Home Care U - The Processes and Culture It Takes to Grow 300% Year-Over-Year (Becky Reel Pt. 2)

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

Becky Reel's agency earned the highest client and caregiver satisfaction scores of any home care agency in North America while growing as rapidly as 300% YoY—all while she was raising two young kids with her husband and living a full life outside of her work. In part 1 we learned her story; in part 2, we dig into the processes and strategy she used to make it all happen.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 CareSwitch. Enjoy the session. Okay, welcome to this year's last Home Care U class.

It's been a great year. For those who subscribe, we sent out an email with some of our most popular episodes. We've gotten lots of great feedback. It's been super fun and fulfilling for me personally. And we also have an awesome lineup already started for next year's schedule. We'll be resuming these classes in the new year. So please go to careswitch.com slash homecareu and you can see what the upcoming classes are. And thanks to all those who are supporting us by listening. Today, we are bringing back

Becky Real from last week. Welcome back to the show, Becky. Thank you. Excited to be back. This will be a really good episode. So just to give a little bit of context, especially for those who haven't listened to last week's episode yet, Becky recently sold her agency that she had grown for several years before that and sort of not quite founded, but came in in the early stages and turned things around. Is that kind of an accurate way to say that, Becky? Okay, cool. They achieved

lots of really impressive milestones and stats. There were multiple years where they grew 300% in revenue year over year. And then I think kind of most recently at the end of her time with her agency, they earned the top spot on the home care top 100 list by home care pulse. And what that list is, is of all the thousands of agencies that are contracted with home care pulse to have surveys done with their clients and caregivers. They take those scores, they tabulate them, and the 100 agencies with the highest client and caregiver satisfaction scores are ranked in order on this big list and posted publicly online. And Becky's agency was the top agency on that list in 2022. I mean, to be clear, this is the most credible ranking I have seen of client and caregiver satisfaction

with home care agencies. And it is the top. So they, she represents the top rated home care agency in all of North America for 2022. So today we're going to dig into the strategic decisions, the culture, the processes, all the nitty gritty stuff that helped her to accomplish this. We talked about some of this last time we talked on various things got onto lots of tangents, we'll get on a lot more tangents today. And I'm really excited for it to kind of give the scope of what we're trying to dig into with all of our questions here. I actually kind of wrote up like three goals for today's episode. So we want to understand, you know, first, every agency says they know the secret to success, to satisfaction is to focus on their caregivers, give great care, et cetera, and lots to it

successfully. But the fact is like, we're, you know, gathered here today in this episode, because we're talking with an agency who truly just like rocked this and has the data to back it up. And we want to understand, you know, what did you do, Becky, to make the talking points and objectives and context can we identify to help agencies in determining if and how the way you did things make sense in their situations or if it maybe isn't right for them, but there still are things they can learn from it. And then third, I think just in general, we're trying to understand like what were you doing differently than the typical agency when it comes to specific strategic or operational things. All that being said, that's our goal. That's what we're trying to get to today. Becky, do you mind just briefly recapping your story, including how you got into running your agency, how long you operated it for, and some of the things that you are proudest of? Sure. Well, again, thank you for having me back.

This is a huge honor and I'm really excited to be here. So my parents had started for Papa's sake in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago after my grandfather, who I dotingly called Papa. Both my children are named after him. He was a big, big part of my life. So they started it after he had a tragic end of life at a nursing home and wanted

to keep his legacy alive and give families an alternative besides facilities. So they started it. It was a cute little project, but it was not super profitable and they were not doing very well. So I came in with a marketing and sales background and I said, let me build this up for you for a few years so you can sell it and ultimately have a nice retirement. I have worked for multi Fortune 500 companies, leading sales and marketing teams. I thought this would be something I could do very easily for 2-3 years. Fast forward 10 years later, I was still there. I loved it. I loved what I was doing. I was providing a service for the community. We kept growing. We kept winning awards. I found my niche in the marketplace, but it was time to sell. So my parents could retire so I could fulfill that promise. So we did sell earlier this year. My parents are now jet setting all over the world and doing everything that I was hoping they were

going to be able to do. And now I'm taking my learnings and my experience and helping other agencies, whether it's a franchise or independent, helping them grow, find balance, whatever their goals are. So I founded, it's called Real Home Care Consulting. My last name is Real, R-E-E-L. So that's what I'm doing now. And I've been doing this for a while and I'm loving watching other agencies find success and find that balance because it's very hard in this industry, as you all know. Well, thanks. Love it. Glad to have you back. And yeah, for those listening who may be interested in Becky's consulting services, we'll share the information for that and how you can get in touch with her at the end of the episode. I guess my first question, you mentioned before when we talked that you really didn't do much traditional advertising for much of the lifetime of the agency.

