Last weekend I attended the Localshops1.com 2nd Birthday party and awards ceremony. It was held at the Safety Harbor Resort and Spa and featured an incredible brunch buffet. Everyone had a great time and I met many dynamic Tampa Bay people.

One of the most interesting people I met was Olga Bof. She is an energetic, engaging woman with lots of ideas. One of the most interesting ideas is the opening of a children’s bookstore, called Cheeky Monkeys Books & Toys. It’s mission is to instill a life-long love of reading in children of all types. This will be  a solid local community resource. Check out Olga’s video:

Here is how you can help:

Olga is currently competing for a $50,000 grant in the August round of the Pepsi Refresh Project to help get the children’s bookstore a start. Hundreds of thousands of applicants attempt to enter the competition every month and Cheeky Monkeys is one of the lucky ones in the “Neighborhoods” category.  You can vote EVERY SINGLE DAY IN AUGUST IN TWO WAYS:

• TEXT 101443 TO 73774
• Vote online at  http://pep.si/cheekycity

You can also help by spreading the word TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE. If you’d like to contact Olga to get involved or see how you can help, you can email her. You can also follow Cheeky Monkeys on Facebook.

-Dr. Nate
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Located in the Westchase area of Tampa.
Connect: Facebook Twitter Foursquare LS1 Yelp

I’ve voted today! Have you?

Did you know that Bright Eyes has a passion for bowling? Well, we don’t. But we do have a passion for community involvement, especially when it means helping out local children.  So we are happy to be sponsoring a “Dream Team” of bowlers to raise money for the The Children’s Dream Fund.

Check out the Dream Team: All Your Pin Are Belong to Us

• Me,  Dr. Nate
• Amber Osborne, AKA Miss Destructo
• Allison Barkely of That Girl Allie
• Gregg Hilferding, of ClassB.com
• Simon Cousins of Illuminant
• Antony Francis of Head of Lettuce Media

You can join us as a ‘Pinhead’ guest for $30. For that you get to watch the action, take part in the silent auction and raffle, complimentary beer, wine and pizza buffet, as well as musical entertainment from 93.3FLZ DJ, Kidd Leow. If you’d like to sponsor a team Click here to email Andrea Vest or call 727.896.6390.

More info The Children’s Dream Fund:

The Children’s Dream Fund was founded in 1981 with the single purpose of fulfilling dreams for children ages 3-18 who have been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Referrals are received from several hospitals on Florida’s west coast. Dreams vary greatly – from trips to Disney World, meetings with celebrities, computers, play sets, cruises and shopping sprees. Every child deserves hope and a dream! The true impact of a child’s dream cannot be measured in dollars and cents. Our desire is to grant every eligible child’s dream. There are many children in our community with life-threatening illnesses, and the Children’s Dream Fund needs your help to reach them.

Hope to see you there!

-Dr. Nate
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Located in the Westchase area of Tampa.
Connect: Facebook Twitter Foursquare LS1 Yelp

We at Bright Eyes Family Vision Care are thankful and humbled to have been nominated for the 2010 LocalShops1.com Best at grassroots marketing category. It is very cool to see that our efforts are noticed by the local independent business community. There are many wonderful businesses nominated and all should be congratulated:

As part of the selection process, there are five questions that nominees must answer. Below are the questions and my answers. We will find out the winners at the LS1 Birthday Bash. Come out with us and have a ball!

Give us your 30 second “Elevator Pitch”

At Bright Eyes Family Vision Care, we provide comprehensive eye care and quality eyewear for the whole family. Dr. Nathan Bonilla-Warford gets to know his patients, and makes sure each patient understands their visual conditions and what can be done to improve their eyesight or eye health. He also specializes in pediatrics, vision therapy, and specialty contact lenses, offering services not found at most optometry offices.

