Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Tammy Pham.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My parents sent me from Vietnam to Florida to live with my grandparents and aunt in 1996 for a better education. My first memory of America was the little white fan in my grandpa’s car when he picked me up at the airport. I pondered its use. We went home.
It was March in Florida but the weather seemed freezing cold. He gave me an electric blanket to sleep with at night. The whole house was frigid so I just stayed in bed most of the day. That was my first impression of America-cold. I learned later that we didn’t use central heater in our house to keep the electric bills low and the little fan in his car was replacement for air conditioner. Summer came and it was actually hotter than in Vietnam. The little fan was on all the time and the car windows were always down.
I remember my first day of school. I was quite excited. When we got there, an older white lady and my aunt talked for several minutes. My aunt then told me I will be transferred to another school farther away that has a bilingual program. I was pushed back two grade levels from my age due to lack of English. It took almost two hours commuting to school each day on the school bus.
I spent three months in sixth grade and one year in seventh grade in the bilingual program. At the end of that school year a classmate and I went to the principle office and convinced him to let us skip eight grade based on our As. Somehow he did. I passed ESOL testing and could finally take English first year in high school.
My grandparents lived in a high-crime neighborhood at the time. Public schools were as bad as the streets. Fights were ritual every day during lunch. Students sang randomly in class and sat on tables instead of chairs. Some even danced while class was still in session. Teachers didn’t have any say and as the matter of fact, they let us watch movies most of the time. After freshman year, I applied and was accepted to Science magnet program at a better high school in a different district. Although the bus rides were longer I loved every day of school at Edgewater High. There I learned my love for science. I graduated with honors and was accepted to University of Florida majoring in Agricultural and Life Sciences.
I applied for financial aid, worked part-time and attended school full time. Living at a dormitory was a dream for me. One time I visited a classmate’s dorm. It was just beautiful and walking distance to class. I shared a bedroom with a roommate and two other females at an old housing apartment complex. I still didn’t have a car at the time.
I wrote the city bus to class everyday but this time it only took less than one hour each way. I graduated in three years, volunteered at Shane’s hospital, took Optometric Aptitude Test and was accepted to University of Houston College of Optometry in 2014.
I worked part-time as a pharmacy technician for three years while in optometry school.
I graduated with almost $200,000 in student loan just from optometry school alone. I worked for other doctors and retailed chains for three years before opening our private practice in The Woodlands. I took out a big business loan in 2011, I was about $400,000 in debt. Failure was not an option. For three years I worked part-time outside of our practice settings in addition to my full-time hours at our primary clinic.
In 2013, my high school sweetheart and I married. In 2015, we opened our second office, Conroe Eyes and welcomed our first-born son, Eli Huynh.
As cliché as it wounds, if you can dream it, you can make it happen. I believe success is 10% luck, 10% intelligence and 110% hard-work. We all come from different backgrounds and face challenges throughout life but America is a promising land where hard work pays off. There must not be excuses for our circumstances. Have a vision and pursue it with great passion.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
All the challenges during school were manageable. They were learning opportunities.
The biggest decision I faced was opening our private practice cold without much business knowledge. In 2011, I met with the president of a doctor-franchised company to request to join our office with theirs. We were denied because our office size was too small to represent their company for The Woodlands area. The president asked me a few business questions like working capital, market saturation, product pricing etc.- things that I didn’t research well prior to opening our business. Looking back, we would have never opened had we done a throughout research. The odds to thrive in an established area with high numbers of optometrists/opticals per resident were slim.
Our biggest struggle after opening was of course acquiring new patients. It took us a few years to establish our patient base.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about The Woodlands Eye Center – what should we know?
We take pride in our family-owned and doctor-owned optometry practice. We provide primary eye care services from yearly eye wellness examination and contact lens evaluation to medical contact lens fitting for those who have corneal conditions like keratoconus, ectasia from corneal surgery complications to corneal-molding, orth-keratology, for myopia control. Our optical provides a variety of frames with large price ranges to accommodate all patients with and without insurance. We make different types of eyeglass lenses from basic single vision to digital progressives. We offer Varilux and Carl Zeiss brands. We believe great optical products yield great vision results. Our number one business model is honesty. That and great customer services have set us apart from our competitors.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Passion is the essence of success. It turns dreams to reality and gets us through the hard times.
Contact Info:
- Address: 10807 Kuykendahl Rd. Ste 408
- Website: WWW.THEWOODLANDSEYECENTER.COM
- Phone: 281-298-8332
- Email: Thewoodlandseyecenter@gmail.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Woodlands-Eye-Center-138358729582928/?ref=bookmarks
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-woodlands-eye-center-spring-3
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