You didn't have a marketer employed. And I heard you talk about on a different podcast you were on that you were taking less than 50% of the client inquiries that you were receiving due to your focus on right fit clients in the right geographic areas. So I think all this raises the question, how were you marketing? How did you get clients? What were you doing? Yeah, so we were very selective with who we not only hired, but also who we took on as clients. We, we were able to build that though that didn't happen overnight. We grew to the point that we had that luxury that we could say that wasn't a good fit, or that was too far for us. We were an independent agency. We were not a franchise. So we could go

wherever we wanted. And over the first few years, what we did and what I do with a lot of my agencies I work with is you go through a discovery phase to figure out who you are as an agency. What is your value prop? What is your identity? And for us, it was small boutique quality over quantity. And that meant we didn't go everywhere. That meant we had a very small focus of an area that we really wanted to focus on and concentrate on. And that worked for us. And that allowed us to get the most highest quality care available because we weren't running all over the Chicagoland area. But that was what worked for us. It doesn't necessarily mean that's going to work for all agencies, but I really took a very focused look

on community and how do we invest in our community. We try different marketing tactics. I believe in trying different areas in trial and error and see what works, but this isn't like a pair of shoes you see online and you keep getting a targeted ad for it over and over again. You're like, I'm going to finally get those shoes. This is a service that the need has to really be there in order for somebody to make that jump. And so it's being top of mind. It's being really highly spoke about in the community. It's having really good referral sources. I see somebody on the attendee list that was my, you know, if I couldn't help, if I couldn't help an agency, there was an agency down the street that I trusted that I knew would be a great fit if we'd have the right staff. And so having those relationships is so important and just having that reputation in the community.

So that was really, that was really the nuts and bolts of it. We can go into it more, but that was really kind of the overall strategy. Yeah. Let's talk about two parts of it. I would say first, tell me about some of the efforts you made to invest in your community. And then second, tell me about whatever referral programs you had in place, both for clients and I assume also to get new caregivers. Yeah. So we, you know, obviously the best caregiver turnover is high with any, with we, you know, obviously the best caregiver turnover is high with any, with anybody, right. We had pretty low caregiver turnover and that was attributed to, we were very careful about who we hired. Everyone is right. But we loved getting referrals from our other caregivers, our great caregivers, if they likely, if good people hang

out with good people. Right. So we offered a referral bonus. It was up to $500, depending on the amount of hours that somebody worked for referring a caregiver over after the first 90 days. And they have to be in good standing, obviously. But that was a huge way we got caregivers. And it was the good ones referred the good ones. And it just kind of kept cycling through that. We also wanted our caregivers to refer clients to us. And there's a strategy there. It's not like they're like going out and marketing for you, but if you're, if your caregivers are in

facilities with lots of other people, or they're taking the client to the grocery store, there's a strategy there to empower your caregivers to want to help refer other people that need care. And so we would give out a bonus, a percentage of bonus based off of what we were billing the client. So we incentivized our own caregivers to almost be like our own little salespeople out in the field. And that worked really well. So besides the incentive, how did you teach or empower your caregivers to kind of be their own salespeople out in the field? I mean, sales is easy if you believe in what you're doing.

If you are giving your caregivers a great experience and they love working for you and you treat them well, they're going to be your biggest ambassadors. They're going to want to sell, quote unquote, your services because they believe in it, because they know the heart's there. And it's easy. So we didn't have to do a lot. We just took care of our team. And that seems to be going through this process of when we talk and coaching other agencies, it always comes down to do what's right, treat your team well, do the unexpected in the most positive way possible. And that all comes back to people being your biggest ambassadors.

Do you remember, just to compare like how the programs work for clients versus for employee referrals? Do you remember how much the amounts were that you paid out for like a client referral versus an employee referral? Were they the same? Were they different? It was based off of what we were billing. So it was a percentage of what we were billing. Gotcha. So not like a percentage of like their first month or like, how are you calculating that? Not an ongoing thing. We did. We would do it off of the first two week because we build every other week. So we would do off the first two week billable and we would do 10%. But some agencies I've worked with, when we do something similar, they do 5%. You have to do what's right for your agency and what you can afford to do.

But for us, that was... Some of our invoices were $10,000, $12,000 for two weeks. So from a caregiver, I mean, for anybody, I would love to get that kind of bonus. It really paid off. Wow. Yeah. I mean, when you put things that way, that makes a ton of sense. And I think like you said, that only works if they're also very confident in what they are selling. And they can say firsthand that they love this agency, they love working for it, and they know that it provides great care because they give great care on its behalf. In terms of investing in your community, I mean, besides, you know, what you've already mentioned about being a great employer, were there specific events that you were sponsoring or a part of? Were there other other things you did to be seen in your community? And

what were those? Yeah, I would be careful with sponsoring events, right? Those are very, you know, basically you're giving money and your logo gets put somewhere and that's all great. And that's all great for brand awareness. But if you're sponsoring every event that comes your way, it's hard to really tie back any kind of return on that. So we didn't do a lot of sponsoring. We sponsored the chamber of commerce events because we were a big part of the chamber. And a few other local charities we would sponsor because we wanted to give back. But we didn't do a ton of sponsorships. And so this morning, I was looking at one of my clients' P&Ls.

