Home Care U - The Story of the #1 Rated Home Care Agency in North America (Becky Reel Pt. 1)

Episode Date: December 17, 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 dealing with a slew of health challenges. How'd she do it? We're going to find out.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. Welcome to Home Care U.

As always, I'm really excited for today's episode. We'll get more into the guest and the story that she brings to the table here. But first, just a few housekeeping things. For those who have listened before, this will be old news, but a quick reminder that HomeCareU is both a live class and a podcast. If you want to ask questions, you can register free. They're always on Wednesday afternoons. Join live and then you can chat in your questions as we go. For those who are joining live, yes, please chat in your questions. Depending on what the question is, we may ask it right then. We may save it for the end, but we love to make sure that we're engaging

with the things that are most important to you. If you prefer to listen on your own time, maybe turn up the speed or whatever, listen while you work, listen while you drive, you can get Home Care U as a podcast. Wherever you get your podcast, just look up Home Care U, that's U as in university. Today's guest is Becky Real. Welcome to the show, Becky. Thank you. Thank you for joining. We are really excited for your expertise and your story and your experience. To give a little bit of background here and who Becky is, where she's coming from, why we have her on the show. She is highly qualified. She recently sold her home care agency earlier this year that she ran for, I think, seven or eight years.

That's right. And a few quick stats here. They achieved multiple years of 300 plus percent year over year growth. They were also the number one rated home care agency by client and caregiver satisfaction in all of North America. Now, where that stat is coming from is Home Care Pulse. If you're familiar with them, they do a bunch of things, but one of them is client and caregiver satisfaction surveys. They are the largest home care specific company doing that. And so they have thousands of agencies who are contracted with them to gather satisfaction scores. And in the last several years,

they recently started doing what's called the Home Care Top 100, where they actually release a list in order of the 100 top-ranked home care agencies by their satisfaction scores. And coming in at number one was Becky's agency on both the client and caregiver experience side and the business and growth side. She is exceptionally credentialed and we're excited to learn from her story. The way we'll do this is that we have her on for two weeks. And so this week we'll be going through the story, kind of a how I built this style. If you're familiar with the NPR podcast by that name. And we'll kind of hear the story of how and why she built it and what the ups and downs have been along the way. And then next week,

we'll get more into the how of it, what the processes and culture and the strategic decisions she made to help get there. So I guess without further ado, we'll jump into this. So Becky, I already kind of gave some context here, but if you want to briefly introduce yourself and your background, including what you did before home care, why you wanted to get into home care and anything else about yourself or your family or your non-work life. And then from there, we'll get into the story of your agency. Sure. So thank you so much for having me. I'm so honored to be here. My background, my previous life, I led sales and marketing, product marketing specifically for Fortune 500 companies, understood the sales cycle, understood that sales is really based on a notion that it's based, people want to work with people they like and trust. And to effectively sells something really well. You'll be passionate

about it. So I did that for a while. Meanwhile, my parents started for Papa's sake. Papa was my grandfather and he had a tragic end of life in a nursing home. So my parents started this to give our community better options because at the time there were not very many good options for our seniors and we wanted to keep his name alive. We knew that was not the end of his story. He was a comedian in World War II and he bunked with Burl Ives and his life was about lighting people up and the way he passed was not his ending. It was due to neglect and we wanted to give him a different ending to his story. So we started for Papa's sake. Well, they started it. And over time, it organically was

catching on in the community and little by little. And then I came in 10 years ago and told my parents, let me build this up for you. It was doing well. They had a few clients here and there, but it wasn't profitable. And I wanted my parents to have a decent retirement. So what I did is I said, let me come in for two to three years. I'll build this up for you with my background. 10 years later, I stayed because we just kept growing and I loved it. And I found something that made me feel really valued in the community. And I actually felt like I was doing a service. So we kept growing every year. We kept winning more and more awards. And that was how I got into this industry. But before, for Papa's sake, I had no backing in

home care whatsoever. My background was purely sales and marketing. Well, it's a good background to have. And thank you for sharing also just the story behind the name of your agency. It's always, I think, helpful to understand someone's motivation for getting into this. And that's a slightly unique way to think about it. And that's a slightly unique way to think about it. So that's, that's a very meaningful thing. And I'm, I'm sure that the way that you gave care and made sure that care was delivered did honor his memory that way. Let's kind of get into the weeds here. Walk us through the story of your agency from founding to selling, you know, what were the early challenges and how is it different than you

