“Any role that I go to, I want to try and better myself”

 I’m a 1980 baby, and we used to do work experience placements in year 10.

I lived in Birmingham, so I would get the bus into town, and there is a massive Specsavers on New Street, opposite what was a House of Fraser. I had an interest in science, and wanted to explore what other options were available within science, rather than just medicine.

That Specsavers agreed to take me on for a work experience placement.

I went there initially for one week. I was going to do another week somewhere else, but I loved it so much I ended up staying for the full two weeks. This was 1994, and at that point, High Street optometrists were still quite new. The optometrists there were really passionate about it. They explained that there was a commercial side to it and as well the clinical side, so it had a good balance, and that for those with a commercial mindset, it would tick lots of boxes.

They were right – it really did tick all the boxes for me, and my personality. Optometry is a healthcare profession, but there’s the fun side to it as well, which is the retail side, and I really enjoy that. I’ve never looked back.

At that time, there were only seven universities that did optometry.

I really wanted to go to Cardiff. I was amazed about how beautiful it was, with massive white buildings and green fields. But their offer was quite high, and the cautiousness in me meant I chose Bradford.

I’m quite a homebody, so I wanted to be as close to home as possible, but obviously not to the detriment of my education. Bradford had a quite practical degree course, and that’s my skillset. I learn a lot more by doing things, rather than sitting in a lecture room.

I was so glad that I did go to Bradford. Within the first few weeks, we were doing retinoscopy on dummy eyes, and within the first semester, we had had a clinic-based assessment. It resonated with my learning style, and really enhanced my enjoyment of the degree.

I was successful in applying for the summer school place with Vision Express, which I did at the Trafford Centre in Manchester.

I stayed on during my final year of university, to do Saturdays and Sundays, and then I ended up getting a pre-reg placement with Vision Express joint venture practices in Royal Leamington Spa and Sutton Coldfield. I lived near enough that I was able to stay at home, allowing for home comforts during that very difficult pre-reg year, where I was learning to work full-time but also study.

The pre-reg programme was very different to how it is now.

In the old style professional qualifying exams, there was a set of exams in April and set of exams in June. There was no continuous checking in with a supervisor, and it was known to be extremely difficult to pass. It had about a 30% pass rate. I was fortunate enough to pass all 10 aspects first time round, so I didn’t have to go through the trauma of doing it again.

I really enjoyed my pre-reg, but I was very focused on how it was going to be the hardest academic year of my life. I was prepared to really roll my sleeves up and get stuck in. I knew I could not leave any stone unturned in terms of my knowledge. 

I knew I could not leave any stone unturned in terms of my knowledge

After qualifying in August 2002, I stayed with Vision Express, going back up to Manchester and staying there for 18 months.  

I didn’t want to have a residency in a single practice, because I found that, from my limited experience working with newly qualified optometrists, that they would be quickly out of their comfort zone if they were put into a setting that they weren’t familiar with. I wanted to throw myself in the deep end by becoming a mobile optometrist.  

My region was the Northwest. The furthest north was Blackpool, and the furthest south was Hanley, in Stoke-on-Trent. Typically, I was three days a week in Chester, and then sometimes at the Trafford Centre. It was great, because I’d have a late or a midday start, so I’d miss the morning and evening traffic, and I could go to the gym in the morning. That buzz is great when you’re newly qualified: multiple testing rooms, many clinicians, 20 or 30 members of staff at any one point. I really enjoyed the diversity. 

Sometimes, I’d be working in Birkenhead, in a less affluent practice.

There was a lot of pathology there, and an older population. I’m really pleased that I made that decision to become a mobile optometrist, because it gave me a good exposure to different working environments. The Trafford Centre practice was brand new, with all the latest equipment, a really slick, optical lab-style practice, and premium frame ranges. Then I’d go somewhere like Birkenhead, which was, because of lower affluency of the patients, more pathology and not dealing with such high-end ranges.

It added a lot of strings to my bow, in terms of being able to adapt my communication style with people of different backgrounds, but also respecting that, regardless of where you are, it’s important that you have that same conversation with everyone in terms of offering them the right lifestyle solution.