And one of the exercises I do with all of my clients is we go through their P&Ls from the last few years. And we kind of look at where we can cut and make changes really quickly, right? And their sponsorships was significant. And there was zero, it's always hard to tie back any kind of ROI, but there was zero tieback. And so now what we're doing is we're thinking more strategically. For us, we wanted to control the events. So we started hosting the events. We started controlling where, what. And so we were doing more educational pieces for our community. Same amount of money it would cost to sponsor something, but then we're the ones driving

the agenda. We're the ones driving the email list. And so taking control of that was really successful for us and then positioned us as a leader in the community, not only because of what we did, but because we're educating our community, too. So carefully consider sponsoring events sometimes, but really focus on being the ones to do the event. Love that. And sponsor events. Absolutely. But be selective. Don't sponsor everybody that comes

through your door because I'm sure you guys are getting calls nonstop and people are popping in your office. Just be selective and make sure that there's a relationship there. And if you are going to sponsor something, really nurture that relationship and make sure that you're sticking with it and not just having your name thrown on a bunch of different banners and logos and t-shirts. That makes sense. Let's talk a little bit about your kind of typical client. What did they look like as far as needs, their weekly hours or schedule, etc. And did you have any shift minimums or unusual policies around client services that would be relevant to share for

agencies to understand your context and how you were doing things? Yeah, we didn't really have a minimum. We would do as little as one hour shifts. However, that did change the dynamic of the rates. And that's obviously to fairly compensate your team for going somewhere for a short period of time, right? And it was a significant increase. It was a, somebody needed to feel good about going somewhere for an hour with gas time. That's going to pack the rest of their schedules. Our sweet spot tended to be more of those eight hour to 12 hour shifts. So we did a lot of long shifts. Most of our caregivers wanted full-time hours. So that tended to be where we did really well and we had the longevity. Anywhere from 8 to 12.

And we did a lot of 24-7 shifts. We did a lot of 12-hour shifts. We didn't have a typical client. It was really kind of all over the place in terms of schedules. What I would say was in terms of what our clients looked like, again, we had the luxury, but we were selective. And if a client was rude to our caregiver, rude to us, we didn't really stand for that. We wanted to make sure that our caregivers were being treated with respect.

And if they weren't, or if they're being put in dangerous situations, whether it was hoarding or whatever the case may be, we didn't really want to take on that liability and we wanted to preserve the safety for our caregivers. So that was always a common thread with our clients is we wanted to make sure they aligned with our values. Was it hard to balance the ideals of not keeping clients who were rude or unkind to your caregivers, but also understanding that with conditions like dementia, there can be lots of changes in behavior. It's always a challenge. I think that's why it's important to really have educated caregivers that understand the disease.

And if the caregiver doesn't understand and that's the issue at hand, right? That's the agency's job to educate and to do a better job training them. So those are very two different areas. Oftentimes, it was more the children that were the ones that were not, whether it was rude or disrespectful, it wasn't necessarily the client themselves. But we always holistically looked at the family members as part of the client because we always looked at our services as a holistic service for not only the clients, but the family members, too. That is a good way to think about it.

I'm not sure how often we think of the families as being clients in almost a lot of the same ways, you know, simply because they are so important in that process. They're going through it, too. The spouse is going through it on a different level. The kids are going through it. Everyone's feeling it from different levels. And that's where that empathy really comes into play. But we just, we didn't want, and it happened. And we had to let some clients go

because it just wasn't a good fit. And when you spend more energy on things like that, that is not conducive to the business. For us, it was not helping push the business forward. It was not a good use of our services. Something that you've mentioned often, both in this interview and the last interview and any content that I've heard you make is empathy. Talk to me about what that means to you, how it guides your decision-making, how you instill it in your organization. I really think empathy is everything. It's how you build your culture and culture is the core

of your agency. If you don't have basic empathy, basic emotional IQ, how are you expected to connect with caregivers who are often being pulled in a billion different directions, right? And being asked to do sometimes just the most stressful and, and emotional work you can ask somebody to do. If you're not able to emotionally connect with them, same for the clients, there's either an ailment or they're declining or this whole industry is about connecting with people. That is when people say, how did you grow so much? We focus on connecting and there's different ways to do it. But if you don't even have that basic foundation as an agency, I think that's something you really need to look into deeper.

And that goes, that just, it goes in so many avenues when it comes to your business. I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit here and ask you to define exactly what empathy means in this context, so that it's very clear to those listening, how it differs from other, you know, desirable traits to have in a home care agency. So I think what's interesting is like empathy and sympathy get used very hand in hand, right? And there's, there's so different sympathy is sympathy is more than a feeling is more of a feeling of pity, right? For one another, where empathy is where you truly try to understand how someone's feeling. And when we relate with someone with empathy, we're able to give someone their own space to feel their emotions, to feel their feelings.

