The Optometry Professional

I have been in optics for over 20 years. I became an optometrist because I wanted to help people. Like most clinicians, I was good at the technical side, the tests, the diagnostics, the prescriptions. What I was less prepared for was everything that sits beneath the surface of a profession. The identity questions. The pressure to perform. The invisible weight of always being the one with the answers. The particular kind of exhaustion that comes not from working hard, but from

Behind every thriving optical business, there’s a person who once didn’t know where to start. I’ve been that person. I bought a struggling practice, rebuilt it from the ground up, and transformed it into a seven-figure business - not through luck, but through learning, failing, and finding the right mentors at the right time. The optical world is full of brilliant clinicians. But what I see missing, time and again, is business confidence. We’re taught how to test eyes -

Before you’re an optician, you’re a person. Before the qualifications, the clinics, the patient lists, the targets, there’s you. Somewhere along the way, many professionals forget that. We spend years training to care for other people’s vision, and in doing so, we lose sight of our own. In the optical world, success often looks like ticking boxes: exams, accreditations, clinical mastery, patient satisfaction, business growth. But when you strip it all back, who are