Any role that I go to, I want to try and better myself, either clinically or leadership-wise. It is really important for me. While I was young, before marriage and kids, I was able to really focus on my career path.

I was joined Optical Express in 2004 and was there for 18 months or so.

My practice was very quiet. I was only seeing four or five patients a day, and I got bored after a while. Also, I was only covering resident laser optometrists if they were on holiday, so it might have only been once or twice a month, if that. 

During that period, I still had contacts at Vision Express, and I was speaking to them about becoming a franchisee. We were looking at Stratford-upon-Avon, and I was approved as a future partner franchisee, but I was going to have to wait for a while. 

I thought I had the skillset to be a good manager, but you don’t know until you try. With my future aspirations of owning a practice, there were not many places that had such a strong support network in terms of training for management.  

I joined Boots Opticians for a year as a practice manager, at the Fort Shopping Park, five minutes from home. I could leave at 10 to nine, and be home for 5.45pm, and come home for lunch. It was the first time ever that I was able to do that.  

I had an amazing year. I was in the consulting room five days a week, and having a good team behind you, who buy into your values, makes a massive difference. 

I left Boots Opticians in December 2006, and opened my first Vision Express franchise, which was in Stratford-Upon-Avon. 

That was a completely new business. I’d got married in the summer of that year as well, in July 2006. My wife used to work for British Airways, and she wanted a career change. She wanted to go down the teaching route, so she did a conversion course to become a college lecturer. We’d got married, she was studying, and I was into the mayhem of a new practice. We’d really thrown ourselves into the deep end, when I look back. 

I was 26 at the time and I hadn’t wanted to own the practice on my own, and luckily Vision Express was able to pair me up with someone who had been looking for a new business opportunity. He lived in Stratford, and we met, hit it off, and ended up owning the franchise together.  

Then, the opportunity came to have another Vision Express practice, in Hereford. 

We took that on in July 2007, and then a few years later we took on a third Vision Express practice, in Barnstaple, Devon, which is obviously very far away.  

At that point, Vision Express was moving away from the franchise model. The caveat for us in getting the third practice was that we would have to enter into new terms with them, as a joint venture partnership. 

We had the three practices from 2010 to 2014.  

Stratford was really tough. It is probably one of the practices I’ve most enjoyed being in, because we had opened it from scratch, and we had the team, the patients – everything we had built ourselves. I was able to spend a lot of time with patients, building those relationships. For me, that is the key differentiator of the experience that we can offer as clinicians.  

The Stratford practice was really patient-focused. It’s a very affluent town. I could end up spending an hour or an hour and a half with a patient, because the diary allowed me to. I’d go out and grab something from Mark & Spencer for lunch, and end up bumping into patients and having conversations. We had a coffee machine, televisions – it was very ahead of the times, as far as multiples are concerned, in the experience that we were offering. 

An opportunity came where someone was interested in purchasing Stratford from us, and we thought we’d take the opportunity.  

At the same time, Vision Express had bought some practices from Rayners. In Hereford, there were two Rayners practices, so we were going to do a practice merger with them. All of a sudden, we had acquired this database from two practices, and we didn't have the clinic capacity. Selling Stratford allowed me to go into the Hereford practice full-time, and allowed us as a business to serve the demand of two practices merging into the one Vision Express practice. 

I live in Birmingham, so it was a 150-mile round trip to commute. 

Hereford, as lovely as it is, is half motorway and half country roads, and typically you end up getting stuck behind a tractor. The journey could, on a perfect day, be an hour and 20 minutes, but it could be anything up to two and a half hours. Doing that every day, being in clinic, and having the pressures of being a business owner, eventually took its toll, and I started to lose my way a bit.  

Once, I fell asleep at the wheel, on a roundabout, whilst driving to Hereford. That was the moment that I thought, ‘this is not healthy for me. I’ve been blessed with four children, and I’ve got a responsibility to my wife and to them. Some things are much more important than career and money.’ There was an opportunity to sell Barnstaple in 2016, so we took that and consolidated from three practices down to one.  

