Today we’d like to introduce you to Nicholas King-Smith.
Hi Nicholas, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My name is Nicholas King-Smith, owner of Pinnacle Eyecare, a new Optometric eyecare clinic located in the Northeast Gahanna area of Columbus. I was born and raised in a small rural town in Northeast Ohio called Wooster where I spent a lot of my free time working with my father in his woodworking business. I grew up doing hard manual labor in the sawmill and was pushed by my parents from a young age to pursue education and work with my head more than my shoulders. I graduated from Wooster high school in June of 2006 and started my undergrad education at Xavier University that fall. I was always drawn to science and decided to pursue a Biology major which I finished in June of 2010. I had initially planned to pursure medical school and began shadowing doctors of different modalities my senior year of college, however, after shadowing my hometown Optometrist decided Optometry was the field for me. I applied and was blessed to be accepted to The Ohio State College of Optometry the fall of 2010. I graduated from The Ohio State College of Optometry in May of 2014 and joined a private practice called Buckeye Vision Care in Logan, OH right out of school.
My wife and I live just east of downtown Columbus making that Logan office commute about a 45-minute drive one way. After the birth of my first child in 04/2019, I decided I did not want to do that drive for the rest of my life and thus set out to start my own private practice. With the start of our family, we first started researching school districts for our not-so-distant future. We found ourselves attracted to the school districts of Gahanna, New Albany, and Westerville and made tentative plans to move to the Northeast Columbus area in the next few years.
From May of 2019 to October of 2019, I scoured through every square inch of available commercial real estate in the Gahanna/New Albany area. I was honestly beginning to get discouraged when I happened by chance to connect with a local dentist through a friend of a friend who was building his forever practice and looking to lease out an adjacent office suite. I signed my lease November 2019 with our construction timeline set to finish in late May and high hopes to open our doors on 6/1/2020. Then…COVID happened and 2020 went to crap; on top of COVID, my general contractor had a massive heart attack and ended up in the hospital for a good month or so, construction got delayed and I found myself feeling fairly discouraged before we had even finished our construction on the build-out.
I have a fairly unique background in that I grew up working in my father’s sawmill business. Given as such, I am blessed to be somewhat handier than most and was able to complete a good amount of my clinic construction myself with the help of my father. I tiled the bathrooms with my brother-in-law, ran electric, worked on framing…you name it, and spent numerous weeks working my 9-5 in Logan and then driving to the new clinic to work until 10-11 PM on construction.
I designed the entire office with my father and aunt and manufactured basically all the finish pieces at my father’s woodworking shop (Lattasburg Lumberworks) up in Wooster, OH. If you check out our website (www.pinnacleeyecare.com), you will see the main entrance to the office on the homepage – everything from the reception desk to the frame boards to the wood ceilings in the optical were made by my father at our woodshop where I grew up working as an adolescent.
We finally opened 12/1/2020 and have had a slow start but are slowly growing. I currently work Monday/Tuesday/Friday/Saturday at the new office and spend my Weds/Thursdays working for a brand new state-funded program called Vision To Learn that I helped launch here in Ohio. Vision To Learn provides free eye exams and free eyeglasses to elementary school students in low-income communities. It is a very rewarding outlet that I am proud to be a part of until my new office grows to the point I can be there full time.
My experience in starting this new business from scratch has been both humbling as well as extremely rewarding. While I had expected a much stronger takeoff, I did not plan on the COVID pandemic happening at the exact moment I was set to launch my office. Regardless, we just celebrated our one-year anniversary and I am beyond proud of what my team and I have accomplished thus far. Starting a business from scratch is hard enough, let alone in the middle of a pandemic so I keep telling my team – if we can survive this then we can survive anything!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Far from smooth – COVID crushed our opening date pushing us back six months. At my old office (Buckeye Vision Care in Logan, OH) I know all the local pediatricians, endocrinologists, primary care providers, etc. and received a lot of new patients through practitioner referrals. In starting a new office from scratch, I had grand plans to visit all the local doctors and introduce myself…COVID crushed that hope as I could not even get in the waiting room with the new pandemic protocols let alone get five minutes of one on one time to introduce myself to the doctor.
In summary:
1. Getting through construction and simply getting open during COVID was hard.
2. Marketing plans to visit local doctors were crushed from COVID – we adapted and sent out door-to-door direct mailers to the local community which have had surprisingly good traction.
3. Staff morale – starting an office from scratch means starting with zero patients – the first quarter or so we were seeing 1-2 patients, then 2-3 etc. Seeing two patients on an eight-hour day is a long long day…we are growing and averaging 6-8 patients/day now.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Pinnacle Eyecare offers the newest and greatest when it comes to comprehensive eyecare. Our mission is to offer a new standard of quality eye care with an emphasis on customer service and an enhanced patient experience. We pride ourselves on transparency and providing value to our local community through quality products, and premium eye care. Our focus is to provide a positive and uplifting experience to patients of all ages and would love the opportunity to earn your trust for all of your eye care needs.
There are several aspects to our clinic that I feel differentiate us from other eyecare professionals. For one, we offer the newest and great technology in the eyecare field. We have a brand new Maestro2 OCT machine which is essentially an MRI for the eye. We can take images of the back surface of the eye called the retina as well as cross-sectional views of said tissue. This allows me to diagnose and manage ocular disease at the highest possible level whether that be glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy or retinal issues in general. This is not a machine you are going to find in the typical box store down the street ie. Lenscrafters, Visionworks, etc. In regards to glaucoma, we also have a brand new Octopus VF perimeter which incorporates the latest technologies in mapping out a patient’s peripheral vision and monitoring for glaucomatous change.
On top of all of this, I am proud to say I love working with kids! We offer full-scope pediatric eyecare and even free eye exams to infants under 12 months of age. If you are concerned about a possible eye turn, congenital eye disease that may run in the family or simply want a comprehensive evaluation of your child, please bring them in, we would love to meet you and your family! On that note, we do have our office dog Max here in the office most days who loves kids! Check out our Instagram @pinnacleyecare2020 to see more of him.
Lastly, I would argue our optical offers the newest and latest in fashion-forward frames due to our top-notch optician Kyle Whitman. Given we opened cold/from scratch and are independently owned, we had the opportunity to curate our own flavor of eyewear without any outside pressure. This allowed us to handpick each of our frame lines and bring in the awesome variety of color and classic frames you will see when you visit us. We carry unique European brands such as Lafont from France and Etnia Barcelona from Spain to designer labels like Tom Ford and Kate Spade as well boutique brands hand made in America like State Optical out of Chicago.
We are passionate about what we do and love connecting with our patients. I feel we offer a personalized and unique unmatched experience when it comes to eyecare.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
I have been blessed in that my education at The Ohio State College of Optometry set me up with a large network of doctors to lean on. I am still in touch with a large group of my classmates who have been through similar experiences in starting their own offices. I also joined an optometric service network of independent optometrists called Vision Source that supports private practice Optometry which has been hugely helpful when I was starting my office in regards to early business decisions.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@pinnacleeyecare.com
- Website: www.pinnacleeyecare.com
- Instagram: @pinnacleeyecare2020
- Facebook: pinnacle eyecare
Image Credits
Nicholas King-Smith
Hannah Kempton
Kyle Whitman
Lori Baskin
