Home Care U - How to Find, Train, and Develop Great Administrators (Krystal Wilkinson)

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

Having run a successful agency for ten years and serving as the president of Arizona's chapter of the Home Care Association of America, Krystal Wilkinson's passion is developing leadership talent. Join us as she sounds off on this very challenging aspect of home care agency management.Enjoying the show? Send me a text and let me know!Learn more about Careswitch at: careswitch.comConnect with the host on LinkedIn: Miriam Allred This episode was produced by parkerkane.co

Hey, welcome to Home Care U, a podcast made by the team at Care Switch. Nobody went to school to learn how to run a home care agency, so we're bringing the education to you. Join our live audience by going to careswitch.com slash homecareu or listen on your own time wherever you get your podcasts. Home Care U is hosted by myself, Miriam Allred, and Connor Koons of Care Switch. Enjoy the session. Welcome to Home Care U is hosted by myself, Miriam Allred, and Connor Koons of CareSwitch. Enjoy the session. Welcome to Home Care U.

I'm Miriam Allred, head of partnerships at CareSwitch, one of the hosts of this podcast. It's great to be with you. Thanks for listening live. I see people joining us here on Zoom live. Thanks for joining us. And thanks to all of you that will tune into the podcast after this. I want to mention we will be skipping an episode next week for Thanksgiving, the holiday. So know that we won't have a live

session or an episode that will come out for the holiday, but we are excited for today. It is the end of the year. The holidays are approaching, but I am elated that we could squeeze in the guest today. You all are in for a treat. I'm in for a treat. I'm really excited for this opportunity. So again, thank you all for being here and thanks for listening. And we hope you enjoy today's session. Today, I'm going to be interviewing our guest, Crystal Wilkinson. She's the president of Adult Care Assistance Home Care in Arizona. She may be a new face to some of you. She has served on the education board of the HCAOA, so she may be a familiar face, but if you haven't heard of her or heard from her,

you're in for a treat. So Crystal, thank you so much for being here with us today. Well, thank you, Mary. I'm really excited to get to join you and I'm honored that you asked, so I'm excited. Thanks for making the time before the holidays. I know year end Q4 is a crazy time for all of us. So really appreciate you being willing to give us the time today. So I want to preface today's topic. And then before we jump into the topic, I want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself and talk briefly about your background. Today, we're going to talk about finding, training and developing great administrators. Many and all of you here at some point have or will hire administrators, and it's challenging. We talk

a lot about hiring, finding, attracting, retaining caregivers, but today we're going to shift gears and talk about the administrative team, your staff. How do you find and develop great administrators? And Crystal's here to disclose some of what she's learned over the years. We're going to talk about some of her failures, mistakes, but also the successes and the things that she's learned. And we hope you all can take something away from this conversation. So before we get after it, Crystal, tell everyone a little bit about your background, about your story, and then kind of segue into your agency and the demographic so people can get a feel for where you're coming from. Sure, absolutely. So, yeah, I didn't come from the health care world.

I have had a lot of different careers early on, but probably the last stop I had before coming jumping into home care, I was a case manager in a sense, but I did not work in case management like healthcare case management. I actually worked more. I had 17 families from Tucson, Arizona that we had sent all over the world in global outreach with a local Baptist church that is in Tucson. And I had 17 families that I had, you name it, I probably had them in one of the countries and I was their ticket home. So I was their connection.

So I did a lot of case management from them abroad. And then when they come home on furlough, I have to find housing for them, doctor's appointments, things like that. Case management, but not on the healthcare side, kind of more of social work kind of thing though. The way that I got into home care, I know, Maryam, you know my story, but a lot of people don't, but I became the family caregiver. My husband, it's, you know my story, but a lot of people don't. But I became the family caregiver. My husband, it's been 14 years now, was diagnosed with cancer. And it was a very aggressive form of cancer. So, you know, I watched him go from being very athletic, he would do 24 hour mountain bike races and crazy things like that to really, you know, being very weak and

lost a lot of weight, things like that, going through eight hours of infusion, chemo, six days a week, that type of thing. So during that process, he had his bucket list. And one of the things he always wanted to be was a business owner. We didn't think he would survive his cancer. So this was one of the many things on there. He started, he got himself a broker. You know, broker. You can do a lot of work from bed nowadays with the computers. And next thing I know, he's like, hey, I think we need to look into this. So I met our previous owner, Karen Weller, through this whole process. She was a cancer survivor who had been re-diagnosed with cancer. And unfortunately, it had progressed,

and she knew that her time was short. So anyway, long story short, we ended up purchasing the business and she passed away about five months after we met. And I took over. And that was January 1 of 2012. So I've kind of been doing this a little while now, not as long as her. But ironically, this is our 28th birthday this month. So she started out much younger, but the IRS apparently got involved. And yeah, she so the official start date was in November of 1996. So 28 years in the making here we are. Right. That's kind of my journey, but I kind of stepped into it more holistically. By the way, my husband's doing great.

You saw him at the conference and the HCAOA conference in Chicago just recently. He does not work in the company, but he does come with me because he has a great business mind and we are still trying to spend every opportunity we can. We both are pretty busy with our careers and things. So he works for a pharmaceutical company and kind of stuck with his own career, but I did step in and now I'm doing the business. So that's kind of where we're coming from and where we're at. A great story. I got the chills just hearing you tell it again. Those types of stories never get old to me, you know, from personal experience, being the family caregiver, not knowing the future of your husband, discovering home care, and then purchasing

the business and stepping in. And now imagine all of the lives that you've impacted based off your experience. And I'm so glad your husband is doing well. He's a pleasure to be around. And I'm so glad that he's made, you know, full recovery and is doing well. And it's been so influential to many more lives. That is amazing. So before we get into it, I think it would be useful for you to talk about like maybe your org chart, because we're going to talk about administrators.

I think it might be interesting for people to understand kind of like your size and breakdown and where people sit before we get into it. So would you mind sharing some of that? Yeah, absolutely. And Maryam, I know I shared with you recently that just very, very recently, like at the end of June, we actually had some changes in our company. And I did have two of our leaders step away just recently. They've both been with me for about five, five and a half years. And for personal reasons, they both needed to take a step down and, you know, seek, you know, some time to take care of family issues and health and things like that. So our chart has changed recently and it really flattened it out. So

I'll kind of give you kind of a gist in a sense of what it looked like before and then and what it looks like right now. And I'm still honestly just kind of working my way through this. But initially, you know, of course, I'm the head. I'm at the top. So I'm kind of the visionary, I guess. I'm the one who kind of oversees everything. We have two physical locations. And so I had the two people who stepped down was my branch manager in a sense in the Sun City, North Phoenix, Northwest Phoenix area. We have our big office. It's located on the Banner-Buswell Hospital campus. And that's where our HR department and just our day-to-day stuff for the Sun City, Phoenix area is kind of out of.