expected? We can kind of get started there. Yeah. So I think working with family anytime is complex and complicated. Initially, challenges really came down to generational challenges is what I like to think of it as. And just getting and gaining buy-in from my parents, new technologies and resources, online reviews, the importance of a stellar website. I mean, that's where my marketing expertise really came into play. That was initially probably my biggest obstacle coming into it. And then everything was very manual. Everything was very tedious. And so we immediately came in and I tried to figure out ways to streamline the operation. Again, getting buy-in from my parents was challenging in that way. But once we got it

going and they could see the value of it and how much time it saved, eventually they understood the why behind all of that. But that definitely took some time to get everybody on board. I think not knowing enough about home care, coming into it and not understanding the dynamics of caregivers and, you know, having somebody not show up for an interview was baffling to me at first. Like, how do you not show up for an interview? Or when I was looking at resumes and you see spelling errors, like for me, from corporate, I had to learn to rethink my clientele a little bit and to look deeper at somebody versus what's on paper. So finding good people was always a challenge even before COVID, right? Everyone talks about the staffing shortage now, but if you think back to five years ago, finding good caregivers was always an issue. But once we started building on our brand and defining who we were in the community, that really got a lot easier when you have all these words and backings, people want to work for you, right?

So I think those are probably my biggest challenges. Set aside, not knowing a lot about the home care world, that took me some time to kind of get up to speed. But like we were just talking about before too, at the end of the day, home care is about people and about good customer service. And I don't think you really need to have strong backing the day, home care is about people and about good customer service. And I don't think you really need to have strong backing and background in home care to be successful in this industry. That makes sense.

A few questions about that. So the first thing that I want to make sure that I got right. So you said that kind of the early biggest challenge, it sounded like you said it was kind of like brand awareness. Am I right on that? Or am I missing which thing you were referring to? Yeah. I mean, I think part of what the discovery phase of what we went through was who are we as an agency, right? Because there's hundreds of agencies in any given area. What makes us unique? What's our value proposition? All of the things I

spoke about play into that. And that takes time. That takes a lot of time to figure out who you are, why you're different, why is someone going to choose you over another agency, for sure. But that came into play more when it came to hiring retention of the caregivers, I think. Focusing on the value proposition, I'm guessing you kind of started those conversations right from the get-go since you were coming from a background in sales and marketing? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you have to understand a consumer's needs and their why behind why they're choosing whether it's a service or product. And so when I came in, we really had to figure out who are we, what are we offering people that's

different than anybody else. And that was a big project right off the bat. I love that you started with that because something that I see so often is agencies whose self-claimed value proposition is we give great care. And it's like, great. Everyone else says that and they probably do that too. How did you go about thinking about what your value proposition was, figuring out what it was and what did you land on? So again, it took time. What we ended up landing on was that, and most of my clients love this, but we really positioned ourselves

as a boutique home care agency. We really took that mom. We were very family owned, right? Very, it was my, me and my parents. We were what we said we were. We played on that. We really, we ran with that. We were family owned and operated. My grandpa was the name of the company and we positioned ourselves as this boutique agency. We, you know, we used to go all, we're in the Chicagoland area. We used to go all over an hour away when I area. We used to go all over an hour away. When I first came into the agency, when we weren't doing well, and we were in a place where we couldn't say no to any clients, right? You couldn't turn down revenue. As we grew and as we were able to get more selective, we started to define our service area. We define our service area as a very small area in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago.

And that allowed us to be very selective on not only who we hired, but obviously who we took on as a client. If we felt like we couldn't give that client 110%, if we felt like if there was an emergency and we couldn't get there in a timely manner, or we couldn't give them the level of customer service that they deserved, we didn't want to get into that. We wanted to make sure that everybody was getting the same quality. So defining our service area really helped us become this boutique agency that was very small in terms of where we served. That really helped in our positioning quite a bit. That's super interesting. It's surprising, but also not surprising to hear that in order to grow, you actually shrunk your service area. And I think that's a good reminder because

there's this easy temptation to be like, well, we just need to increase our territory. That kind of always being the solution to growth or to growth plateaus. In terms of that growth strategy, there's a different tactic for different agencies, right? That was our strategy. Some of my clients, they want to be everywhere. They want to be everything to everybody. And if that's how they want to operate, then that's great. My priority was balance. So I have two little kids. I wanted balance. We weren't the cheapest agency in Pound 2. So when you look at reducing your service area, there's other factors that go into it too, right?

