Managing a growing business effectively is a constantly challenging, uphill battle. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it and every business would be successful. We all know that isn’t the reality. In fact, the wisest business leaders recognize there are always opportunities for improving performance.
The three owners of Night Lite Pediatrics Urgent Care – Dr. Vivek Desai, Dr. Ayodeji Otegbeye, and Dr. Oludapo Soremi – asked themselves how they could run their business more efficiently. To do so, they turned to the Florida Small Business Development Center at the University of Central Florida (FSBDC at UCF) for answers. They soon found themselves tapping into the FSBDC’s no-cost, expert consulting services as well as participating in its Advisory Board Council program, leading to extremely positive results.
As the name suggests, Night Lite Pediatrics Urgent Care is dedicated to caring for kids and young adults. With more than 150 employees and 13 offices throughout Florida, they offer a complete spectrum of health services for children, everything from high acuity medical care to on-site laboratory services, radiology, testing and COVID vaccinations, as well as IV Therapy. They understand that a child’s accidents and illnesses don’t always occur during normal business hours, so they are open after-hours every day of the week. Specializing in small child pediatric urgent care is what sets them apart, however.
“Although we see everyone, our niche is the fact that we treat and care for children from newborn to 5 years of age,” said Dr. Soremi. “Our competitors are not comfortable seeing children that young and are very happy to send them to us.”
Night Lite Pediatrics has been successful, almost too successful. “As we were growing, we had a lot of challenges that we were struggling with,” recalled Dr. Desai. For guidance, they called upon the FSBDC at UCF.
“I distinctly remember meeting with consultant Pauline Davis of the FSBDC for a financial evaluation and she pointed out a lot of areas where we needed work,” Dr. Desai continued. “It was really an eye opener. I thought we were doing really well, and I discovered we were not doing well at all.”
To assist Night Lite in addressing the issues that she had identified, Davis recommended the FSBDC’s Advisory Board Council (ABC) program which provides no-cost, customized boards of volunteer experts specially selected to address the specific needs of the FSBDC client by providing advice and counsel to help the business grow. For Night Lite Pediatrics, Jill Kaufman, ABC program manager, recruited advisory board members whose expertise would be beneficial to the organization and would help the clients streamline operations, enhance productivity, and improve customer satisfaction.
“The Advisory Board members had really diverse skills and areas of expertise,” Dr. Otegbeye said. “There were people who worked in S&P 500 companies as CFO, or in their marketing or HR departments. They held us accountable. They would do the assessment, provide the solutions, and then guide us through to get results.”
The results achieved have been substantial. Since the company started working with the FSBDC, they have seen revenues grow at a rate of 64% and closed a successful sale of the business to a publicly traded company.
“Having the FSBDC in our lives for the last two years had a lot of positive impact,” concluded Dr. Desai, “and we are truly grateful. Thank you, FSBDC.”