And when somebody's declining or maybe they get put on hospice, like it's not our job to fix it. We can't fix it. We're not here as an agency to fix the problem a lot of times, but we can listen. And sometimes that's all people need. We can give a hug and truly that can change anybody's day. This seems simple, right? But I can't tell you how many agencies I work with that don't understand the power of just a simple, you know, just the simplest thing that can change

retention from a client and a caregiver's point of view. Having that connection is going to make your caregivers work so much harder for you and to give your clients a better experience. So that's when I look at empathy. That's why I focus on it so much because it does drive this industry so much forward. Do you have any examples or hypothetical examples of common moments in the running of an agency when a lot of agencies do not choose empathy? And what does that look like? a car accident or has an issue getting to work. And car accidents are dramatic, but a caregiver is late for work or there's an emergency. How many times have you just initially gotten so mad and so frustrated? Like, ugh, this caregiver is so unreliable. Who knows what is going on with that caregiver? They're probably a caregiver for their own family and dropping off kids at school and had a chaotic morning. And you just don't know what else is going on, right?

So our first instinct is always to get really frustrated and to start being mad at that caregiver. But what if we turned it around and we had more empathy for them and we showed up for them? And obviously this happens over and over again. Then yes, you have a pattern and that's a different situation. But when somebody initially does something and our first reaction is to get angry,

I would recommend you look at that and take a step back and have a discussion with the caregiver. Once you have a chance, there's probably something deeper going on. And maybe that caregiver needs a little bit of a break. Maybe that caregiver needs some time off, needs a mental health break. And that's your job as an agency to recognize that and to get proactive before this becomes a bigger problem. When people pass away, right? We're like, oh shoot, we lost that client because we lost the revenue. Someone just died. Someone just lost somebody. So what are you doing for that client after they, the client's family, after they passed away? Are you sending a condolence card? Are you showing up to the funeral? What are you, are you sending something to the

funeral? There's so much beyond that. Yes. You lost a client, you lost that revenue, but showing that that client actually meant something to you. Now that family, hopefully that family is going to remember that. And they are, again, are going to be your ambassador and be able to recommend you and refer you when they have people that need help or know people that need help. But time and time again, like, you know, I would see people, people pass away and then people are only worried about the revenue. And, you know, I've heard so many stories like that in which a client will pass away and the next communication the family receives is a bill. I know. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a time and a place to automate things, right? I'm very big on streamlining and automating,

but there's also a time to stop that. So yes, if, you know, we, we would bill on Wednesdays and if someone passed away that day or right before then we would hold on to that. And, or, or, you know what you say, you make a note in there, we are so sorry for your loss. That simple little personalized touch shows that you're still a human caring for other humans. Love that. Since culture really does start at the top and kind of translates through the different layers of an organization, Are there any other examples you can share around how empathy affects how you might deal with your admin team? So, I mean, that's the same thing with my admin team.

I was very focused on making sure that they had a really good experience. They felt supported. I will say one client of mine had a new person start in their office this week, and the owner wasn't even there for the first shift or for first day of her work. She's a full-time employee and really hasn't been there this week to help with onboarding. And I think that that's so important, again, to show up for your team, your office team. And you want that to be a really great, smooth onboarding process. And you want to be able to be ready and give them all the tools they need

and not look at this as a churn and burn situation. Look at this as much as you can as you want this person to be here as long as possible, right? People know if they're going to stick with a company within that first two weeks. They know if it's a good fit or not. So you really want to show up for them. Showing the empathy. We talked last time about, we had an unlimited time off program for my office staff. I recognize that my office staff worked through the weekend sometimes. And this was an emotionally draining industry. I'm not going to be the one to say, no, you can't come in. Like if you need a day off and you take a day off, or if you need to take care of your family, that is always going to come first. And having that family first mentality is who people want to work for. And I'm going to

give a shout out to Daniela. She's on here. She's a assistant hands franchise. And one of my dear friends, you know, runs an agency down the street. And one of the reasons I referred her out was because she has that same mission. Family comes first. Our office staff and our caregivers are people and human beings first, employees second. And you look at her team and she has really long longevity over there too. And you wonder why. Love it. Thanks for sharing that. And also thanks for your patience as I've asked like 14 questions that weren't on the outline I sent you. I know I'm like going through the outline. Returning to some of the more like operational questions. Let's talk a little bit

about your hiring process. What did that look like in terms of steps, timeline, and was there anything you might have done differently than the typical agency? So are you talking about hiring caregivers? Yeah. It was fast. You move fast. And typically when you've been doing this a while, I think you know pretty quickly if it's a good fit for your team. We would do a screening first. You can get a good sense of people over the phone or on Zoom. We try to do a lot of Zoom screenings just to make sure just basic things were covered, that we were legally allowed to hire them, that they lived within an area that made sense. So obviously, if somebody lived two hours away, we're not going to bring them all the way in for an interview.