We had other fees that went into working with us and higher rates. So we were able to make it up from a rate perspective. But we also were on a wait list most of the time and we were in demand. Wow. I think one other thing you referenced that I wanted to ask about was just in that process of trying to get up to speed with home care and how it worked and how it is different from the business context that you were used to. What did you do to get up to speed on home care? Were there any sources you turned to or was it just kind of figuring things

out on the ground as you went? Yeah, it was a lot of figuring it out as I went. I one of the reasons I started my consulting firm is because I wished I had somebody like me when I was getting up and running. I didn't have anybody like me to turn to and say, how would you handle this? What how you know, what are we talk through this client or this caregiver, I'm having an HR issue. I kind of just went with my gut. Obviously the home care association of America was a big resource for me in terms of policies and making sure that we were abiding by state regulations. But that was really the big motivation for me starting this is I wish I had somebody like me when I was getting up and running or when I was

looking to get to my next million. And for those listening, we will talk more about her consulting at the end of the episode. We'll also talk about how you can get in touch with her about that because that is something that I want to make sure that we address and make available. Let's talk a little bit about profitability. It sounds like when you came in that it maybe was profitable, but not very profitable? What did the road look like to achieving the level of profitability that you wanted? So we were not doing well by my standards. We were barely breaking even, often operating at a loss when I stepped in. A lot of it was because it was being operated a lot like a nonprofit too, though. And so that changed.

I think there's a very good middle ground you can get of still being a good person and being charitable, but also running a business. So we went from barely being profitable and if not losing on a monthly basis to very quickly growing. And that's where you mentioned earlier that we were pretty consistently 300% year over year, our growth. Wow. Wow. Without a lot of mark, we don't, we did not do

a lot of traditional marketing also. I, even though marketing is my background, I, we tried it. I did a lot of test and learn approaching, but we really didn't do a lot of ads. I didn't do a lot of SEM. Really, it was very organic, very community-based. So that growth was all word of mouth. And I think we'll probably talk about that next episode,

some different marketing tactics to help us grow. But we didn't spend a lot of money to make that happen. Yeah, we'll definitely want to get into that more. What were the office or the admin roles that were there in place when you joined? And then do you two other people in the office that weren't really doing anything. And so one of the first things I had to do was I had to make some changes. And I took over most of the responsibility at the beginning because I really felt like the best way for me to learn was to just dive right in. And I think a true leader is somebody who is... They will do the job too, right? A great leader is somebody who leads first and delegates second. So I needed to learn. So I was the main on-call person. I was, I mean, for 24-7 for probably a good year, it was me running the show. My parents were there in

background, but I was really in charge of all the scheduling, hiring, firing, HR issues that came up, client issues that came up, payroll billing. It was a rough year. I have a very patient husband. But once I had a handle on what was happening here and I had a budget, I was able to hire my first real full-time person who was very instrumental. I want to give her a big... She moved on to another career where her name was Kristen instrumental. I want to give her a big, you know, she moved on to another career where her name was Kristen. And I really think if it weren't for her, we would not have been able to have made such growth. She was phenomenal. And she was kind of my jack of all trades. She started as more payroll billing, took that off my plate. And then as we

progressed, she took more and more on. So then she took over scheduling and caregiver issues. And then the on-call responsibility. So I was able to delegate and I was able to focus on more big picture marketing, business relationship items. Then from there, we hired somebody who was focused more on the employee side. And I think we'll probably talk about that more next time too. But one of my biggest strategies was investing back into my people. If you take care of your people, they're going to take care of your business. So once we have the operations side down with Kristen's role, we then focus another role solely on employees. And that's more of like

an employee onboarding or employee success, whatever you call it in your organization, right? But it's the HR function. It's hiring, screening, onboarding, but really following a caregiver through that initial submission of their resume or application all the way through their onboarding and hire to make sure that caregiver feels very supported and makes them feel like they're part of a family or a bigger mission, right? Those to me, those were the two biggest needs in an office. As we grew, we grew more into client care management roles, care coordinator roles, trainers. But before you get into that, you need to have a foundation.