And then I had a branch manager for our Tucson office that just basically had that. So under those branch managers, each of them would have a team of three. I would have a sales and marketing person who's out there doing the day-to-day things like that. I would have a scheduling person, obviously doing scheduling or what have you.

And then I have a case manager. We do use a geriatric case manager, but just to be clear, we don't do geriatric case management in that generalized sense. I like having social workers because we're non-medical. When I've had nurses in the past, it kind of got confusing and it confused also the people who are referring to us. They would assume that we could do medical when we cannot do medical because we don't have that medical director. So I use case managers instead. And that has worked really well. So that would be like under one of them. And both offices would have those two teams.

And then under me as well, I have an HR team where I have the office manager would sit underneath that. Our HR director, our recruiter, we have a full-time recruiter, actually. And then we have under those places, I would have then our front desk receptionist. And we have just another recruiting person that just does interviews. So that's kind of it. Now, once I lost those two main branch managers, we kind of flattened it out. And so I'm actually overseeing both offices. My office manager is kind of overseeing the day-to-day when I can't be in the Sun City office up in the North Phoenix area. I personally live in Tucson, so it's a little bit easier for me to kind of handle the day-in and day-out in the Tucson office.

But I do make that trip up. It's about two hours, door-to-door, a little over two hours, at least once a week for an up-and-back. Or maybe I'll stay the night and be up there for a couple of days. two hours door to door, a little over two hours, at least once a week for an up and back, or maybe I'll stay the night and be up there for a couple of days. Kind of more just because I really love my team and I enjoy seeing them. They're doing pretty well without me. But you know, it's always good to have that that connection. Awesome. So about how many people I know you lost the branch managers, but about how many people are we talking? Was that 10 or 12? About? I have 11 managers. Well, I have 10 right now I have one open seat still. So? I have 11 managers. Well, I have 10 right now. I have one open seat still,

so I should have 11 managers total. Okay. Awesome. I just wanted to make sure I was getting that right. So yeah, kind of a 12 person team, which is fairly large depending on, you know, people's size and scale, but thanks for sharing that. That context really helps kind of, as we start going down this path of this conversation. So I do want to, well, I want to address, this is top of mind for you. Like you mentioned, you had two branch managers that had been with you for a substantial amount of time, five years in today's world is a long time to be with you. And I think that's an accomplishment in and of itself. But like you mentioned, they've just left, you're kind of back in this position of, you know, how do I go out and find new managers? And so we'll get to that. But I want to zoom out and start in this concept of who are you looking for? And where have you found your best longstanding administrators? You know, where have

they come from? Referrals, other industries, etc, where have you found them and how you go about looking? Looking for them. Yeah. First, I also was, you know, when you kind of said that you had asked me when we were in Chicago, you know, like what is the longevity of the people? Because we were talking about how I did have the five years, five and a half, one was with me five years. The other one was with me a little over five and a half years. And they both left pretty much simultaneously. They left about a month apart. And I went back and I kind of was like looking past it. And I had one person who was with me 11 years in a senior leadership position. But I did go back and really look at our numbers. And our average is three and a half years is the average for us. Now, the one position

that I see the most turnover is going to be the scheduling position. That is also probably the most stressful position. And it's really hard to find the right person. You know, you need to find somebody who, you know, enjoys puzzles, but it can be a people person. So you're kind of looking for, I don't know, like a, almost like an engineer that's friendly. It's kind of, it's a tough personality to find, and then you need somebody with really thick skin, but they need to be warm and, you know, and accommodating and things. So it can be a challenge finding that position seems to be my hardest one to fill. The second hardest I think will be, and I haven't found somebody to actually

take that leadership position. I've always kind of taken that branch manager position and kind of brought somebody up through the ranks so they got to know me and got to know the agency. And, you know, and earn their spot versus hiring somebody off the street is really difficult to do. And I haven't quite figured out what I want to do there. So I haven't filled that space right now. But as far as where do I find them, I started also thinking back, you know, where have I found some of my best people? And I've used Indeed, you know, quite a bit. I don't like Indeed for caregivers. It does okay for getting the higher level of, you know, management type, you know, that you start seeing more people

who are career oriented, going on to the Indeed that you do like the caregivers, you know, that you start seeing more people who are career oriented going on to the Indeed that you do like the caregivers, things like that. But actually, when I think back as some of my best people, they've come from either a past employee has referred them to me, like, hey, I used to work at adult care assistance. I loved my job there. But you know, I got called over here. And if you're looking for a great place to land, you should at least apply, that type of thing. So I get a lot of people refer to me. I have just a reputation.

My team seems to speak highly of the culture at our company. I have somebody that's in the works that I'm interviewing right now for that open position I have. And she has asked me multiple times for a job, I didn't have a place open that kind of fit her. And we do have one now. So we're walking through that at the moment. So a lot of it comes that way. But I don't necessarily look for somebody who comes with home care experience. That doesn't mean I don't want home care experience, but I'm not specifically looking for that. So some of the failures I've had is, you know, I would not

recommend hiring a friend. I've done that. And when it doesn't work out, I'm not sure if you can still be the friend. Sometimes it's really hard on that friendship. It can be very difficult. And it's also really hard with discipline, you know. So a lot of times it's like, oh, this person's great. And I know them personally. Just you got to be very careful. That's hard. I wouldn't go there. As far as other home care agency, you know, people worked in it, you know, not that I've had some good success stories with it, but you just have to be very careful because not every home care agency does it the same way.