We have excellent staff who focus on patient care and customer service, whether helping a patient put on contacts for the first time, selecting glasses that look good on each person’s face, or working with children to help them improve visual skills for reading. Our best compliment is when patients refer other patients for exams, eyewear, or specialty care. Call our office to make an appointment, or stop by to check out our great selection of eyewear for the whole family.

What have been some of your best marketing campaigns?

When we have a campaign, we want it to be memorable and have people see that we do more than what you might expect from an eye doctor. There are two campaigns that exemplify this: Intensity Academy Hotsauce Giveaway and the Coach Social Media Contest.

At Bright Eyes we love to give away stuff and we love to support local businesses. For the last year we have been giving out free bottles of Intensity Academy Hotsauce to patients who pose for a picture with their bottle. The picture is then posted on Facebook and Twitter. It is a win all the way around. The patients get awesome sauce, Intensity Academy gets exposure, and we get noteworthy content to post online.

Bright Eyes also tries to encourage creativity whenever possible. Recently when we were giving away three pairs of Coach glasses/sunglasses, we encouraged people to tweet, blog, or text interesting things. The results were awesome! Patients were writing haiku about sunglasses, blogs about the contest, and song lyrics about Bright Eyes. It was awesome to receive the support of the community and to see how much fun people had!

What is the longest you’ve gone without checking Facebook?

Probably about a week. Although I am a big social media fan, I didn’t appreciate Facebook until much more recently. For a long time I put my time and energy into networks like Twitter, foursquare, Yelp, and eyecare specific networks.  I would use Facebook for big campaigns but would routinely forget to update it a lot. This may have something to do with the fact that I didn’t have a reliable Facebook app for my Blackberry.

I am now discovering how useful Facebook can be. I am trying new things to promote Bright Eyes, like the recent sunglass picture-tagging contest. I am using Facebook to help organize a group to teach others in my profession the benefits of social media. And, yes, I am using Facebook to reconnect with highschool friends.

What is the most rewarding part of having your own business?

I think this is a funny question because I had never even considered owning my own business until Optometry school. It seemed like a lot of work and responsibility. Then I realized that if I wanted to pursue the specialty that I was most interested in (children’s vision), I had to own my own business because only then would I be able to provide that type of care in the way I thought was best.

Now that I have owned Bright Eyes for four years I have learned this: it is a lot of work and is an enormous responsibility. But it is worth it because not only do I have the flexibility to take time off to be with my kids, I can also make decisions quickly, without having to ask anyone. When I found out that my YMCA spin class was holding a “Spin-a-thon” Fundraiser, I asked the staff if they were interested and we did it. It turned out to be a lot of fun and we helped raise $7,000 for the Building Strong Kids program. It is wonderful knowing that Bright Eyes is a strong part of the local community.

What are some of your favorite businesses (other than your own)?

There are so many great businesses in the Tampa Bay area that it is hard to narrow it down! But here are just a few of the businesses I love:

Intensity Academy Hot sauce

http://intensityacademy.com/

Because their sauce rocks and they are super great people. They are on fire, growing their business by word of mouth.

Pizza Mania

http://www.mypizzamania.com/

I love this place. The pizza is great and it is run by a close-knit Italian family.

Flying Pig Communications

http://flyingpigcommunications.com/

This is Laura Petrolino’s company and she is a powerhouse. She helped in the early stages of the development of Foursquare Day. She is a multi-talented triathlete with tons of experience.

Papergirl Press

http://www.papergirlpressphoto.com/

I have had the pleasure of being photographed several times by Melanie and it is always fun. She has been to my office to take pictures of myself and the staff. I am so pleased with her work that I have used three of her pictures for profile pictures, as well as have them featured on our Facebook page, website, blogs and magazines.

-Dr. Nate
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Connect: Facebook Twitter Foursquare LS1 Yelp

UPDATE: Bright Eyes is happy to be giving away two $100 gift certificates at the Social Media Day Meetup! It is the least we can do to support this great event and Tampa Bay Tech! There are tons of other great door prizes also, including food, concert tickets, and more! So come on down!