Just try to weed those people out, but come in for the interview. Really for me, it's about personality. We obviously want people that have caregiving experience, but also we did a lot of companionship. So we didn't necessarily need agency experience because sometimes we're taking people to the grocery stores and that was okay. Family experience worked for us too, but the interview process was really for us just to make sure they were a good fit culturally. And then if we could, we'd move them into orientation same day if we could. You got to move fast because as you know, as an agency, a caregiver is probably looking at every agency in the area and is going to go through and get them work the fastest, right? It was a very fast process for us. At that same time, then we're also doing reference checks. So whether or not they

come back for orientation later, or we brush them into orientation that day, if we had the bandwidth to do it, we also make sure we do references. And what I'm going to say about references, and if there's one thing I'm going to stress, if you're going to walk away with anything on this call, maybe, is we all know references are going to say good things about people, right? But we dug pretty deep with our references. If it seemed like it was a cell phone and it could have been someone's friend, because we all know people do that. We wanted to actually call the organization. So we dug, we asked a lot of questions. And I guess my biggest takeaway is don't take things for face value. Do your research. The internet is an amazing resource for you and

use it. And if you have red flags or what we would call the icky feelings, listen to that before you run with it. Because there were too many times where we would look back that we knew that that was not a good hire. But in this industry, you go with what you take. Well, you take what you can, right? So my biggest takeaway with that is really do your research, dig deeper, don't take things for face value. If you're unsure, ask for more references and really do your research on your candidates. What were some of the questions you would ask to dig deep and make sure that like, first of all, it's not somebody's friend. And second of all, that like,

even if they are determined to say all good things about the candidate that you could tell if there's something negative that should surface. You know, I always would try to call the business, like find the businesses, even if they put a different number, I would always call the businesses that they supposedly worked at. And if they didn't have any weakness, that's always a red flag to me. Give me something. Even if you turn that weakness into a positive, I want to know something. And that was kind of an issue. You kind of get a good glimpse of somebody.

The weakness could be a good thing, too, though. It could be that they like to chat, right? Or that they don't know how to say no. That's always a way to turn a weakness into a positive. But when people just flat out say, no, they're great. That's when I typically would dig. If things didn't match up from what they said. So if on their application, it said they were their supervisor and they're telling me something different. That's typically how you can kind of put two and two together. You just, you just, you just know, I think you just know. With a process this fast, but also this in depth, were there also like separate background checks happening and how did those fit into the timeline? Like, did you give the offer and then have it be conditional

on a good background check or how did that work? Yes. So references of background checks were done at the same time. We're in Illinois. We used Illinois Department of Public Health, the registry for our background checks. I mean, every state's going to be different. And then some people use secondary sources, which we would do to other background check if we if we needed to do additional ones, we would. We also did drug tests as well. And then we also reserved the right to do additional ones, we would, we also did, um, drug tests as well. And then we also reserved the right to do, we did them in-house. So we did in-house again, I wanted to control everything. I wanted to make sure it was fast and I didn't want to be reliant on other people. Um, so we would do drug tests in the office and then I would reserve the right

to do drug tests throughout our tenure or throughout their tenure with us. Cause I wanted to know people were being watched and needed to be held accountable. Also looked at driving records. So at the beginning of tenure, we would request a driving record. And if there was any serious violations or a history of dangerous activity while driving, we did not allow this person to drive our clients. Let's say that you brought someone in for the interview, you liked them, you did the orientation that day, but then you don't have a client lined up for them. How did you approach that situation? So, and what I talk a lot about with my agencies is transparency. You don't want to mislead them. You don't want to lie to them in any way, but you're very transparent. So we love you. We can't wait to get you scheduled.

We really, we are very meticulous in getting you the perfect fit. We really want to make sure this is a good fit for not only the client, but you. This is just as much about you as it is the client. So we're working on finding you a stable, long-term client. But in the meantime, are you open to filling in? And I would always position that as it's a good opportunity for you to get to know us better and for you to get to see how you feel to make sure this is a good fit for you. So I always kind of position it as a trial run for the caregivers, which was very true. It's a good opportunity before they fully commit to a long-term client to make sure that our management meshed well with them to get a sense of what kind of clients they liked with us.

And so we would try to get them to fill in a little bit before we got them on a study client. But that transparency is really important at the beginning so they know you're working on it and then giving them updates throughout the week. Hey, just wanted to give you an update. We haven't forgotten about you. We're still working on it.

Because if you wait too long to keep up that communication, you know you're going to lose them. How big of a problem did you have with applicants who didn't show up to the interview or with people you hired that didn't show up to orientation or their first shift? It happens. And I think that was one of my biggest culture shocks

coming into this industry from corporate. The idea of somebody not showing up for an interview was baffling to me, but it happens. You all probably see it. It didn't, as we grew and started winning awards and, you know, we were named the number one agency in North America, like obviously people wanted to work for us. So it didn't happen as much down the line, but it did happen. But ways we prevented that was when we'd set up the interview, you send a confirmation email, send a text.

The day before, you send a reminder and you list out what they need to bring. So you're staying in touch with them. And that communication is really important throughout the process. And then afterward, too, you're following up with communication via text and email as well. And then there's different ways to integrate your system, whether whatever system you're using, right, they get put into your system, and they're getting all of those constant communications that you're sending to the rest of their team. So there's ways to minimize those shows. When they did happen, I always looked at it as a blessing because I'm like, well, I really don't want this person on my team anyway. So it happened. Those communications were really, really critical, I think, in reducing our no-call,

no-shows when it came to scheduling. We had very, very few no-call, no-shows the last few years of running my business. And I attribute that to really staying on top of our communication with our caregivers and building that connection, that empathy connection that we talked about right from the start. Speaking of communication touch points, like what did your communication touch points look like in their first few weeks, but then also on an ongoing basis with your more tenured caregivers? Yeah. So the beginning is the most important part.