And it's not that they have bad habits, but they're different. And then you start running into that. Well, we've always done it this way or my other agency, or I'm not used to you doing that. And it might even be a year later that you're, you're struggling with something with somebody and they're like, well, my other agency, we always do this. And it's like, but you've worked for me for a year. We don't. So a lot of times you're dealing with a lot of peripheral bad habits or different cultures that, you know, that you're just fighting against. So, but I do like somebody who has, like, I personally really love somebody who has some

kind of a case management experience or healthcare experience for salespeople. I don't just necessarily just look for the salesperson because to me, they need to know what we do and how, you know, how our case management does it and really understand it. And it sells itself. It's not like we need to go out and do a hard sell. You just need to really talk to them about what we do and how does that like really blow into it. So I'm curious, you were kind of getting into it here at the end, referencing like hiring people from case management. Have you identified any other trends or patterns of other industries that you've gravitated towards? Obviously, like healthcare would be a good one

and like signaling in the right direction, but any other industries that are maybe less common that you've hired people from that you've been impressed or surprised by or the flip side? One of the people that I lost in July, that one of my branch managers, he actually came, this is kind of interesting. He came to me from the sports world. He actually worked for the Seattle Seahawks. And then he worked for the Arizona Cardinals. That's what brought him to Arizona. And I'm like, you were in like, big, you know, big corporate, you know, why do you want to work for little old me? And he was one of them who, somebody who had worked for me, had ran into him, he was, you know, looking for a new job, kind of new on the market and was looking for something. And she told him, you know,

if you really want to go work for someplace, I love my job there. So he applied. And I sat down and when I was talking to him, like, why, why, you know, why would you want to work for home care after you've worked for, you know, Seattle Seahawks and the Cardinals? And he's like, he was in sales and marketing. And I loved his answer because he kind of just paused and he said, you know, I can fill a stadium. I know how to do the sales. But what I'm tired of doing is making the rich man richer. I want to do something that makes a difference. And so often we're hearing that, you know, whenever we're hearing the talks, like, you know, at the conferences and stuff,

they're like, you know, you know, talk to your caregivers and your staff, they need to feel like they're making a difference. That's what it came down to for him. And he had just walked through some stuff with his own grandparents. And so he was actively seeking something that was in healthcare or some way of being able to give back. And his own grandparents, he didn't have them have home care, but he helped them find the community that they were moving in and helping them walk through the move and just calling and checking on me. He had done so many things that had been so aligned with, you know, with what we do. And so, you know, even though he wasn't in healthcare or hadn't had home and care experience, he ended up being, you know, even though he wasn't in healthcare or hadn't had home and care experience,

he ended up being, you know, at the time he was coming on as a sales manager, he ended up becoming one of the best sales managers I've ever seen because he was so curious and he had a personal reason. So you go back to that why. So it doesn't necessarily need to be like, oh, they have, you know, hospice experience or home care experience or, you know, what have you. It can sometimes just be like, well, what is their personal journey that brought them to the table today? Let's keep going down this path. So what I'm hearing is there's not a mold, you know,

there's not a go out and look for this candidate that fits this mold. That's not really the case. It comes down to the individual, the why, you know, the reasoning, but then you as the owner, it comes down to interviewing and vetting and kind of doing the due diligence upfront to ultimately get to their why and know them and understand them as best as you can before you, you know, make them an offer. So let's talk about that piece. How, what have you learned in interviewing these people? Or what do you recommend that people ask to vet them as much as possible up front? You know, Miriam, you're kind of hitting on something. I just, I kind of wish that we did more to teach people about how to interview and how

to find people. You know, that was the thing. I came from an entrepreneur family, but I obviously, you know, I was never in a leadership position before. Suddenly I'm like, I'm the business owner. I was always the quiet little sister who followed in everybody's footsteps and just did what I was told, you know? And, and then all of a sudden I find myself, I now have this business and I need people. I mean,

like, I can't do this without people. And I have no idea. What do I look for? What questions do I ask? What am I allowed to ask? What am I not? And you know, I couldn't find anything on the internet. I really couldn't find any books really that really taught you how to interview. There was no, you know, conference, you know, like topics that was like, here's how you find your people. It was like, I think it's just kind of like, oh, you go with your gut. Good luck with that. I don't, I don't know. So disclose, people need the blueprint. I know, you know, give us give us what you've learned, give us as much as you can. This is really interesting. No, yeah, I don't know that I have the blueprint, but I'll share a few things that I have learned and just through a lot of research. And, you know, for me, it's a big piece of the why. I mean,

my whole reason for stepping into this role and my whole, you know, my whole reason for my company is my heart. I mean, like I found the need that we needed. And then I realized that we had, you know, I had never heard of home care until my husband got sick. And then now all of a sudden I'm like, your world is opened to what the need is. So I think that the why, like, is such a big piece of it. That's, that's a huge part of when you're looking for it. And then just, you know, asking the right questions. And for me, it was kind of like finding, first of all, what is your core values? And I'm not just talking about like, you know, we all see the plaques on the wall that has this beautiful mission statement and here are our four core values, but do you really live and breathe it? And so a few years back, we did go through our core values and we really honed in on what is it that makes adult care assistants who they are. And so, and then we formulated some questions regarding that. So for our, for us,

I mean, everybody has their own for us. Heart is our number one core value, advocacy, and impact, making a positive impact. And so we actually designed questions as we were starting to look at people, whether it's our caregivers, or a management leadership position that are surrounding those three core values and really trying to find out, do they have the heart? Do they have that care, compassion, empathy? Are, you know, is people important to them? You know, are they an advocate? Are they going to speak up and, you know, and stand on a soapbox if they want to? Do they have passion? Are they going to be a

good communicator? You know, both ways, right? And then the impact, you know, are they going to be making that positive impact in somebody's life, and that's going to be that dependability, and doing the right thing when nobody's looking, and, you know, and just stepping up, and being, you know, having integrity, I mean, there's just so many different, you know, adjectives I could make for that, so we created and tried to find ways of trying to really utilize that as kind of the base of a lot of our questions. Of course, we're asking questions like, can they do the job? The right to play kind of questions.

But, you know, what are some ways that we can figure that out? So I did write down my four favorite questions that are different. Because you can Google, you know, interview questions, and that gives you a nice start. But I do have four questions that I love asking that kind of take you down a little bit different path and not necessarily just for our core values, but it gives you a neat introspective of what is going on. You know, and you can always do what are the different, you know, personality profile tests like disc and all those. But I find that these questions, I can get a lot of information.

And so one of them is what is the most embarrassing moment of your career? And then, you know, or your biggest failure in your career? And then, you know, how did you handle that embarrassment? And what I'm looking for there is going to be, first of all, you know, you know, humble, are you going to like, oh, I never really had one? Or am I going to be honest and say, you know, I totally screwed up something. And I'm really embarrassed to actually be saying this out loud. but this is what I learned from it. This is how I handled it. Here's how I could handle it better. You know, like, are they going to be somebody who is going to be moldable and humble enough to be able to say, you know what, I'm not perfect? Are they going to be honest? There's a lot of information you can pull just from that question and how they respond to it.