You need to have payroll and billing streamlined. You need to have operations streamlined, recruiting and onboarding. Those are kind of the key to any caregiving organization at the core, in my opinion. Was there a point where you hired someone to do like referral marketing type things or did you handle that? How did that part go? Yeah. So we did it for a while, have somebody, she was phenomenal, wonderful. And then COVID happened and it kind of took us another direction. And then we were just so busy that when, I mean, I'm sure a lot of agencies that unfortunately benefited from COVID, we just couldn't keep up with the demand. So after COVID, we did not rehire that role. What we did do, I was really the face of the business that allowed me to be out networking. But again, we were always on a wait list. So we didn't have that need as much as some agencies. What we did that I think is unique

is my salespeople really were my internal employees. So my caregivers really became our best salespeople. And we had some unique ways to incentivize our caregivers. Our caregivers loved working. They still do. They still love working there. Typically, our caregivers only left if it was a life change or something that happened on their side. We had very, very low turnover. And our caregivers became our biggest advocates. So when you're in a facility or when they were in a grocery store, we gave our caregivers tools and empowerment tools to be able to help get clients. And they would get a referral bonus from that. And that turned out to be a really big success for us.

We did have a marketing and salesperson for a while. I think the wrong way to look at it is sales. Look at more community outreach, I think, is a better way to position that role because it's hard to... You're not selling, you're not, you're not, you're not selling, you're building relationships. Yeah. So much in there. I get very, very, yeah. We are all about the tangents on the show because that's, that's where we get into the good stuff. No worries there. Did you have any like core values or principles, like either as a company or just personally?

And how are those tested over time? When it came to caregivers, the mindset was if my grandfather was still alive, would we be comfortable sending this person to my grandfather? Kind of just basic core when it came to hiring, right? And if the answer was anything but yes, with confidence, then we moved on. My principles, I took a page from Zappos playbook. So if you're familiar with Zappos, the shoe company, customer service representatives, they don't really follow a script, right? They are trained to have more of an emotional connection with their customers.

And the only mission that they have is to wow their customers with their customer service. And that was how I really feel with any business we should be doing. I think customer service is a dying art. But especially when you're dealing with home care and people are dealing with their loved ones that have an ailment or maybe they're declining, customer service is so important. And I wanted to make sure that that was consistent for not only our clients, but also our caregivers because they're technically still your customers, right? They're your internal customers.

And I always felt our motto was our caregivers should get equally as much customer service as our clients. And we really followed through with that. And again, that's why we had very low turnover. We really treated our caregivers with respect and dignity and high levels of customer service. So tell me a little bit more about that, but let me frame this just a little bit. I think that a lot of what you're saying are the same types of things that almost any agency would believe in and espouse and try to do. It sounds like you were probably more successful, at least than the average agency, at instilling some of those values in your company.

So what did you do to make that be more than just nice ideas that you talked about, but make it happen? We invested back into our people. So I think a lot of agencies come in with, okay, we're going to charge this amount of money. We're going to pay this amount, insurance and taxes, whatever. So this is what we're walking away with, right? And they're looking simply at that bottom line. I didn't do that. There were some weeks where we weren't profitable because we were giving back to our caregivers, because we were giving up bonuses, or we were doing different incentives. And I understood that it balances out at the end and to not have such a strict view of,

if you're looking at your P&L, and to not put too much strict view of, you know, if you're looking at your P&L and to not put too much stock into that, right? Because the money will come when you're doing the right thing. And that's what I really talk a lot about is I call it empathetic marketing. You do the right thing. You treat people the way they should be treated and you operate from the heart. And that's in this business, right? That is, is I can't think of anything more important. If you're strictly just looking at numbers, then you're looking at the wrong things. So we invested back into our people when COVID started. I wanted to keep the lights on. I wanted to keep my caregivers safe and I wanted to, I didn't care about being profitable.

I just wanted to keep the lights on. That was all I cared about. We ended up being very profitable in that time, but we were focused on care packages for our caregivers about self-care and consistently doing trainings about self-care and about infection control. And we were constantly looking for ways to show appreciation beyond our normal ways because our caregivers were putting their own health at risk to be out there taking care of our clients. You know, everyone does their holiday parties and we did a summer party, but we tried to do a lot more community events, too, to thank our community for supporting us. So it was really just a continuous play on gratitude, which was authentic, but we just continuously invested back into our people and our community. This idea of making sure that your caregivers received as much customer service as your

