Passion and Patience


When I was planning my first practice in 2004 I was clueless. But what saved me was the fact I was very aware of the fact of how little I knew about business and our industry. And so I set about rectifying that. I read trade journals and every optical magazine I could find. There wasn’t much of anything online back then. I travelled around the country researching possible locations and to see what others were doing. I wrote letters to established practices I admired and tried to arrange a coffee to pick the brains of the owners of stores like the massive 2020 Optical Store on Tottenham Court Road. It had an actual coffee shop inside, as well as a nail bar and beauticians and all sorts inside and I was curious to meet the owner. My business partner Tareq and I also nicely and respectfully tried to call by and chat with other practices that we admired like Adam Simmonds in London. Basically, we had multiple trips to London, Paris, Milan and Munich and we walked the streets till our legs ached, but our minds buzzed from the possibilities and vision that was taking shape for our first practice. We tried to take in everything, not just from optical practices we liked but from shops, hotels, cafes, restaurants, even offices. We looked at great examples of retail display, lighting, doorways, shop fronts, signage, staff appearances, interior décor, furniture. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-ng. I made mood boards and vision boards and I bought architecture and design magazines like Frame magazine and I devoured them. I dragged Tareq along to our first trade show, Silmo in Paris in 2004 before we had even secured a location for the practice. We both were inspired and learned so much but saw how little we knew so that just a few months later we travelled to trade fairs in Munich and Milan. We weren’t so dumb to think we got it the first time around.

In an episode of my podcast The Optical Entrepreneur (here’s a link if you haven’t heard it), I had an insightful interview with Jason Kirk of Kirk and Kirk. Jason was one of the big influences for us in the early years and he was extremely passionate and also very patient with us. And those are two values that I have tried to emulate over the last two decades. I have been passionate about eyewear and my practice’s philosophy and approach to eyewear for nearly 20 years. I did, and continue to do, the things to keep that passion alive in myself and to keep that passion burning in every single team member. It doesn’t just happen. We keep working at it. Relentlessly. In OSA, if you’re paying attention, you could list a couple of dozen things we do to create passion in our practice. In fact, next week I’ll send you a list. Like I said it doesn’t just happen. You have to work at it.

Let’s talk about patience. My first month in practice, we did £7,000 in sales. In the first year we did a measly £98,000. It would have been easy to panic and go down the traditional route of mainstream brands at lower price points and just focus on being a run of the mill opticians to get bodies through the door. Instead, I was patient. I kept working at it. And I’ve kept being patient and kept working at it for nearly 20 years. I may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but I am persistent. Dan Kennedy would call it stick-to-it-ive-ness. Most people don’t stick to it for long enough. They try in for a few months and then bail. They give up on their dreams for their practice and life or they put them off till ‘when the time is better’ aka ‘never’ or worse, they expect it to just happen by itself.