It's a tough question to ask, right? Tough one to answer. I love that question because it just it gives you so much insight about the person. My number two was, can you tell me about somebody who's better at you as something that's really, really important to you? And it's interesting on some of the different takes on that. But again, you know, are you jealous of them? Is it something that you try to, you know, learn as much as you can from them? Are you feeling intimidated by them? You can get a lot of great information about who that person is by just asking, you know, tell me about that. Just listen to their story. Just stop and really listen when they're talking. My third one is,

tell me about your work ethic as a teenager. You know, I know that their work ethics typically change, but you do get a little bit of insight as to like, their personal culture, like, what are they like when they start talking about a teenager, and you start feeling a little bit more of the dynamic, you know, and, and sometimes they'll tell you, well, you know, as a teenager, I was really lazy, but, you know, I learned this from it, or I've always been a hard worker, and I had a job from the time I was 16 years old, and I've always worked and, you know, learned this from it or I've always been a hard worker and I had a job from the time I was 16 years old and I've always worked and you know so you get a little information there and then the last question I think is kind of fun we always ask for referrals you know like

references not referrals sorry references and we do check the references but I found that if you ask the the applicant or the person that you're talking to tell me what you think like you know we go over each one of the referrals and you know know, what do you think, you know, Mary is going to say about you when I call them? Because they typically, they will lie to you, but they typically won't lie for somebody else. And so when they're actually answering that question, you're probably getting a pretty honest answer because they don't want you to call and find out that they lied. So let them speak on behalf of somebody else is kind of an interesting tactic to kind of bring something back to see, you know,

what they what their own and also, you know, are they self aware? You know, is another great piece that you're getting out of it. So those are my four fun, different questions, maybe that you don't normally hear in an interview, but I think are really good to kind of give you some insight. Amazing. You didn't tell me those beforehand. So I'm honestly just like absorbing. I think two and three are so unique. I personally have never heard those. And I think they're like you explained them. They're like crafted in a way to, it's kind of like a, kind of a surface level question, but their answer is so telling. And I think that is what we're getting at, which is like, it's really hard to vet people. It's hard to like get a taste of someone in a 30 to 60 minute conversation. But if you ask really tactful

questions like this, their response tells you so much about them. So thank you for sharing this. I imagine like when you said four questions, everyone's like grabbing their notepads and like writing those down. And I hope people do because those are unique. And the cool thing about interviewing is like you said, you've developed and learned and tried and tested and failed, but you've landed on what works for you. I would encourage anyone listening to this, write those down, try those in your next interview, you know, test them and see if they resonate with people or what answers you get. There is no mold for interviewing, but I love that you shared those. And I encourage people to try them out, you know, and see, see how they work for them. The other thing that I want to go back to slightly was, was when you

were talking about core values. I don't know if you listened to last week's session that I actually was interviewed by Connor and talked about the trends that I've seen from the most successful agencies. And one of them was this hire, fire, review and reward based off of your core values. And I think that is a differentiator as an employer. If you hire, fire, review and reward based off your core values, you will find people that are a good fit for your business. And so I love that you mentioned that. And I think it's a great exercise for any business. Like you said, you might have core values in a mission statement on a plaque, in a notebook, written down somewhere, but living, breathing, and implementing

processes in your business based off those core values, including interviewing, is so powerful. So I'm glad that you mentioned that because I think that is something that people can start doing today if they're not. And like you mentioned, I think you said a few years ago, you kind of hashed out your core values. Again, a lot of businesses probably need to start there. And so anything else that you want to share on maybe a success story of focusing on your core values to bring about someone that that really resonated with? Yeah, one thing I wanted to mention, you know, also with just trying to figure out that whole idea of, you know, how do you find, you know, the right interview? Or how do you go about that whole process of interviewing somebody? And how do you like take that information that you got during that conversation and really turn it around? There is a really good book that I did

find. And a lot of my ideas have come out of that as well. And some people have heard of him, most people have, he's a pretty, pretty well known author. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of the ideal team player by Patrick Liccione. He also has a podcast that's really good as well. But he actually, in that book, he does talk about the humble, hungry, and smart, and that being like something that, you know, if you're looking for somebody,

and he kind of walks through, and he actually has a tool on the internet that has some really great interview questions as well. And so that, I guess, give a selfless plug to him. I don't know. I don't know him or anything. But that book I found to be very helpful for me when I was kind of like, every time I start looking at, you know, hiring, especially a new manager, I really do go back and I do review my notes out of that book. And I have actually has a book laying here. And you can see I have all of my little post-it notes. And I go back to the title one more time, Ideal team player.

The ideal team player by Patrick Lencioni. Awesome. Want to make sure everyone caught that. Yeah. And so that's one great book. I mean, there's several that I have read. I like to try to, I still feel like I'm new to it. I know I've been doing this a long time, but I feel like I still need, there's so much more I can learn.

And I try to eat up everything I can because I do think it's such an important piece, an important role. And you just asked me to share, you know, like a success story. Can I first share a non-success story? Because I mean, like, I've already kind of shared one with you with Sean, when he, you know, I was bringing him on, you know, that was a success story when he shared with me his heart, you know, some of the questions we asked, and I got down to his reasons, you know, as to why he was changing careers and why he wanted to work in home care. You know, those questions really helped lead me to the fact that he was aligned with our same vision and who we are. And so he, you know, that was something that was a really good place for us to come together. I think that a not so successful story would be like, you know,

sometimes when we're doing it in a hurry or whatever, I would also encourage people to really take their time. And we were in a position that we needed to hire somebody rather quickly. And so I was kind of thinking, you know, I'm kind of getting to the point I have, you know, managers and stuff like that. They can, they can interview the person, I'm just gonna let them make the decision. And not that they made a bad decision, but we didn't vet the person completely. So we actually have a minimum of three interviews with any candidate for a leadership position. We do a phone interview, just to kind of like go over some basic stuff to make sure that they, you know, first of all, you know, are, you know, are going to be a fit as far as, you know,