clients did, what does that part of it look like as far as communication specifically? It sounds like you must have had a ton of touch points with caregivers, things like that. Tell me more about that. I mean, there's so much there, right? It's from when they first get started, making sure that they feel supported, right? If you don't have the right client for them right away, explaining that, setting expectations, at least get them in the groove with the agency, with picking up fill-in hours or whatever, at least get them in the groove with the agency, with picking up fill-in hours or whatever, but just letting them know what's going on, don't leaving them in the dark. Even when they get started with the agency,

check in with them during the shift, check in with them after that first shift, check in with them after that first full week, right? And close the loop on that communication, get feedback from the client, continuously get feedback from people and continuously get that feedback to caregivers. People often think that caregivers are purely going after the money. And I don't, I think that's furthest from the truth. Caregivers want, they want recognition. They want to know that they're making a difference, right? So get them whatever feedback you can get them. We would do a 30, 60, 90 day review and an annual review. They want to know how they're performing. They want to know how to do better. They want to know

how to grow. Give them growth opportunities within your organization, whether it's even just moving up to like a senior caregiver or a trainer, or maybe in an office position, but understand what their goals are. Maybe they wanted their goals to be a CNA. Well, let me figure out how to help you get there, right? You might have an expiration date with that caregiver because you know they're going to move on. But while they're with you, they're going to give you all of their best, right? So we were in constant communication, whether it was a client's information on their client or just feedback or just praise, general updates.

We, communication was something we really focused very heavily on. So it sounds like you did pay very competitively, but viewed that almost as a prerequisite. And it's like, that was something you needed to do, but that wasn't what was going to retain people and make them excited about working for you. So you kind of saw that as the foundation, but then treated the experience as if it were solely about that for them,

if that makes sense. Yeah, pay obviously is important. You want to pay people well. You don't want them to have to have six jobs, right? I understood they were going to maybe have another job too, even though we try to pay well, I just, life's expensive. But giving them, you know, a lot of our feedback that we get, they want more training. So, all right, let's figure it out. CPR training or whatever the kind of training they want, you want to give them the tools that they're asking for to help them in their career. Typically caregivers, you know, there's caregivers that are

lifetime caregivers, and there's a group of caregivers that they're there for a period of time. Understand that and know, like, I want to help you be your stepping stone to get you to whatever your next path is, because then you know, that person's going to be an ambassador for your company, even after they leave. I guess kind of outside of that and outside of the fundamentals that we've talked about and we'll talk about more next episode too. Are there any additional parts of your success that you attribute to exceptional or unusual ways of doing things? For my office staff, I had some unusual benefits that I remember when the company that bought us found out about it, their eyes kind of perked up a little bit like they'd never heard of it before. But I would give out trips for my office staff and I would encourage my team to take time off.

We also had an unlimited PTO program in my office. My thought on that was, you know what, they're working through the weekend sometime and they're working really hard and this is an emotionally draining field. And so the offset there was within reason. And if you're responsible about it, like, I don't care when you take time off, just be responsible about when you take time off. So it was a lot of trusting my team. After three years being full-time and good standing in my office, then I had a benefit where we would send you on a trip anywhere in the world up to $10,000 for you and a guest.

That's for your office team or caregivers? Right, my office team, yes. Caregivers, so we did a lot of raffles monthly, different fun things for them to get extra money that way. Referral programs for referring caregivers, referral programs for referring clients. We did a lot from them. We were always looking for ways to do more. But I think for me, having a really awesome office team helped grow quite a bit. As I alluded to, I have two kids. I have a five-year-old and two-year-old. So all of this growth happened while I had my children. My husband and I both have had serious medical issues over the past few years. And if I did not have an infrastructure in place,

we wouldn't have been able to continue. We continue to grow through all of this, right? So I needed a strong office team. That was always my, that was always my goal. And, you know, they all had to get it. They all had to have that same mindset that it's people over profit for me to feel confident to not be in the office. So I think that was really important. Okay. So a few questions. I can like see, like there's someone who's listening to this, like where they like have it playing in the office and they're like this is all great there's a couple members of like the staff listening to this and then they get to the unlimited pto part and the staff like looks over at the owner and the

owner just kind of like turns the volume down so sorry so for the sake of those people let's talk about the nuts and bolts of the unlimited PTO policy here. Like, how did that work? How did you feel comfortable kind of exercising that judgment? Were there people who tested the limits of that? Like, break that down and make it, like, digestible and understandable for people. Because I think it's really important. I think it's subjective for every owner.