I think anybody will agree that that first 30 days is when you're really going to capture the heart of the caregiver and you the office, depending on the situation, and actually walk them through the care plan. What that does is it helps build that connection between the caregiver and the client before they even meet. You give them all the background. Did their spouse pass away? What ailments does this person have? You literally walk through the care plan and you answer any questions they have with them. They're very unlikely not to show up for that shift after that call because they've already built up this person in their head. So then obviously somebody meets them there on the first shift for an introduction. And then also the night before we'd also check in, do you have any final questions? So then you're really going to know that person's going to be

there. Then on the first shift, somebody is there to meet them, do an introduction, make sure they feel really good. Let them get started. Throughout the shift, we would check in, how's the first shift going? You know, we typically will get some good feedback one way or the other. And then after the first shift, we would also follow up with feedback and we followed up with a client too with feedback. We make sure to share that feedback. And then we also follow up at the end of that first week with the shift. And at that point, you will be able to know if it's going to be a good fit long-term between the client and the caregiver. And then we always did a 30, 60, 90 day check-in too. And that gets you through that trial period.

And then the constant communication was really, there wasn't like a set, like we didn't do monthly. We were just in constant communication. We did a lot of raffles and a lot of internal promos with our team. We had a private Facebook group for our team. So we were always asking them for feedback. And I had a person on my team that her job was solely to make sure that my employees were happy. It was HR, but it was a fancy HR role where I really wanted to make sure that everyone had a really stellar experience with

us. So her part of her role was to engage with the team, do polls, get feedback. How can we improve? What are you guys looking for? What kind of trainings do you want for the young state required trainings? So communication was pretty consistent for our team. Tell me more about that role. What was the job title of that person and what were all the different things they did? I think this is really interesting to people listening. Yeah, I love this role. And I think it's a really cool role for anybody who's looking to get into HR or who just likes talking to people and connecting with people. It was manager of employee success. You can play around with that title, but using the title employee success really paints this picture that you want your team to be successful. You want your team to thrive.

For me, success doesn't mean necessarily that they're going to be with you for 10 years. Success can mean that they're a nursing student and we're helping bridge that gap while they're in school. So we know there's an expiration date. We know they might only be with us for six months or eight months or whatever, but while they are with us for that short period, you better believe you're going to get a stellar employee because you have somebody there to back up whatever they need. So the role was, it was screening, onboarding, interviewing, all of that, following from basically following somebody from the time they submit their application to hire. If you're doing job offers and things like that, that actually execute that. This role also was in charge of setting everybody up with training.

We also did specializations for our caregivers. That really gives them a boost of confidence and fulfillment in their job. Then they get a cool pin and then they get a rate increase or pay increase. So it's a great retention tool. But this role was responsible for trainings and finding extra trainings and finding these extra sessions that we would do off site for not only the employees, but the community. They were unfortunately in charge of write-ups as well and terminations as well. But really just holiday parties, summer parties, if it was important to the employees, it was important to this role. And that's the way I kind of looked at it, where it was about the employees and

anything that fell under making our employees happy. That was this person's role. So there are two things I'm hearing here. The first one is that, like, in general, HR positions in an agency are like the person who's in charge of all the HR and hiring stuff. And then they're also in charge of keeping employees happy. And it sounds like in your agency, it was this person's job is to keep employees happy. And they also do all the HR and hiring stuff. And I think that's a really important distinction. Second, I mean, just based off of the credentials that we've already talked about, whoever you hired for this must have been really good at their job.

I, yeah, I think, and I think she's still there. And she, what she did, the person that held that role when I left, what made her so good at it, again, was she cared so deeply, but she was so empathetic. She, and when you think of- There we go again. I know, when you, and I'm doing a webinar for WellSky coming up

and it's about empathetic marketing. So it must be my wheelhouse, but she cared so deeply. And I think what's funny is when you look at HR in any organization you've ever been in, you don't typically see that, right? People find, I think the stereotype is that HR is kind of, I don't know if the word's like burnt out or what it is, but it's not the warmest place to be stereotype wise. And I really wanted to change that. I wanted people to want to come to us and feel really comfortable. How did you make it not be the job that is like, that's the person in charge of putting

out everybody else's fires? You make it fun. You make it fun. And what I do too with my roles that I had found successful was job descriptions are great, but not every human is going to fit into every job description exactly how they're written. So I would really take a lot of time to figure out over time what people were really good at, what they really wanted to do long-term. And you start tweaking the roles and you start moldaking the roles and you start molding the roles a little bit more to make it more exciting. And that's how this role evolved to be what it is. It didn't start with this. Over time, it just made sense based on what somebody was really good in and what we were finding the need for our organization was.