the maybe a little bit of background, you know, their availability, various things like that, like, you know, how do they speak on the phone? How do they present themselves? Are they professional? Just to kind of like kind of vet some of the applicants and narrow it down a little bit more, we kind of go through all the applicants, kind of get it down to maybe three people, maybe four, have phone interviews with them. And then those that, and my recruiter does that. So I utilize different team players to actually have these interviews. I think it's important to have more than one person touch, touch the applicant because you're looking for a culture fit. Because I can tell you that the person who can do the job the best is not always

the best person for the job. And then I typically have like the branch manager, or if it's a position in a different office, if I have somebody who's in that position, like if I'm looking for a scheduler, for example, and I have a scheduler in another office, I may ask that scheduler to do an interview, because they have a knowledge base and probably have a better idea of what it takes to do that job than I would or somebody else would. So I'll let them do the second interview and then they would push it on to the next person. I'm the last person to meet them. And often I stay completely out of the process up until that point. I might go through the applicants to kind of say, these are the ones I want you to look at,

but I try to stay out of that until right before I interviewed them that I read through all the notes. I don't want to be too swayed by their information. So we don't really talk about it until after we've all interviewed them. But in this particular case that I was telling you about, I didn't go through all of that. So I basically, this person had two interviews, they were quick, and they were almost like back to back, didn't have them meet the team or anything. They stepped into the field really quickly. And, and, you know, kind of, you know, stepped into the role. And the first thing I noticed, I have never had a big issue with my staff having like interpersonal issues and they started eating each other alive. I was like, what happened in this

office? Like there was just like, just everybody turned on each other almost instantly, but the person was out there doing their job. They were hitting, it was a salesperson. They were hitting the, they were making all the sales calls. They were working their tail off. It lasted three weeks before it finally all came to a head and they stormed out. And it was like, wow, what did I miss?

Like everything seems so on point. You know, what did we miss in this whole thing? Well, we did it too quickly. We were desperate to hire somebody, did it too quickly. We were desperate to hire somebody, get somebody out there. We didn't take our time. And the other thing was we didn't let them meet the team. And so I often will also have some kind of a group interview, meet and greet kind of a thing. It doesn't have to be there. The people who they're meeting with aren't actually necessarily the decision makers, but the people that they're

going to be working with. I think it's very important that you see the interaction, see if they're going to be oil and water, not all personalities are going to match. So even though this person did an amazing job on the on their job, they didn't, they didn't mix well with the team I had in the building. And I don't care how good you are, you're not going to, it's not going to be a success story if you don't have that, that continuity within the team and in that mutual respect. So good unsuccessful story. Let's call it that. Thanks for sharing that you covered a lot of information that I probably wouldn't have like gotten to. So that was fantastic. And I was wondering if you were going to come full circle and talk about like group interviews or team interviews, because I think that's really important. I have been on the receiving end and on like the forefront of, of being in team interviews and they are really intimidating and they're very

different. You know, it's, it's one thing to, to talk to someone one-to-one in an interview. It's another thing to have four or five, 10 people in an interview. It's a very different format, but it also discloses important information. So I think that's interesting. I'll share with you just so it can be, and you can see the nervousness and it's interesting because sometimes the current team is also nervous. So like, oh my gosh, why am I in here? Whatever. So I'll share with you just a couple of fun things. So I will tell the applicant before we bring them in for that that group meeting or you know meet and greet or team interview or what have you but I do want everybody to have opportunity to make sure it feels like it's the right fit and I will

tell them that and I'll tell my team that like I you know you're a strong candidate and you know I'm trying to make our decision but I want to make sure that this is going to work I want to make sure that you're going to fit with the team the team feels like they're going to fit with you it's you interviewing us as much as we are interviewing you. So come prepared to ask us some questions as well. You'll get to know the team a little bit, see how you feel about it, because this is not just our decision. You're trying, you're interviewing us for your job as well. And then there's one more interview question that I don't always use, but if I see that we're having like just some nervousness,

I will throw out the question. So this is, comes from my background working internationally with people all over the world. I am a huge chocolate lover. And so I would have people from all over the world sending me chocolate. And I started calling it, I've been blessed because every time I would get chocolate in the mail or delivered, I'd be like, oh my gosh, I've been blessed. So we call it blessings in my office. And if you're ever needing to be blessed, please stop by. We have chocolate in all of our offices. And it's blessings.

And some days, yes, you need to be blessed more than other days. And some days you need to bless others. And some days people really need to be blessed and you throw it at them. So one of our interview questions is, so are you a white chocolate or dark chocolate kind of a person? And it's not, it doesn't mean anything. And we joke about, well, if you say white, then you're not getting hired, but it's just something to kind of dissipate. So sometimes you have to throw a crazy question in there to kind of like relax the room. And so I think it's okay to kind of be silly with it. You know, it doesn't all have to be stuffy. And, you know, like, you know, if you play a little bit, like, what is your team culture? Like, do you just are you very stuffy in the in the office? Or do you have a little bit of fun and enjoy each other? So bring that into that group interview as well. And you'll see that the barriers go down and people start interacting a little bit more and then sit back. And in those interviews, I try to stay very quiet and just really watch body language, the conversations.

Is there any laughing? Are they having eye contact? There's just so much that you can observe to kind of see if you're going to be melding well or if it's going to be, you know, like, I don't know if I like this person. Again, I'm so glad you're referencing this because that is an essential part of a group interview is you want to give the candidate an accurate taste of the team. And if it's all stuffy, if it's all rehearsed, that's not really an accurate picture. And so keeping it light, I was just thinking of an interview I was in and they asked, you know, like, what sea creature are you? And I was like, so caught off guard. Like, I don't know, like, I'm not an animal person, but it like put me on the spot. And then everyone shared, you know, the whole group shared and it was just light and fun, but also interesting and just got everyone comfortable going into it. So the thing about group interviews is they do take more thought. They do take more time. Everyone's time is precious in the office, but I would also advise like preparation going into it. And then also like post-meeting feedback, like right after, you know, huddle for five or 10 minutes and just let everyone kind of give like a knee jerk reaction

to the candidate. So they do take more time, but like you've identified, I think the vetting and just like going through this thorough process and including a team or a group interview is really impactful to give everyone like a more accurate depiction of the candidate and of the team itself. I 100% agree. So what, as far as timing goes, I'm curious, you mentioned how this one was just too fast. What would you say is like an average time to hire for an office staff? I know it's a range. I know every role is probably different. But if you had to kind of generalize a time to hire, what would you say? Yeah, and I think everybody's on that speed to hire kick right now. And I know that that's so incredibly important because you don't want to miss out on the candidate that's going to be the