I was very close to my office staff though. And I trusted them. And there was one person in particular that did abuse it. You know, you got to have uncomfortable conversations sometimes. It's within reason. So, you know, you can't just last minute decide, obviously emergencies happen, but if last minute you decide you just don't want to come in because you don't want to come in, you know, you're still a salaried employee, right? And there's responsibilities that come into play. My philosophy was if your job is getting done, I really didn't care.

Be responsible. You're an adult. We're all adults here, right? It takes time. I want all agency owners and employees to hear this. This takes time to build this out and to trust your team that they're not going to take advantage of it. But at the end of the day, everyone has the same mission in place. We know our caregivers and our clients are priority.

Everyone needs to be staffed. Everyone needs to be communicated to. There is never, never time would it be acceptable for there to be an unstaffed shift. It's just not acceptable in that world. I never lived in that world, right? There are backups and things in place. We had backup systems in place for if a caregiver did call out last minute, but not having somebody not be there, we were never going to call a client and be like, sorry, we don't have

somebody for you today. That never would happen in my world. So as long as all that stuff is running smoothly, I don't, you know, you're burnt out. You take that Friday off. You, you take that week off. I'm not going to keep track. Like it wasn't in my best interest. I didn't have the time to track your PTO. It's easier for me just to let it go. And as long as everything is getting done and you're doing your job, I really, I really didn't care. I also have very high expectations. And I'm sure if you talk to my team, they will tell you that. So they know they have to get their stuff done and everything needs to be closed up at the end of the day, but you're an adult, you can manage your own time. So it sounds like, so they were all salaried then?

My office decades. Yep. And I would assume that you had kind of like a system in place where everyone had metrics to kind of measure their performance, you know, their output or whatever. So that would be kind of a more useful way to judge whether they were doing their job correctly than, you know, if they were just like, they're like butts in the seats at the right times. And exactly. I mean, so we did monthly bonuses too.

So that person that consistently abused the PTO program, guess what? They also did not receive very much in bonuses. So there's a trade-off too. And while KPIs are very important, they're very important. I also was not the kind of person that sat there and monitored my KPIs either. I cared about our revenue increasing. I cared about our margins staying on track. But more than anything, I cared about staffing and making sure that there was never an open

shift and making sure we were being proactive as opposed to reactive. So that played a big role too. You know, no call, no shows. We never had those. We, you know, we've had a handful of times in my 10 years at the agency. We, of course they happened, but it was not a common thing for us because if we got wind of something that we thought might've gotten to that, we just took care of it. And so again, everyone's an adult and I'm not here to police you. I'm not here to micromanage you. I'm here to run a business. And if that didn't fit in with somebody's mentality, then they just weren't a

good fit for our office. There are, I think some roles in the office that are easier to just kind of have someone kind of do the job whenever. And then there are some roles that kind of like need to be a button to seat at certain times, so to speak, like have somebody answering the phone or whatever. Did the way that you administered this policy and like this level of trust look any different for the roles that like you need someone to be available or answering this phone at all times or? No, we, I also took up from the same Zappos model. Their philosophy is anybody should be able to answer the phone, anybody from the CEO to the janitor. And so we had everybody cross-trained in our office. So every single person was able to answer the phone, whether it

was me, whether it was my admin, it did not matter. Everybody knew what was going on with every client. And that's obviously where systems come into place and where communication comes in. But no, I mean, we obviously try not to all take the same time off. We try to plan ahead to make sure there was always somebody physically in the office or at least available via the on call line. But it didn't matter to me who, as long as somebody was there, it didn't matter who it was in the position because everybody was qualified to be able to take a client call or a caregiver call.

Did you let your team work remotely? Yeah, of course we had to, especially during COVID. And there's some roles that I think are harder to do that from because there's just things that get lost in communication. But of course, if there's a need for it, there was, you know, we work it out, but I do think then you lose a little bit of that morale if you do it too consistently. Gotcha. Well, thanks for letting me take us down this detour. That's really good. I, some industries are much more used to unlimited PTO policies,

you know, in tech, it's like, you see it all the time, but it's not something- That's where I come from, right? That's why I knew how to do it. Love to hear that. And I'm sure we'll get some more questions on that after we listen to this. Perfect. As you continue to grow your agency, what were some of the biggest ups and downs? And also, you referenced having some health challenges, you know, raising small children. How did you navigate growing your agency despite challenges and responsibilities in your personal life, too? I'll answer that first question first because it's top of mind. So through my children and our health issues, it was really having that infrastructure in place.