But I try to make it more fun. I try to make it more exciting than doom and gloom. Of course, we had to do write-ups and we had to fire people and no one looks forward to that. But because we took care of our team and tried to make this a really comforting environment, fortunately, we didn't have to do that a lot. That's probably a good segue into something I wanted to ask about, which is how you were looking for and hiring and helping empower your admin team slash office staff slash leadership. You know, how did you think about those roles? Did you do anything different in hiring for them? You know, just kind of tell me about that. I think this is an unpopular opinion, but I believe in hiring a person, not a resume.

So while the resume is important and that's what brings people in, I focus more on personal qualities and characteristics. And I think that brings us to more of a well-rounded and effective team. For me, it was always culture. Like if somebody just was doom and gloom and so negative right away. Even if they had the most robust resume, it just wasn't going to be a good fit for us. And that happened. I remember I hired somebody purely on the resume. And culture-wise, it was a terrible fit. And unfortunately, I had to let her go because it was toxic to everybody else in our office. So I look for culture fit. I look at

problem-solving abilities. And I try not to ask for culture fit. I look at problem solving abilities and I try not to ask the basic questions. I try to ask more like, what would you do in this scenario? I'm not looking for the right answer. I'm just looking for someone that can show me thought process, adaptability and growth potential. Are they looking for a quick, are they looking for just a job or are they looking to really grow in this organization? Empathy, of course, and compassion. Communication skills. I would always do like a writing sample to make sure. Well, I had to learn the hard way. I needed to get writing samples because I hired somebody else one time that had a lot of industry experience. And I thought, as for a care manager,

I'm like, this is going to be so great. She has the best experience. She's doing the same job at another agency. She had used the same systems. I'm like, this is going to be turnkey, easy as hire. And she was a mess. She could not even put a coherent sentence together. Her emails didn't make sense. And I really prided myself on our communication. I was so confused. It was a terrible fit. So I started asking for writing samples. I would do a scenario. I'd say, here's the scenario. I'm a client. How would you respond to this kind of writing sample? I looked at ability to work in a team. And I also looked at how they were in gray area, because as we know, in an agency, while people have a defined role, a lot of agencies are smaller. And there's still a lot of gray area where that might not be your

job description, but you still have to do it because we need to do this. And not everyone's okay with that gray area, we would call it. So that's what I was looking at for office staff. I felt like I could always train on the technology on home care. I came into home care without any home care knowledge. You can train on all that, but you can't train on everything else. I agree. Are there differences in what you look for based on the role within the agency or do they all kind of roll up to the same kinds of traits you're looking for? A little bit. I mean, obviously a care manager and a scheduler. And I, again, I didn't have like typical job. I didn't have a scheduler on my team. I had someone who scheduled, but they did other things. I think having a scheduler and that that's all they do, they're going to get burnt out really quickly. It's kind of, it's a very tedious job,

right? So I, there's different things with somebody who's going to be doing scheduling. You need to make sure they understand logistics and understand how their brain works and make sure that they're, they're good with with creative thinking because a lot of scheduling is creative problem solving. It's not putting pieces and it's Tetris in a lot of ways. So yes and no. But ultimately, again, I felt like I was able to train on a lot of the job function when it came to like care managers and people that were responsible for checking in on clients. I needed to make sure they had a certain tone and were comfortable talking to people or if there was somebody out in the field.

So yes, you need to make sure they have certain qualifications. But at the end of the day, everything I listed was really the most important things for me. I wanted good people. I wanted people who understood our mission and that were going to help us get to our end goal more than anything. Did you have a written out mission statement or something similar? And what was it if you did? So internally, we would say, basically, if my grandfather was alive, would we be comfortable sending when we were hiring caregivers? Would we be comfortable sending this person to my grandfather? And then our mission, you know, our quote unquote was we were a boutique home care agency really focusing on the quality of care versus the quantity of care.

And that was more of the external mission statement that we focused on quality all the way. We didn't want to be the biggest agency in town. We wanted to be the most we want to be the highest quality. One last kind of more technical question in terms of caregiver pay rates and billing rates. How did you fit comparatively into the local landscape? So we always tried to pay as well as we could and tried to pay higher than other agencies. We were pretty much in line with other agencies.

It's not probably a little bit above. We paid really well for those short shifts. And so people always really wanted those. But we tried to pay well. But I also understood that money was not always the driving force. We also had a 401k that we would match up to 4% for our employees. And we really focused on telling people, we want to help you plan for your future. We want to help

you save. And that was really important for us that we were teaching lessons beyond caregiving. And that was a really big pull. We also had a education. I had a tuition reimbursement plan for my office team. So if they want to go back for their master's or even their undergrad, we would pay a portion of that. And I wanted to do something similar for the caregivers. Obviously we couldn't afford to send all of our caregivers to college. So we did an education reimbursement plan with them after a certain amount of time with us where we'd basically pay if they wanted to go back for their CNA license or they wanted to do further education to help them, we would pay for a portion of that. We did a lot of bonuses and ancillary monetary things. Where were you competitively