perfect candidate. But if they're truly the perfect candidate, they're going to be feeling it too, a little bit, you know, if they're really, really wanting it. So it's hard to kind of say, but I would say that we on average are probably hiring somebody in about a two-week period. Sometimes, you know, it'll last a little bit longer if something gets in the way. But by the time you're having those interviews, you know, one after, you know, having, probably looking at at least a two-week window to kind of do that. And just, you know, I would just say, though, that take your time. Like, there is not a huge rush. I know with our caregivers, we tend to be like, if we're not getting them in the field within, you know, 48 hours, we've lost them. And it's a different role. And honestly, it's going to be a more intimate role. And honestly, it's going to be a more intimate role. So you definitely need to make

sure you're having a person that's going to really fit in a little bit more with the team, because they're going to be in on your day in and day out. They're going to be the ones representing your company and representing you. And they're going to be the ones that are interacting with your clients and your caregivers and with the community. And so it is really important that you take your time and move forward as you see fit. I don't know that there's an exact timeframe, but I would say our average is about two weeks. Yeah. And I'm glad you drew the distinction. We talk a lot about time to hire on the caregiver side. And like you said, that's a very different hiring process. The speed to hire is way more critical with office staff. I would

say two to three weeks is good. Maybe that's even a little quick, like all of the legwork you put in upfront, you will be grateful for down the road. You know, if you vet them more thoroughly and are more cautious upfront, you know, that should reap the reward in the longterm. So I just was curious though, you know, what that looked like for you. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the onboarding process. So once you found the person, you vetted them, you know, they're onboarded. What does the first, I don't know, you tell me the cadence, what does the cadence look like when they get onboarded the first seven days, the first 30 days? What does that onboarding process look like for your agency?

Yeah. And so when we're talking about leadership positions, like managers or schedulers, or, you know, you know, your salespeople or what have you, I like to take a very hands-on approach with it. Again, they're representing my company. And as we grow, I mean, like, you know, we're not huge. We don't have nine locations. So, it's still a viable piece for me to be able to do that. At some point, I'm probably going to have to say, I cannot do this with each and every single person. So, you know, in that regard, and back when I had, you know, my branch managers, it was the same idea, but it was them who was doing it. And so the first, you know, couple of weeks, at least,

it is very much hands on in things. And so typically, the first day, you know, of course, we have them sit in with our caregiver orientation, I want them to hear what we're, how we're interacting with the caregivers. For me, I want them to see how the importance of the caregiver, that's a huge piece of who we are. And so when a caregiver comes, you can have a referral source walk in my office and we'll be like, oh yeah, we'll be with you in a minute. A caregiver walks in, everybody drops in.

They go, oh my gosh, it's like a celebrity walked in. So, and I want them to be a part of that culture. So we start showing that right away. So, you know, whatever the first orientation that is happening that, you know, if it's the day that they walk in the office, we have an orientation, they're sitting in that orientation with the caregivers to kind of hear what we're telling the caregivers, meeting the caregivers, kind of doing that orientation with them, that type of thing as well. So we do that. I always spend every single person who's been hired on as a leadership position, the first day I have lunch

with them, just them and I. I want them to feel comfortable with me. I don't want to be the big scary boss. I'm not that kind of personality. So I want them to feel comfortable with me so that we can start. And that's when we can kind of get to know, yo, tell me you have kids. Tell me about your kids. We haven't asked those, you know, in the interview. And so we want to have that opportunity to get to know each other. And then a lot of times I spend a lot of time with them shadowing me. I talk a lot about our background, my background, the background of the company really important. Um, we walk them through our operating system, you know, you know, how we, you know, how we hold our meetings, how we, you know, we have our morning meeting every morning. We do the standup meeting. This is what it means. Um, a lot of times I will have them shadow each one of the office managers in the first week or so, so that anybody who's in the office or whatever, they'll go out in the field with the case manager, see what case

management looks like. Um, they might as a, you know'll go out in the field with a case manager, see what case management looks like. They might go out with a salesperson and go to a networking event or something so they can have an idea of what that looks like. They may sit with a scheduler to walk through some schedules and talk about, you know, what are we looking for and why is this important and that's important or whatever. So they literally will kind of sit down with each person. They'll even sit with the front desk receptionist and watch them answer phones for a couple hours and maybe, you know, how do we greet people and things like that. So they have a position I have somebody else in, I have them working with them to kind of learn the position. I utilize a lot of, you know, resources like your software company. If you're, you know, using your scheduling software company often has a lot of videos or classes that you can take and utilizing those types of things.

I tend to assign books to read various books that I think would be helpful for them to get started or podcasts. Yes, they listen to you, Miriam. You know, things that can help bring that, you know, that information to the table. So I try to utilize as many different ways as I possibly can to, to bring them into our culture to bring them into, you know, knowing about us and, and, and then also trying to teach them and train them on what their job is. Awesome. I think cross training is the best place to start. And it sounds like that's what they spend a lot of time doing when they're first onboarded. What would you say the timeframe of

that looks like? Is that a week or two weeks or 30? You know, what, what is kind of the timeframe of what you just shared for someone that's coming on? Again, it kind of depends on, you know, what the calendar is looking like and their position, right? So like, I just onboarded a sales manager in one of our offices, and the poor guy, he spent a lot of time with me, you know, for about two weeks straight, you know, every networking event, every, every appointment I had, I wanted him hearing me talk about the company. I sent him to my other location, took him up to Phoenix. And he spent a lot of time with our sales manager up there going out on sales calls with her, things like that. Just really, like, again, hearing, it's not just knowing how to sell home care, it's knowing how to sell

adult care assistance, you know, like, how are we different? What's our differentiators and hearing us talk about what's so important in our passions. So, you know, it kind of depends on that calendar aspect of it, as far as you know, what I can get them in on and things like that. I would say that probably the first two weeks, they're spending a lot of time just shadowing. By the end of that two weeks, we were starting to send him out kind of on his own. Okay, you go do these three things. We talk about, you know, okay, go through your referral list and try to figure out who is the most important people you think would be important. Or, you know, go through Google, you know, I don't know, commit, you know, rehabs or

whatever. And you bring to me who you think is going to be the most important. And then, okay, now you go out there as soon as we look at it over. Yeah, you're on the right track. You go out there and do that and then come back and we meet again. Let's report. What did you learn? What did you see?