There was my husband had a very serious surgery almost three years ago now when I was pregnant with my son and I was checked out. I, the last thing I cared about was the agency and having a really strong team being able to lead it was really the key. So having people under you that are trained properly, I think is going to be important. You can't be everything to everybody. And this is what I talked to a lot of my clients about is we need to get them up to a point where they can hire people under them to have some kind of boundaries or, you know, just so that way they can, they can step away, right. They can delegate. That was, I mean, I wouldn't have been able to do it if I didn't have a team. You know, I think initially, I mean, all the time, there's sacrifice, right? Saturday morning, when I first took over, Saturday mornings,

you know, caregiver calls out and have that infrastructure in place. I'm on the phone at six in the morning, trying to get a fill in, stuff like that. A lot of sacrifice with my family, my husband. That was in the beginning. Again, my husband, if it weren't for him, I would not have been able to do this. He is the most supportive person. So having a good support team, whether it's family or friends that understand your mission, I think is also really important. I think for me, I tend to be a little bit of a control freak. So learning how to delegate and trust people to do what I would do in that situation took me some time. And what I learned was it might not be done exactly like Becky would do, but it's going

to get done and it'll be done well. So learning to delegate was something that I found challenging and just letting go of things. And then also prioritizing what is an emergency and what can wait till the next day. I'm the kind of person where I want to get it done and I want to get it done now, but I had to learn to kind of step back. And if it's scheduling, an immediate scheduling need, it needs to be done right away. Setting expectations for your clients that you get back to them quickly is still great, but if it's an emergency, you can get back to them within some time, reasonable timeframe. So those are probably my biggest challenges that I went through. sense on like the first question of having the right team in place and the infrastructure, like you said, to be able to handle when you were going through health challenges and family

challenges and things. How did you decide when it was time to sell and what did you do to prepare? Yeah, probably my favorite question and topic. I made a promise to my parents that I was going to build this up and give them a decent retirement. So background and probably more information than anybody needs to know, but I grew up with a single mom. We did not have a lot of money. And this was my gift to her. I really wanted to be able to give my mom a decent retirement where she didn't have to worry about money for the first time. So again, I thought it was going to take two to three years, but then I stayed for 10 because I just loved it so much. And I probably would have stayed on longer, but my parents needed to retire and they needed that. So that was really the why behind it. We probably could have sold

five, six years ago, but we just kept growing. And I thought, let's just keep doing this. And it was fun. I, you know, it's an emotional journey. I think I talked to a lot of agencies that are looking for their exit strategy. And I wish somebody would have told me about the emotional side of it. I was not prepared for that. It took me a few months to kind of get back to myself. I thought we're going to sell it. I'd move on. No big deal. It's a huge emotional impact on you. You invest so much of your time and your life to building your agency. And then all of a sudden, it's gone, right? Depending on how you sell it. For me, we sold a private equity. So when we sold, I walked away. And it was really hard. We have a little time. Tell us a little more about that if you want. I mean, what else did you wish you had been prepared for about that? And how did you process the

emotions of selling? I would say I didn't start the morning process until right before this, until it hit me that it was happening. It was a long process too. We were in the process for probably about two years. So I would tell any agency that's looking to sell, it's not something you're going to just wake up one day and just do. You need to find the right buyer. You probably want to work with a brokerage. And we had several other interested parties and they just weren't the right fit for us. And so we had to keep going. And I would say, start the morning process early and start the process before you actually sell. It was my baby. I spent more time on the agency than I did with my own kids. So I struggled a lot with who I was, what was my identity without the agency.

I didn't know who I was. And that's where I struggled because I have a reputation in my community. I've won awards in my community for my leadership. And I didn't know who I was without the agency. And I think it took me some time to separate that I'm a human being outside of that. But it took me, I would say realistically, it took me a few months to kind of get out from under a rock. Makes sense. That definitely isn't something that we hear about talked about as much. I guess one other question I have as far as the selling process is to frame this a little bit. We often hear about how in the months or like typically years preceding the sale, like that kind of dictates a lot of the decision making. You might make