I also felt like I had, to a certain extent, fallen out of love with optometry. 

I was thinking about a career change. My wife had got fed up with teaching, and decided that she wanted to go down a children’s day nursery franchise route. Like with anything new, it was quite exciting, and I thought that maybe I could locum for a while and then join her. 

Then, in 2018, I saw an article that talked about Hakim Group winning The Sunday Times best company to work for award. 

In the picture, there was my manager from when I was doing my summer school placement at Vision Express, Stephen Potter. It was Easter Sunday, and I said to my wife, ‘what do you think?’ She said, ‘well, there’s no harm.’ 

A quick Google of Imran’s [Imran Hakim, Hakim Group’s CEO) CV speaks for itself. It is inspirational. Because Stephen, now a senior practice buddy at Hakim Group, someone I knew and respected, and who had really moulded my personal leadership style, was there, I filled in the application to register interest in being a joint venture partner.  

Within half an hour I had a phone call . I was really taken aback. A couple weeks later, I went up to Hakim Group’s HQ in Darwen, met Imran and had a chat. I left that meeting, thinking: ‘I’m missing something. It’s a really simplified business and relationship. It can’t be that simple.’ 

I had my first Hakim Group practice, Pinder & Moore Opticians, in Dudley, by November 2019. 

Pinder & Moore Opticians had joined Hakim Group in March of that year, part of an exit plan for one of the partners. The optometrist partner was retiring, and the dispensing optician (DO) partner wanted to stay on. It was great for me. I wanted to be able to see my kids’ sports days and nativity plays.  

I joined Hakim officially on 1 November, and there was an annual retreat at the end of the month.

It was only a few weeks into my tenure with them, and I was totally blown away by everything. It is very different to any the conferences I’d been to before. There was no business talk at all – it was all about yourself and strategies to help you become a better person, and how if you do that at home, it will naturally transfer into your professional life. 

Pinder & Moore Opticians was a five-day, Monday to Friday practice, with no Saturday opening.  

I had a great time there, but I started getting itchy feet quite soon, in terms of what we could do next. The opportunity came to join Davis Optometrists, which I did in January 2022. Going from one to six practices was a great challenge.  

I stayed with Pinder & Moore until April of 2024, and then I sold my shares. Mark, who was the DO partner, ended up selling his shares as well. 

At the same time, there was conversation about another group of independent practices joining Hakim Group, not far from the Davis practices. That group was DW Roberts, based around Milton Keynes. They joined the Hakim Group family in August 2024, and then Lynn and I, who are the partners in Davis, joined them in the September. 

I had previously felt I would be able to do more business development work if I increased my portfolio of practices. Now, I’m a partner in 10 practices. 

I’m enjoying the leadership side of the role now, more than the optometry side of it. 

Because it’s quite an established business, it’s stable, and we’re all rowing in the same direction. We’ve recently invested in IPL equipment for dry eye, and equipment to treat dry macular degeneration. Alongside that, I’m learning as well, to make sure I am up to speed with everything. 

We’re all rowing in the same direction

I’m also part of an advisory board for Hakim Group. 

My main tasks are around professional services – university visits, helping set up the pre-reg programme, helping with CPD days, and presenting to partners at Hakim Group roadshows.  

I’ve definitely transformed from a manager to a leader during my time at Hakim. 

It’s about empowering people, and watching people grow. You can get strong buy-in from your team, if you emphasise strong leadership and the values that you have.  

For me, those values are humility, an optimistic attitude, transparency, honesty, and gratitude. Lynn, my work wife as I call her, shares the same values, and I didn’t want to go into another group without her. Because we’re both coming new into DW Roberts, there is a lot of work that needs to be done. I think it’s going to take us three years to get the five practices to where we’d like them to be. 

I am really grateful for my partnership with Chris, my partner at Vision Express.  

He was 10 years older than me, and he was from a business consultancy background. In terms of customer service, I’ve learned a lot from him. Also, the time I had at Vision Express – all these things have led me to where I am today, and I’m grateful for all of it.