If you haven’t heard yet, this Wednesday night will be the biggest social media event in Tamp Bay since Foursquare Day. The event was conceived by Mashable as a means to get together and celebrate Social Media. It is called Social Media Day, and there are over 100 people planning to attend the local event! In fact, Tampa currently has the 14th largest gathering of the 550 in the world according Mashable’s Meetup Everywhere page.

The Social Media Day locally is being organized by Jordan Leonard and Kyle Williams. It is being held at the Tampa Bay Brewing Company at 6pm on Wednesday 6/30. You can find out more details about the event, as well as RSVP and catch up on the pre-event conversation here. When making plans, don’t forget to use the hashtag #TMMUP.

The local success of this event is just more evidence that Tampa Bay has a vibrant and growing tech scene. We at Bright Eyes are so excited about it, we are closing early this Wednesday to take part. So if you see me and the Bright Eyes staff be sure to say hello!

-Dr. Nate

Bright Eyes Family Vision Care

Connect: Facebook Twitter Foursquare LS1 Yelp

At Bright Eyes, we try to stay current in the opportunities given to our patients. As contact lens companies go, it’s usually in the form of rebates and annual supply savings. Recently however, one company has gone above and beyond the product savings to offer an opportunity in an activity many of us and our kids participate in but usually don’t associate with wearing contacts: athletics. Contact lenses are a necessary piece of “equipment” in many athletes’ gear bags. Because glasses are cumbersome and can even be dangerous in certain sports, contacts are a comfortable and healthy alternative that give athletes a crisp and complete field of vision.

CooperVision, a company that manufactures, among others, the Proclear, Biofinity, Biomedics, and Frequency line of contacts, is holding a contest in which it will award ten prizes of $2,500 to athletic teams, athletes, or even community sporting organizations. They want to make sure teams and individuals have the proper “gear” to help them compete. Plus any member of the team who currently wears contacts or glasses will also have the chance to be fitted with CooperVision contact lenses for an entire year.

To enter you must complete the online form and create a short video or series of photos introducing your team and why you think you should win. What could you use the grant for? Whatever you think your team needs to succeed: new jerseys or uniforms, new equipment, transportation funds to your next away game.  You must hurry though, because the deadline to submit is June 25th.

Visit the link below for additional information and to submit your video and application.

http://www.mycontactsports.com/

All the best,

Justin Schoonover

If you take a look at the June issue of World of Westchase, on page 22, you’ll find a feature story on Dr. Nate. The article discusses his involvement with social media, Foursquare Day, as well as Dr. Nate’s passion for children’s vision. The article refers to him as an optician. Although Dr. Nate is an optometrist, he is actually a certified optician, too. Click here to find out the difference.

If you do not have copy of WOW handy, you can also read the article online titled as  A Social Media Visionary (PDF, pg 4).

Thanks, WOW!

Connect: Facebook Twitter Foursquare LS1 Yelp

At Bright Eyes, we believe in strong relationships with the community. In addition to providing eye care for those in need, we have been longstanding supporters of  the YMCA.

I routinely work out at the Y and since this year has been quite cold, I’ve especially enjoyed the spin classes, also called studio cycling.  So I was excited to see that there was going to be a spin fundraiser: The Spinathon on Saturday, March 20th at the New Tampa YMCA!

The idea is simple: A person or team of people will do four consecutive hours of spin class. They take donations to raise money for the YMCA Building Strong Kids Campaign. The Building Strong Kids Campaign is a nation-wide campaign to raise money for after-school care, swim lesson, camps, leadership training, and other programs for kids not just in Hillsborough County, but around the country.

Why donations? (Get it? “Y Donations!”, lol ) From the YMCA webpage: “Simply put, your gift changes lives. Every dollar given to the YMCA goes directly to help children and families participate in YMCA memberships and programs, regardless of their financial circumstances. Through YMCA involvement, families become closer, children grow and blossom, seniors discover new energy, and those with disabilities find new abilities and new hope.”

