WRITER Nathan Tsalkos

When he left school, Nathan Tsalkos had a plan to study medicine. Instead, optometry came his way and, within 18 months of graduation, came practice ownership.

To be honest, my journey into optometry wasn’t exactly conventional. Most people follow the same path – graduate, work for someone else for years, then maybe think about buying a practice when they’re in their 40s. I sort of did the opposite and bought Eyecare Plus Heidelberg while I was still a grad.

The whole optometry thing started because my mum kept asking about having a backup plan to get into Med School. I was dead set on medicine and kept saying “I don’t need a backup, I’m going to keep going until I get in”. We’d have these conversations where she’d insist I should apply for something else, and eventually I thought, okay, I’ll put in an application for optometry. When the first year came around and I didn’t get an offer for medicine, the optometry offer came through. At that point I thought, well, maybe this is meant to be. On my first day at Melbourne Uni, I went to my first lecture, and I’ve loved it ever since.

After graduating at the end of 2022, I had a pretty good gig in private practice in metro Melbourne – they’re hard to come by, so I was fortunate. Then less than a year in, everything changed because of a random conversation at the dentist. I’d just gone for a check and clean, and my dentist said, “Oh, you’re an optometrist. You should buy my optometrist’s practice. He’s about to retire.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” I took the phone number, had a conversation, and it went from there.

MOVING INTO THE 21ST CENTURY

The practice was over 40 years old on the inside and hadn’t been touched. When I walked in on my first day, the shelves were only about half full – even though there was plenty of stock in the drawers. It just wasn’t well kept.

Everyone wants to be an optometrist and focus on the clinical stuff, but you need to understand that you’re still partially retail at the end of the day. Those little things that subconsciously influence people’s decisions on where to shop – they affect your practice whether you like it or not.

So, I renovated the whole thing and brought it into the 21st century. We’ve been able to grow revenue by about 20% just because of that renovation. Even existing patients have been more willing to get new glasses and spend money because it’s like an exciting new toy. We’ve got new frame ranges, and the whole place just looks more professional now.

What’s interesting is we haven’t really done any proper marketing yet. The growth we’ve seen has been purely from the renovation and word of mouth that’s just started in recent months. So, there’s still huge potential there.

DISCOVERING THE UNKNOWN

The biggest learning curve for me has been the backend financial side – dealing with tax, working out how to pay super, all that stuff nobody explains to you. You could have conversations with your accountant, but you’re going to rack up a pretty hefty accounting bill. So, you’ve got to research it yourself and work it out. To an extent, you hope you’re doing the right thing; but it is tough.

Having the Eyecare Plus network has been super helpful. You have someone from head office come in and critique your practice, and they give you benchmarks for things like average discount percentage and second pairs.

Managing people was another learning curve. When I started, it was just me doing everything – the consulting, dispensing, admin, phone calls. If the phone rang during an appointment, it was “excuse me one second, I need to grab that”. It was unprofessional, and I had to get out of that as quickly as I could. Now I have a qualified dispenser, and it makes a huge difference.

JUMP IN HEADFIRST

My biggest fear has always been not achieving my potential. When the opportunity came to buy this practice, I was worried that if I said no, I might regret it in 20 or 30 years. Now that I have it, my goal is to make it quite successful, but I don’t know what happens after that. At the end of the day, having one successful practice is fulfilling for me.

Looking back, I wouldn’t necessarily change anything. I don’t think I’ve done everything perfectly, but I gave it my best shot. Maybe I could have been more proactive getting the refurb done sooner, but there’s nothing wrong with taking your time and understanding how things work before you start changing everything.

Everyone who’s not a practice owner thinks practice owners must know so much, but everybody starts with no idea – I’m no different. For anyone thinking about doing something similar – you don’t need decades of experience first. You need support from those close to you, willingness to sacrifice salary (initially), and you need to understand that this is both clinical work and business. The reality is you learn along the way, and that’s okay. Just have a go and jump in headfirst.

Nathan Tsalkos graduated from The University of Melbourne in 2022. He is the practice owner of Eyecare Plus Optometrists Heidelberg in Victoria.