on the client billing rate side of things? We also were not the cheapest option in town, but we surprisingly weren't the most expensive. We were not the cheapest, but I would say we were on the higher end. And when people would call us and say, the first question is, how much are you? We typically knew that was not going to be a good fit for us because we were shopping purely by price. We were so much more than that. And I always would have to explain the, you get what you pay for concept and explain where a lot of that money is going. Again, transparency was very important. You explain that you're paying, let's hypothetically say it was $40 and you're paying the caregivers hypothetically 20. We didn't

just pocket that other $20. And you have to explain that. I think once you're transparent with people and can explain it, they're much more open to paying a little bit more. You get what you pay for is a terrifyingly relevant concept when shopping for home care. So I'm glad you pointed that out. When shopping for anything, and there's psychology behind it, and there's studies that show if you price yourself too low, and this is what I do for a lot of my agencies too, is I do competitive analysis for all of my agencies so they understand where they are in the market. But if you price yourself too low, you're setting yourself up to be looked at as an undervalued agency. There's just psychology to prove it. So you need to make sure you're pricing yourself. You either want to be a volume play agency where you do want to be on the lower end,

but you're going to make it up in volume or you want to go quality over quantity and you're going to have less clients that you're going to make it up purely on the cost side. So, I mean, then there's a middle of the road strategy. Right. But I think typically agencies go one way or the other and there's not a wrong way to do it. But it's really just based on what your bandwidth is and what you want to do. That makes sense. We're nearing the end of our time here. And I want to give you just kind of an open platform for a couple minutes here to pontificate on whatever you think is most important for agencies to understand, or just share anything that I haven't asked you about that I should have asked you about. I mean, I think if there's one important thing I want people to walk away with, and what I coach my agencies on, it's that there's not a wrong or right way to do your agency. So I, you know, I'm on all these webinars and, you know, conferences and I watch other consultants

and they say, here's the playbook of how to run a really successful agency. And I look at that and I think, how is this relevant for agencies that are maybe in this situation or this situation? And every agency needs a very different approach. And so I would encourage you to do what works for your agency and not be so hyper-focused on your competitor. And use your competitors as a positive outlet. Use them as a resource.

Don't look at them as your competitors. Like I mentioned earlier, one of my biggest competitors is on this now. I'm sure she's going to text me when we're done and say, good job, Becky. I'm her biggest supporter and she's mine. And that's not, I think, how agencies operate. They're always very skeptical of their competition and they think they're out to crush one another. And that's not helping anybody. I would say, follow your gut. If there's a

caregiver that you're not sure about, don't hire them. Put your client, tell your client, it's going to, I need an extra few days to find you that right fit, as opposed to placing somebody that you think is not going to suit you well. And then my last thing is just be authentic. Be authentic in this industry. There's hundreds of agencies,

I'm sure nearby where you are, but what's gonna make you different? And that's how you are authentically presenting yourself and how you're authentically running your agency. And people will catch on and that will organically over time, people will start talking. And that is a very honest and organic way to grow your business safely. If someone is listening to this and they want to get in contact with you potentially about your consulting, how If someone is listening to this and they want to get in contact with you potentially about your consulting, how should they reach out to you?

And if you don't mind just maybe like sharing like the overview of like what they should know about your consulting services. Yeah. So my website is it's realhomecareconsulting.com. It's R-E-E-L. You can also, there's a download. It's called Breaking Down Barriers. There's a worksheet that you can download on the website. And that will help you gather insight about you as an agency owner and your goals. It's a really good worksheet to start formulating kind of what you're looking to do with your agency and where you're spending the bulk of your time and where you can prioritize better. So that can be found on my website. I'm also available at my phone number, which is 312-590-3225. I work with

independent and franchise agencies. Some of my agencies haven't even started yet. They're not even picking out, they're in the process of picking out their name and their LLC. And then some agencies of mine have been in business for five to 20 years. So I do a little bit of everything from marketing and strategy to HR systems, operations, string mining systems. I try to come in with a customized approach based on your biggest need. So just like you don't have two clients that are exactly the same, I don't have two clients that are exactly the same. So I'm going to come in and build out a roadmap with you on what your biggest needs are. And I'm going to be with you every step of the way. I like to think I'm much more of a coach than a consultant because I really want to help people get to whatever their goals are.

And then I do a three-month, a six-month, or a 12-month package with my clients. because I really want to help people get to whatever their goals are. And then I do a three-month, a six-month, or a 12-month package with my clients. I also can do hourly. It just depends on what their needs are. Awesome. Thank you for sharing. And thank you for joining on the podcast today. Again, we really appreciate you and your wisdom and your experience. For those listening, just a couple quick reminders here.

Though we are taking a break for the rest of the year, we will be coming back in the new year. We do a Zoom class every Wednesday. So each episode of Home Care U is both a live class and a podcast. If you want to listen to the podcast, just go to Home Care U, that's U as in university, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to join live, watch live, maybe ask your questions to the guest, you can sign up free by going to careswitch.com slash homecareu. That's also where you can see the schedule for the episodes that we have planned in the future. So thank you again for joining. Thank you, Becky, and everyone have a great week and happy holidays. Happy holidays. 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 carewitch.com.