Check out this wonderful video about  Building  Strong Kids, click here.

And if you like to read some wonderful testimonials, click here.

The entire staff of Bright Eyes will be taking turns spinning away for four hours straight. We are planning on getting team shirts and everything. You won’t miss us. It will be a blast!

There are three ways to support us in the Spinathon:

1) Drop a donation in the Spinathon box at Bright Eyes: check or cash is fine.

2) Use this handy Chipin widget via Paypal. (It is SO easy!)

3) You can donate directly to YMCA: Just click here and then tell us how much you donated for our team!

Look forward to photos and results! Let us know if you’d rather your gift be anonymous. Or consider forming a team of you own!!

UPDATE:  To ensure that we reach our goal, we will be donating 5% of all sales on glasses to the Spin-a-thon between now and March 20th. If you’d like to match our donation, then let us know!

GO TEAM BRIGHT EYES!

-Dr. Nate
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Connect: Facebook Twitter Foursquare LocalShops1.com

Note – There are lots of great bloggers in Tampa and we’re going to begin showcasing their talents with periodic guest posts. This is a great way to further strengthen ties with the community. This first guest post is by Laura Petrolino of Flying Pig Communications. – Dr. Nate.

You visit the grocery store to find the cashier remembers your name and asks about the sick child you had come in last week to buy cough syrup for….

What do you do?

The manager at your favorite restaurant surprises you by giving you a complimentary lunch, for no reason other than as a thank you for your continued business…..

What do you do?

You go to have your hair cut by a new stylist, who not only takes you late and treats you rudely, but also leaves you with a Beatles inspired mop-top……..

What do you do?

Read the rest of this entry »

This is cool! Localshops1.com has featured me on the very popular “Sticks of Fire” blog, in a piece called, “Bright Eyes See Social Media Work“:

Nathan Bonilla-Warford, better known as “Dr. Nate” among patients, friends … and Twitterbuddies (but more on that in just a bit) opened his business, Bright Eyes Family Vision Care, in 2006 in Westchase. The family-friendly neighborhood in Tampa is ideal for Bright Eyes, which focuses on family vision care, with a big emphasis on eye care for children and even infants.

Now, about the Twitter stuff, business people especially should listen up. Dr. Nate is a great role model for business owners on how to effectively use social media to market their business. On Facebook and Twitter, Dr. Nate has established himself as THE vision care expert among the Tampa Bay social media world. More than 1,000 people follow him on Twitter@BrightEyesTampa; on Facebook, Bright Eyes Tampa has almost 150 fans. Dr. Nate has even been known to help quite a few neighboring businesses get on board in the social media world. “Get involved with social media as early as possible,” Dr. Nate tells other entrepreneurs. “We have really made connections and strengthened Bright Eyes via the Bright Eyes News blog, Facebook, and Twitter.”

The piece then goes on to interview me about the good and bad of small business owner, advice for other entrepreneurs  and my opinions on the recession. Check out the whole thing here.

Thanks to Localshops1.com for making this possible! And remember, you can pick up a 1Card at Bright Eyes and use your 1 card for a Bright Eyes discount! You can see our Ls1 listing here.

Dr. Bonilla-Warford
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Westchase, Tampa, FL
Connect with Us: Facebook Twitter Foursquare

Here at Bright Eyes, we have amazing patients that do very cool things. I am always interested in what people are doing and enjoy the conversations that we have during the eye exams. Sometimes I will spotlight them.

Today I was lucky enough to be the focus of a very cool and generous post by Randy Watson (AKA The Wine Whore). If you don’t already know him, he is a very funny, genuine wine blogger, twitter fanatic,  friend, and a patient.

So check it out! Check out the rest of his blog. And if you are feeling up to it, leave a comment. And don’t forget to get your turn on the Cabernet Couch!

Cheers!

Dr. Bonilla-Warford
Bright Eyes Family Vision Care
Westchase, Tampa, FL
Connect with Us:  FacebookTwitter