We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daniel Brunson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daniel below.

Hi Daniel, thanks for joining us today. Let’s talk about social media – do you manage your own or do you have someone or a company that handles it for you? Why did you make the choice you did?

I have done both. In the early years I began trying to manage it on my own, and I quickly realized how time consuming it was going to be. That was even in the years before we had video content. I remember in the early years of Instagram it was just about posting pictures. They really didn’t even have to get great pictures. Then it eventually turned into a space where the pictures needed to be great shots that you spent time editing to make even better. At this point I looked at outsourcing all of this to an agency. So I hired a company to do it for me. They sent a photographer to come out and take pictures of my store including eyewear on the shelves, and they also took pictures of the team. From this photo bank they began posting to the Hicks Brunson Eyewear social media feeds twice weekly. They wrote the captions and scheduled all the posts. It was great until I started learning that if you really want to get anywhere with social media as a marketing strategy you really need to post daily. I also realized that they could not capture the vibe of my brand on a week to week basis they I could by handling it myself. So after about two or three months I took it back over, and decided to prioritize making the time to do it myself.

Back in 2019 I hired a local photographer to shoot with us on a weekly basis. She was already connected to other local influencers who were often interested in coming along to model frames in exchange for some of the content. This was also a great way to get to know a lot of new people in the community, which is great for networking. Once I started building a huge content bank I was then able to post daily, and things started to take off in terms of followers that then turned into sales from social media.

I think as video has become so much more important across all platforms from Reels to TikTok to YouTube Shorts, it becomes essential to focus less on photoshoots.

About one year ago one of my opticians and I began hosting weekly live spots on Instagram. Every Saturday morning we go live at 9:30 AM and share new arrivals or talk about an upcoming special events that we have. Adding this component has also help us grow. Just being consistent about how we post has been key to growth. I would say that creating video content has been the biggest time drain, but it has come with the biggest payback.

Daniel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a fourth generation optician. I own and operate the optical boutique that my great grandfather founded in the Tulsa, OK in the late 1940’s. I took over managing most of the operations in 2008. I went to college with the goal of becoming an accountant, but I worked at the optical store during the day and I realized that I really loved working with people. I had a knack for selling, and I loved learning about that optical side. I ended up slowly finishing my degree at night, but I knew my path forward was to one day take over the family business.

Our product back then was what I called designer eyewear. We carried well known name brands like Prada, Fendi, and others. The more I got involved in frame buying the more I learned about the world of independent eyewear. This whole other world opened up to me. I discovered a new world of smaller indie brands that were designing and making eyewear. Their stories were more interesting and their passion for their craft was more relatable to me as a small business person. So I began working with designers like Tom Davies of London, and others around the world. I even did a collaboration series of eyewear that I co-designed with Tom Davies in those first few years of working together.

Our clients have a discerning taste for unique eyewear, and they come to Hicks Brunson Eyewear because they trust us as stylists to consult them on the best wardrobe of frames for their lifestyle. They know that most of the eyewear brands they can explore in our store can typically not be found anywhere else for hundreds of miles. That means something because eyewear is very personal. You wear it on your face after all. Our mission is to enhance our clients confidence through the craft of opticianry, and that is very rewarding. We change lives when we help our clients feel better about how they look, and when we provide the best in class lens technology so they can see their best.

A few years back I recognized a unique problem. Most plastic frame are made without nose-pads, but some noses are too small so the frames don’t fit right. They fit too low or always slide down. I learned that custom adjustable nose pad arms can be added. So I learned how to do this, and began doing it myself. When I got really comfortable doing it I made a video and posted it to YouTube. After a few months that video started getting lots of views, and people started calling me from all over the country asking if they could send their glasses to me to have this service done. Fast forward several years, and I have now done many hundreds of these for clients from coast to coast.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I read a book for extra credit in one of my business courses back in college called Good To Great by Jim Collins. My biggest take away from that book that I still let guide me today was the author’s business as a bus analogy. If your business is a bus then you have to make sure you are headed in the right direction. Are you focusing your time on the right things, and do they align with your core values. You also have to make sure that all the right people are on the bus. This means that some people who are not aligned with the mission and vision need to get off the bus. That can be hard, but there are better opportunities for them and you are not doing them any favors by having them linger in a company where their heart is not in it. The last point is that once you have identified that all the right people are on the bus, you have to make sure that they are all in the right seats. Think about each team members strengths, and play to those.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

For many years it has been word of mouth, and the still holds true. It is definitely the best source of local walk-in new clients in my brick and mortar store in Tulsa, OK. Here in the past few years I would say that YouTube has become another best source. During the lockdowns of 2020 I really started focusing on creating more content for YouTube, and as I have grown my audience there I have acquired new clients from all across the country. YouTube has really helped me expand my footprint from a small local optical store to a much larger area. Of-course it also helps to have the online tools that we began building many years ago such as a functioning web-store to make this work the most efficiently.

Contact Info:

• Website: HicksBrunson.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/hicksbrunson or Instagram.com/daniel.g.brunson
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HicksBrunson/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-brunson-2052974/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/HicksBrunson
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCle0cZaO4t0vlcY_Ys3Kx7w
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/hicks-brunson-eyewear-tulsa

Image Credits
I own the rights to all the photos uploaded.