Golden Isles Family Healthcare: Building a community-center practice with UGA SBDC support

“We serve families of all ages,” said Pope. “We do preventative medicine, management of chronic illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure, and episodic sick visits. My passion has always been prevention—helping people live healthier lives before serious illness develops.”

After years in critical care and family practice, Pope decided she needed a change. In December 2019, she left her job at a local medical practice and launched Golden Isles Family Healthcare in January 2020, first as telemedicine service and later from a two-room clinic located inside a pharmacy.

“We were doing well. Even as the pandemic calmed down, the patient volume was there,” Pope said. “But we were running out of room. We needed more staff. The need to grow was apparent.”

Pope had the clinical expertise and determination, but little knowledge in how to operate a business.

“What does ‘accounts receivable’ mean? What does ‘profit loss’ mean? What are balance sheets? I really knew nothing business-wise,” said Pope. “I had to lean on the UGA SBDC to walk me through everything and teach me what I didn’t know.”

Pope connected with the UGA SBDC after hearing about it from her mother, also a small business owner. In the early days, UGA SBDC business consultants guided Pope through legal and operational challenges—non-compete agreements, business entity selection, hiring and financial systems like QuickBooks. As her practice grew, Pope sought help with financial reporting, cash flow management and long-term planning.

When Golden Isles Family Healthcare outgrew its small clinic space, Pope connected with Jennfier Lee and David Lewis, business consultants at the UGA SBDC in Brunswick. They helped Pope secure financing to purchase and renovate a permanent downtown location. Lee and Lewis also directed her to the Brunswick Downtown Development Authority, where she successfully applied for a grant to restore the building.

“It was a really big decision,” Pope said. “But everything they projected played out as good, if not better than expected. They helped me put together the business plan for the bank, and I felt comfortable moving forward with their guidance.”

Once in the new space, the UGA SBDC team helped Pope confront another challenge: balancing workload and profitability.

Through strategic planning sessions, Lee and Lewis helped Pope develop a written roadmap aligning her mission, operations and finances. They also created detailed month-by-month forecasts tied to patient capacity and staffing levels, while teaching her to use financial data more effectively.

“She wasn’t using the numbers to fully understand what was happening with her business,” Lee explained. “So, we went back to basics—building a budget, tracking cash flow and aligning financial planning with her strategic goals.”

With consistent check-ins, Pope began to manage expenses, build reserves and make confident growth decisions. Strategic planning sessions helped her evaluate scenarios for hiring additional providers. With UGA SBDC support, Pope has grown her team to eight full-time employees since 2021, all while keeping her mission central.

“Patient-centered care is my mission,” said Pope. “One of the very first steps in strategic planning with Jen and David was establishing that mission—providing quality care to patients and creating a healthy work environment.”

Today, Golden Isles Family Healthcare stands as a thriving example of what small businesses can achieve with the right mix of passion, perseverance and expert guidance.

“I really feel like it’s not just a business to them,” Pope said of her UGA SBDC consultants. “They genuinely care. They know the ins and outs of my practice, and they’ve helped me grow into the business owner I needed to be.”

For Pope, the reward goes beyond financial success.