“I got my first pair of glasses at age ten,” Nathan Baas recalls. “I really liked my optometrist and he said, think about this for a career. So he planted a seed and it grew.” By the time Nathan was in high school, he’d decided to take his mentor’s advice. “He told me it was something I could do the rest of my life and if I didn’t have the answer, I could refer a patient to someone who does.”
After college, Nathan worked in a large clinic with two ophthalmologists. “I learned more about diagnosing eye disease and got to observe in the operating room.” Eight years later he had an opportunity to buy a practice and remembered his first optometrist. “I wanted the office he had—calm, friendly, small.” Today, Nathan and his wife, Stacie, have that small office in Old Town, Traverse City.
“I want to make patients excited about the way they see,” he says. “With glasses that fit and look good.”
“I work with people of all ages—and with my young patients, I try to make it fun. Like my first doctor who sat down with me and said, ‘Nathan, tell me what’s happening with your eyes’”