How Dr. Tony Jacob Built A Texas Business That Could Thrive Without Him
When Dr. Tony Jacob sold his optometry practice in 2021, something kind of remarkable happened. Nothing fell apart. The 11 locations he’d built across Texas kept running smoothly. No daily crisis calls, no major disruptions. He’d spent the previous seven years setting things up so the business wouldn’t collapse without him around.
Most small business owners know the drill. You’re essential to everything. Your vacation means 50 emails a day and phone calls during dinner. But it doesn’t have to be that way, as Tony discovered through trial and error.
The Two-Location Tipping Point
Tony’s journey started pretty typically. His first practice in Lockhart, Texas did well, reaching about a million dollars in revenue within a couple of years. So naturally, he opened a second location in nearby Kyle.
Then reality hit.
“I can’t do everything. I can’t see patients and run a business very well,” Tony says, remembering those hectic days. He was constantly shuttling between offices, trying to keep both places on track.
One day it clicked. “I had unlocked that level and knew how to open two offices. But the next level was how do you become a CEO and what does a CEO really do?”
It was a turning point. Tony made the tough call to step back from seeing patients, something he genuinely enjoyed, to figure out how to make his business work without him being everywhere at once.
Matching People to What They’re Good At
Dr. Tony Jacob noticed a pattern in his hiring. Sometimes people who seemed perfect on paper would struggle in certain roles. Other times, someone would excel in unexpected ways.
“We really have to fit people and what they would probably do best and naturally succeed in,” he explains. He started using a tool called Culture Index that helped identify how people are naturally wired.
Tony admits it filled a gap in his own skill set. “Being an introvert, I don’t always read the room super well, so it’s nice to have data.”
A Common Playbook Makes Everything Easier
By 2017, Dr. Tony Jacob had multiple offices, but they all operated a bit differently. Staff would call him with the same questions over and over. He needed some consistency.
He implemented something called the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) across all locations. It’s basically a shared way of running meetings, tracking goals, and handling day-to-day stuff.
“We use that in the leadership team, we use that across all of our offices, and it really was pouring gasoline onto a fire for us,” Tony recalls. “Things started clicking, our vision started happening when we built our three-year plan and our one-year plan.”
With everyone following the same basic approach, staff could solve problems without waiting for Tony to weigh in. Each location still had its own personality, but the core operations were consistent.
The Hardest Part Was Letting Go
Here’s where Dr. Tony Jacob gets honest about the biggest challenge: himself.
“Delegation was something I struggled with early in my career—being a doctor and a control freak,” he admits.
He had built his practice from nothing. He cared deeply about quality. It wasn’t easy to step back and let others make decisions, especially when they did things differently than he would have.
The breakthrough came gradually. “People thrive when they feel responsible for results, not tasks,” Tony explains. He found that giving his team clear goals but letting them figure out how to get there worked better than micromanaging every detail.
By 2017, Tony had completely moved away from patient care. He focused on the bigger picture, and the business continued to grow steadily over the next few years.
When it came time to sell in 2021, the transition was relatively smooth. “We got the deal done in about 30 days,” he says. He describes it as “the largest private transaction in the state of Texas for optometry.”
What made this possible wasn’t some secret formula or overnight transformation. It was years of gradually building systems, finding good people, and, hardest of all, learning to get out of the way. Tony built something that could keep running without him at the center of everything. That’s a goal worth working toward, even if you never plan to sell.
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