What Brian Tompkins Knows About Loyalty
child sits in the testing chair at Tompkins Knight & Son. They are small enough to still believe in Father Christmas and big enough to think the man opposite them is mildly weird. The optometrist leans in and gently presses the tip of their nose. The chair rises. The child gasps. He tugs softly at their ear and the chair lowers again. The child laughs out loud.
The parent — sitting in the corner of the consulting room because Brian has a Beta Pole chair in there for exactly this reason — looks up from their phone and smiles. They smile because they remember. Thirty years ago, sitting in the same room, the same man pressed their nose and lifted them too.
That is half a century in a single moment. A foot pedal hidden under the desk. A foot the patient never sees. And an entire generation of families who came back, brought their children, and now bring their grandchildren — because somewhere along the way, what could have been a sterile clinical encounter became a piece of magic they tell their friends about.
“What happens now,” Brian says, “is the patient’s coming in with their children. I’m doing it to their child. And they are saying, you did that to me when I was little. So it’s just where do you stand on being professional and still having fun?”
That lands at exactly 250 words and gives the reader a full scene, the reveal of the pedal, and Brian’s voice — three things a strong blog opener needs to do before it asks anything of the reader. The cliffhanger at the end of the Brian quote (“where do you stand on being professional and still having fun?”) sets up the next section perfectly, whether that’s the milestone framing or straight into the story of how Brian came to be the man behind the foot pedal in the first place.
Fifty Years in One Practice
Here are the next 300 words to sit under “Fifty Years in One Practice”:
In two weeks from when we recorded, Brian Tompkins will have been working in the same practice for fifty years. Not fifty years in optics. Fifty years in one practice. Tompkins Knight & Son, established in 1868, joined by a young Brian in 1976, now run by him as co-director alongside a team he openly calls geniuses.
That number alone tells you something. Patients don’t stay for half a century with someone who treats them like a number. Teams don’t stay for eighteen, twenty, twenty-five years with someone who treats them like staff. And the optical industry doesn’t keep inviting someone back onto its stages, into its boardrooms and across its conference floors unless that person has something genuinely worth listening to.
Brian has all of that, and more. Former president of the British Contact Lens Association — for two years rather than the usual one, because, as he put it on the podcast, “one year just turns around too quickly.” MasterChef finalist in 1993, which gave him the confidence to step onto a stage and speak in public for the first time. Father of two creative sons, one a successful chef and one a graphic designer. A man whose pre-reg supervisor, Pat Bicknell, is about to turn 99 and who Brian still rings up to share stories with.
And then there is this. A few weeks before the fiftieth anniversary celebrations, Brian’s post brought a card from Pat. The card carried a memory. Fifty years ago, Pat wrote, the diagnostic tools they had were a sheet of cloth on the wall, a stick to test fields, and a trial kit. And that was it.
What Comes Next
Brian is not afraid of the future. He has watched the profession move from a sheet of cloth on the wall to AI-driven fundus analysis, and he sees the next wave coming with the same curiosity he has brought to every previous one. Earlier this year, he was at a trade show in Munich and walked up to a fully automated AI refraction machine. He sat in the chair to see what it could do.
“I sat there and said, refract me. And it said, cover your left eye, and I deliberately covered my right. It said, you’ve covered the wrong one. So this robot’s pretty clever.”
There was a pause.
“But it’s never going to tell jokes. It’s never going to do magic. It’s never going to hold your hand if you’re worried because your husband’s just been diagnosed with something terrible.”
That, in two sentences, is Brian’s case for the future of independent optometry. Yes, the robots are coming. Yes, AI refraction will get extraordinary. But the part of the job that matters most — the part patients pay for, the part patients come back for — that part is human. And it will remain human for as long as humans are doing the worrying.
The other frontier that excites him is the eye as a window onto the rest of the body. Brian talks at length about the work being done by Dr Noon and the Heart Project, an AI-driven analysis that uses fundus photographs to estimate cardiovascular risk. Men, it turns out, are notoriously bad at attending GP appointments but will often attend an eye test. If the eye exam can flag heart disease risk, optometrists are suddenly in the business of saving lives in a way no one quite expected.
Higher order aberrations are the third. Brian says they have come up at every single one of the six conferences he has attended this year. Patients who used to live with 6/12 vision — ghosts, stars, terrible night driving – are being pulled down to 6/6 and sometimes beyond.
“Within the world of optometry,” he says, “there are so many capabilities to have fun. Never stop enjoying your wonderful career and passion.”
About the Guest
Brian Tompkins FCOptom is the co-director of Tompkins Knight & Son, a Northampton practice established in 1868 and now closing in on fifty years under Brian’s stewardship. He joined the practice as a young optometrist in 1976 and has never worked anywhere else.
Across half a century, Brian has built one of the most respected independent optometry practices in the UK, with a clinical specialism in complex contact lens fitting — keratoconus, post-graft corneas, irregular astigmatism, EyePrint Prosthetic lenses, and wavefront-guided correction of higher order aberrations. The practice was the first in the UK to offer the EyePrint Prosthetic and is one of a small handful of clinics worldwide working at the leading edge of bespoke scleral lens design.
Brian is a Past President of the British Contact Lens Association, having served two terms in the role, and remains one of the most travelled lecturers in optical and ophthalmological circles. He has presented at the World Congress on Keratoconus in Italy and at six international conferences across the current year alone, speaking on scleral lens fitting, higher order aberrations, and the future of the eye exam.
Beyond the clinic, Brian is a 1993 MasterChef finalist, the author of the children’s book Sunny Goes to the Optometrist, and a long-standing mentor to optometrists, dispensing opticians and students from around the world. His practice hosts visiting practitioners from across Europe, Australia and beyond. He answers his own messages.
Find Brian on Facebook and Instagram, or visit Tompkins Knight & Son in person.
About the Host
Garry Kousoulou FBDO is a Fellow of the British Dispensing Opticians with thirty-six years in the optical industry. He is the founder of Loving Social Media, a digital marketing agency working with independent opticians and healthcare brands across the UK; the proprietor of Good Looking Optics, the Enfield practice he built from scratch with no inherited patient base; and the UK and Ireland distributor for ColourOn, the colour vision enhancement lens system used to support people with colour vision deficiency — a cause Garry holds personally, as he has CVD himself.
Garry is the host of The Optician Show, the podcast for independent optical practice owners, optometrists and dispensing opticians who want to grow their practices without losing the patient-first values that brought them into the profession in the first place. He is a former board member of the Association of British Dispensing Opticians, a judge at the Business Book Awards, and the founder of the Enfield Business and Community Awards.
His work sits at the intersection of clinical optics, storytelling, and practical marketing. He has helped independent practices across the UK rebuild their patient acquisition strategies, modernise their digital presence, and find the language to tell stories that actually convert. He is also a cricket umpire, a community figure in Enfield, and a passionate advocate for the next generation of optical professionals.
Subscribe to The Optician Show wherever you get your podcasts, or find Garry on LinkedIn and Instagram to continue the conversation.