the necessary equipment with her. Four years later, she opened The Optical Experience, creating a boutique model centered on individualized care.

Turner selects frames in advance according to each customer's preferences, while eye examinations are performed on-site through telehealth with a licensed optometrist. The combination of mobility, personalized frame selection, and on-site services has given her business a distinct operating model within the optical market.

Creating that business model also encouraged Turner to experiment with technologies that were new to her, including AI.

Inventory management is one area where she has found an immediate application. When new frames arrive, Turner photographs their SKU numbers and uses AI to quickly create an inventory spreadsheet. A process that previously consumed valuable time can now be completed within seconds, allowing her to devote more attention to customers.

Turner says the Verizon courses helped make her more comfortable experimenting with AI because the training focused on practical, hands-on applications. As a Verizon Business customer, she also uses the company's business internet and phone services.

She has applied automation to customer follow-ups as well. Rather than maintaining annual examination reminders manually in spreadsheets, Turner uses an AI-powered platform to automate the process. The change saves approximately three hours each month while helping encourage existing customers to return, contributing to additional revenue.

The Verizon program has also influenced how Turner manages the financial side of her business.

At an in-person event, she learned a budgeting framework that changed how she approached business finances. Although she had previously used accounting software to record expenses, she did not have a clear system for determining how profits should be allocated among operating costs, inventory, and her own compensation.

The training helped her organize expenses and apply general budgeting principles, including the guideline of allocating approximately 20% to 30% of profits toward pay. Turner subsequently developed a budget tailored to her business and discovered that she was spending money on networking activities that were not producing meaningful business results. She now concentrates those investments on opportunities more directly connected to growth.

Planning around seasonal fluctuations also became an important part of her strategy. The slower summer months had initially caught her by surprise, but the training encouraged her to view those periods as something she could anticipate and plan for.

Turner now uses summer promotions to generate additional business while also treating the quieter period as an opportunity to spend time with her family and recharge.

Turner is currently pursuing a doctorate in optometry, with approximately five years of education still ahead. She intends to continue operating The Optical Experience while completing her studies and eventually hopes to establish a second location in her community.

The business knowledge and digital skills she gained through Verizon have helped her develop a more structured approach to that long-term ambition. Her experience illustrates how targeted training in areas such as budgeting, customer retention, automation, and AI can provide small-business owners with practical tools for turning ideas into sustainable growth.

At Qualcomm, we strongly believe that assembling a diverse range of talent is crucial for unlocking creativity, fostering innovation, and driving groundbreaking technologies. In order to contribute to the growth of the innovation economy, we are actively partnering with organizations like VentureWell to establish a pipeline of inventors and patent holders from diverse backgrounds.
 
VentureWell plays a vital role in nurturing the entrepreneurial skills and imaginative thinking of university students who possess a strong passion for addressing the world's most significant challenges. In 2022, we took great pride in continuing our financial support of the VentureWell E-Team program, which empowers diverse student teams across the nation to transition their innovative ideas from the laboratory to the marketplace.
 
This program, consisting of three stages, provides comprehensive training on essential subjects such as business model development and validation, customer discovery, and intellectual property (IP). Students acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to successfully launch and scale their ventures, benefiting from the expertise of mentors, including Qualcomm employees, as well as influential figures in social impact entrepreneurship and technology innovation. Through our collaboration with the E-Team program, VentureWell successfully trained 190 early-stage innovators from various backgrounds across the United States.
 
Furthermore, in 2022, we joined forces to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts by introducing the Innovator Stipend Program. This program aims to remove financial barriers that might hinder students from actively participating in the innovation ecosystem. A total of 19 individuals from underrepresented groups were granted stipends, enabling them to further develop their innovations or secure patents for their products while pursuing full-time education. Additionally, each awardee was paired with carefully selected Qualcomm mentors who provided valuable guidance in areas such as IP and patenting, marketing, business model validation, and more.