What did you do? What questions do you have now that you're out there with yourself and you don't have somebody to say things? And so, you know, even though they're off doing it on their own, you're still spending a lot of time pouring back into them. So it is a time consuming thing, but I think to do it right, you know,

the greatest gift you can give anybody is time, because it's the one commodity that is not, you know, renewable. So once you give your time, it's gone. And I think it's so important to just spend time to really give them my dad used to say, you don't have to be the smartest person in the room or the smartest kid in the class, you just need to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. So, you know, everybody I hire, they're smarter than I am. I'm learning from them. I utilize my own team to train new people because they know the job better than anybody. That's their job. You know, that is a great rule of thumb in business, you know, and in hiring. Something that I want to call out that you referenced is getting feedback

from these people in those first couple of weeks. They are a fresh pair of eyes on your people, on your processes, on the interworkings of your business. And so even speaking from personal experience, I love kind of the first 30 days of starting a new job because there's just this opportunity to see everything from like a fresh lens. And so I would advise, you know, your existing people to foster this environment where those people can ask questions, you know, sometimes they're timid and like, don't want to like poke and prod, but I would, you know, advise like the reverse of that, which is let them ask as many questions, let them poke holes and prod, because it's a

really good learning opportunity for everyone, the candidate, you know, or the new hire, and also the people in the office at the time. It's just foster this like feedback loop and this open environment where everyone can learn through that process when they're just getting started. Yeah, Miriam, I think that you just made a really good point too, because I think that that's another piece, pardon me, that is so important when you're looking at hiring somebody is, are they inquisitive? Like in your interview process, I think that's a trait that you really do have to kind of keep an eye out for, because if they're asking questions and if you're wanting to foster that side of your business where you have people who are interested in learning and growing and they're going to be inquisitive and, you know, and things like that, you know, developing questions. And we do have some in our interview process that is like, you know, what is it about, you know, the, you know, the company or this industry that intrigues you?

What would be, you know, the one thing that's intriguing you or something like that? But you want to find the person who is going to want to learn. And so that would automatically, those questions would be hopefully holistically happening and getting feedback and learning from each other and not feeling like, no, this is my space. I guess it's just depending upon the culture, but I don't think that most of us want that.

Whereas like we're all very segregated in what we do. If you want to foster that, that cross training and things, you want to look for people who are inquisitive. Absolutely. And don't be, don't be concerned when they ask questions, you know, welcome the questions with open arms and see it as an opportunity for everyone to learn from each other. I want to spend the last 10 minutes or so talking about how you develop these people. I think this is a passion of yours. When you bring someone new on, obviously, you know, there's that onboarding process and they kind of get up to speed and, you know, moving in their role. Something that you care deeply about is developing these people.

Like you mentioned, your tenure is three and a half years. That's awesome. moving in their role, something that you care deeply about is developing these people. Like you mentioned, your tenure is three and a half years. That's awesome. In home care to keep administrators for that long, I think that's a huge accomplishment. And you have people that have been there a lot longer and you as the president owner develop these people and that's a skill set in and of itself. So talk us through your approach and how you go about developing these people into becoming leaders in your organization. Yeah, I think I wish I could remember the book that this came out of. So I'll just I'll take credit for it then. Right. But, you know, there is my voice is going, I apologize. There is an idea of the fact that, you know, whenever you start a

new job, if you think about you kind of go through the honeymoon that, you know, whenever you start a new job, if you think about you kind of go through the honeymoon period, you know, and then you go from the honeymoon period to, you know, you kind of pass through it all, and then you kind of get to the burnout, right. And so the idea is you don't want to ever get to that burnout. And inevitably, you know, it does happen. And, you know, everybody grows and changes and, you know, their passions and their, and their, you know, their calling or whatever, it changes too. So, you know, one thing I want to make sure I point out is that if somebody does move on, you, you can't, and I learned this, this was a hard lesson for me. I, I love my team. And I spend a lot of time on my team. So they become personal friends, but as the boss, you know, But as the boss, the true saying of it's lonely at the top is real because a lot of times

they're more important to you than maybe you are to them can be maybe one way of looking at it or whatever. But at the end of the day, you're still the boss and you can only have such a relationship so far. Your closeness can only get so far. Otherwise, it gets odd or weird and hard, right? And so with that, you know, you have to be a little bit careful regarding that. But you want to keep that passion and things like that. And when people leave, we tend to get our feelings hurt and take it very personally. And sometimes it's not a personal reason, like the two that I

just lost. A lot of people made assumptions that, oh, there was a big falling out because you had two people leave at the same time. Nothing like that. In fact, it couldn't be further from the truth. Both of them had very real personal reasons that it was time. And, you know, instead of like getting wrapped up in the, you are leaving. And so now you hate me. We need to celebrate each other and celebrate their next successes. And I've seen that even with our caregivers. And it's so cool because like I have caregivers that work for me, we have a big nursing school, actually close to both of our offices, but we get a lot of nursing students. And we had this gal who was amazing. And when she went to leave, she was a nursing school, but she decided to change after working in home care,

and she went in to become a physician, she now refers to us as a doctor. It's so cool to be able to see this caregiver who, you know, back in 2012, 2013, was a nursing student. And now she's gone through it all. And she's a brand new doctor out there. And she's like, I used to work for this company, this is who you need to go to. And if you celebrate them, it like pays back in the end, right. And so, you know, we need to not take that too personally and try to celebrate somebody when they find a new career or they career. And I try to say that anybody who comes through our doors, they change us. Adult care assistance is today what it is because of all the people who've walked through our doors in one way or another and poured

themselves into my company. In turn, I hope that we've poured into their company and I do a lot of leadership training and pouring into them. And I certainly hope that they take a little bit of us with them and make the world a little bit better placed by what they learned with us. So I do, that is a huge passion of mine and I'll try not to like go too overboard, but I think it's just so important. And, and it was early on when I first, like I said, I never been a leadership position. I had hired this salesperson and she was with me five years. She was amazing.

But our sales started kind of like, you know, just kind of plateauing. And then we started kind of dropping down. I'm like, what the heck? Why are we growing? Why? Yeah, what's going on? And I was talking to somebody. I was trying to just like, I don't know what to do with this.

And they were like, well, have you trained her? And I was like, what do you mean? Salesperson. They're like, yeah, but have you trained her? And that was like this, mean salesperson they're like yeah but have you trained her and that was like this like you're gonna hit me upside the head with a two by four and I don't think of it like hit me hard because I was like I kind of was seriously under the you know the assumption that you knew sales because you were a salesperson you just that was your personality um I didn't know you had to train these people and And it's so silly now, but I mean, that was just such a huge aha moment for me, just huge. So from there, I kind of taken that and maybe I've taken it too far, but I so feel like that training is so important. for my schedulers to have training. Maybe it might be through the HCA away

or through the scheduling software or another venue where there is something about scheduling. And if I can have my scheduler take an hour out of her day to sit on a webinar or take them to a conference with me so they can sit in and listen to other people's ideas, that's huge, right? Again, I utilize a lot of podcasts for my team. We have a quarterly meeting that we typically have a book or a podcast or an article or something that I've tried to give them up to

before that quarterly meeting and kind of our state of the company kind of thing. And part of that meeting is our education piece, like where we all come back and share what we learned or what we took, what was our three takeaways or, you know, what have you about that book or whatever we've utilized. I also spend a lot of time with my team. Again, that's the one gift I can give them that is probably the biggest gift is my time. I'm super busy too, but to be able to spend time with somebody one-on-one is so important. And so like yesterday, I had three of my of my leadership team, individual one hour meetings with them. And I try to do that every month, where I just sit down and we go over their KPIs, you know, are you hitting your KPIs every month? You know, like every week, we go over

it once a month, we'll say, you know, are we still hitting our KPIs? You know, and I'll ask, you know, tell me what's going really, really well, you know, and then what are you really struggling with? What can I help with? And I try to make sure I'm their biggest resource, like, what can I do to make your job easier? And I think that also helps with the burnout when they don't feel like nobody cares or nobody's listening. And then just be really super clear on your expectations. You know, if you have, and I'm a very direct person. And so, you know, everybody kind of knows, like, you're not going to get the beat around the bush. I don't know if you're mad at me or not. I'm just going to tell you, like, you need to change this.

But being clear on those, what your expectation is really solves a lot of problems before it actually becomes bigger, if you just tell them what your expectation is. And then keep that open communication is huge. Checking in. We have our morning meetings every morning. We have 30 minutes and it ends. It's a hard stop at 30 minutes. Most of the meetings are 15 minutes or less, but we have a different topic every morning we go through so we can continue to have that. And then make sure you're praising them. Tell them what they're doing well. You know, what do you admire about them or what have you seen? What efforts are you seeing? I think sometimes we forget to tell somebody when you notice, but it's so important that you notice. My previous boss, the one thing I took away from him,

we would do these really big events once a year and big events, and it would be like really long days. And sometimes I would just leave just like so exhausted and so burned out, like why in the world am I doing this every day? And I'd walk in, I had this notebook that I kept all my notes in and my checklist, make sure I have everything done. And he would have turned it to the next blank page and just went, you rocked it today. Thank you. And he would just leave that. And I cannot tell you that even, you know, 12 years later, that still sticks with me. And I often go back and say, you know what, I want to be like Scott, when I grow up, I want to be the boss who notices and that that

takes you tenfold. It's like just it doesn't have to be the big bonus. I mean, yes, I think we also need a bonus. But sometimes, just sharing that you notice something will take you so much further down the road than maybe throwing money at it. Those are just good comments and genuine. I really could just like feel how genuine everything you just said was, you know, you called out a few things that we don't really talk about, you know, like being, feeling alone at the leadership level. I think that is something we don't talk enough about. And I just love how there's a few like nuggets in there that were really genuine. And I appreciate you being willing to share some of those things. I think for me, what I just gathered from that and what it comes down to is prioritizing learning and development. If that's something that you're not doing today,

that's a great place to start. And it looks different. Like you said, for every role, the training, the need, it looks different, but it's prioritizing that. Prioritize everyone's learning and everyone will be better off for it. And so just having that mindset of prioritizing learning and development. And then I love what you continue to call out, which was your time. Giving these people your personal time and attention goes such a long way. And I think everyone can relate to that when a manager, when a boss, even when a colleague just like gives you their undivided attention goes such a long way. And so you also called that out multiple times of just being there for them and having that one-to-one relationship and giving them the time to talk to you and get to know you

personally. And then you called out a lot of specifics, meeting cadence, morning standups, one-on-ones monthly, the quarterly state of the company. There's the processes that follow all of this and kind of give it a structure. Learning and development is kind of vague and can be generalized, therefore it can get lost. But putting processes in place to ensure that there's continuous learning in your organization. I think that was great. You, you kind of ran with it and I love it because you've shared so many nuggets. That's like probably a 10 minutes that people have to like re-listen to, to make sure they can grasp all of that. But, but we are at time, Crystal. Thank you so much for everything that you've shared today. I don't know about you, but it went by really fast for me.

But I feel like you've given so many good insights in the 60 minutes. So thank you so much. Well, thank you, Miriam. I so appreciate the opportunity. I hope that somebody can take something and run with it and make it a little bit better. And I think that we can all learn from each other. So I appreciate the opportunity to share. But let me tell you, I'm learning so much from you. I so appreciate you putting these

podcasts together. This is amazing. So thank you. I want to put you on the spot here at the end. I know you've been in the industry for a while. And you know, all the big names. Is there anyone that you would love to hear from? I don't know if you have like an industry idol or someone that you love or aspire to, who are those people for you? Oh my gosh. I don't, I'm really fortunate to, to by serving on different boards and things like that and being able to, to just learn from each of them. I absolutely love getting to go to the conferences and, and, you know, all the different ones. It's not just the ACOA. We just came from that one. So that one's always on top of mind. But getting to meet everybody from around the country, there's so much we can learn because every state has different things that we can pick up on.

So I don't know if I can name somebody in specific right now. That's okay. I'm putting you on the spot. I'm also, we're putting together a list for next year's podcast. We've already got a lot of names and a lot of people, but I respect you and appreciate you. And so I imagine you have people that you like look up to that we could, that we could draw on. So maybe you'll have to shoot me an email with some of your industry aspirations. But again,

thank you for being here. Thanks for everyone listening. I hope you see these thank yous coming in the chat. This was a great session and I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving next week. And we'll look forward to being back with everyone in December. So thanks again, Crystal, and take care, everyone. Thank you so much. That's a wrap. This podcast was made by the team at CareSwitch, the first AI-powered management software for home care agencies. If you want to automate away the menial of your day-to-day with AI so that you and your team can focus on giving great care, check us out at careswitch.com.