different decisions. You might have different priorities if you're preparing to sell versus growing, you know, what did that phase look like for you? What did you do differently as you were preparing to sell with that in mind than you might've done if you were just going to run it for forever? Yeah. I mean, so that's a really good question. And I, this is what I do with a lot of my clients because they're looking for an exit strategy. And so there's a, you have to have that plan in place. So I, with us, they wanted to look at at least three years of historical data, right? They wanted to see that grow. So I knew, I knew three years ago that this was our goal and our plan. And so I knew we needed to continue to grow. And I knew what numbers, I knew what number we had

to sell for in order to get, I mean, I knew the equation with EBITDA, like I knew what we needed to continue to grow. And I knew what numbers, I knew what number we had to sell for in order to get, I mean, I knew the equation with EBITDA, like I knew what we needed to be at in order to sell for the amount of money I needed my parents to have. And so I think having that conversation with a brokerage right off the bat and have them do a quick analysis for you on, if you were going to sell today, here's what you can realistically look at walking away with. We paid over a million dollars in taxes and lawyer fees and brokerage fees and things that I didn't expect. So you need to plan for all of that. And I would say realistically start planning out at least three to five years before you even go down that road. Know the amount you need. Start engaging with brokers three to five years

ahead of time. You don't have to use a brokerage, but I highly recommend it because I don't know what I would have done without my brokerage. Now my investment banker that works with brokerage is now a very good friend of mine. And he also is my therapist throughout the process. And I really needed their support throughout the entire process. but identify areas and pain points now for growth and figure out... I would say that's not the time to take your butt off the brake. That's the time to start accelerating and cutting costs where you can, because that's where they're going to look and see your profitability and a buyer is going to look at that and that's what's going to be attractive. Do you mind if I ask another question about the personal side of all this?

Of course. You kind of talked about the challenges of balancing it with family and recognizing the sacrifices you'd given and how much time you spend with your agency as you had kids. If you had the chance to give your past self advice on how to handle the work-life, you know, family balance side of this, would you tell yourself to do it any differently than you did? No, no. I, without having any home care experience, right? I think I handled everything with an empathetic touch and from my heart. And when you're dealing with people's loved ones and illnesses, we live in this society, right, where the hospital kicks you out because they need the bed. Or we, you know, our medical system is, is, is it's not great.

And it's, there's, there's, there's no compassion. And I wanted to be that source for people because I wasn't finding it anywhere else. And I, I wouldn't have done anything differently. I think the only thing maybe I would have done a little bit differently is, and this is just my nature, but understand that not everything's going to be perfect and not get so hard on myself about that because I want everything to be so perfect. I want every client to be so happy and every caregiver to be fulfilled. And it took me a while to realize that you're not going to be everything to everybody. You're not going to make everybody happy. And I talk a lot about that on my Instagram page because that is something we all struggle with. But at the end of the day, there's going to be clients that are just not

going to be happy regardless of what you do. And the same with caregivers. And you have to just be okay with that. And that took me a while to not internalize that. That makes sense. Thank you. Is there any other advice that you would give to agencies who are looking to do the same things that you've done? I think you need to understand your why. I talked to a lot of agencies about, you know, why did you start your agency? And if your reason is you want to make money, I think you're maybe going to be in the wrong industry. There's a lot of money here.

This is a recession-proof industry. But if your heart isn't in it, if you don't have a strong why and a why that's going to connect with your clients and your caregivers, you're going to find yourself in a lot of challenges and a lot of challenging positions. So I think anybody that's looking to get into this,

like really understand why you're doing it, do it for the right reason and just make sure that you're doing it the right way too. Because it's just going to be harder for yourself to get out of it. It's not. Wise words. I hope that everyone who is listening to this takes that to heart because I have heard that from a lot of different owners and a lot of the most successful ones say that, yes, it is a business, it is to make money, but it's not an industry where you can go

into it just for that. So it's always good to get a reminder of that. In our last few minutes here, let's talk briefly about your consulting services. What is the overview of your services? Who is your ideal client? What do you specialize in? And how can people get in touch with you? Sure. So my company is called Real Home Care Consulting. My last name is real. It's R-E-E-L. So I lucked out in that regard. But I take a holistic approach to agencies and it could be anything from marketing, community outreach, revenue growth is obviously a big one for most agencies, recruitment, HR issues, operations, and streamlining. So no two agencies are going to have the same issues that are not structured the same way. So I come in and from a holistic

perspective, we identify what your biggest needs are. And together, I work as your consultant, but also your coach to help you keep you accountable, hold you accountable for different items, but help you get to whatever your next step is. So whether you're an agency that is just starting out and hasn't even picked out your name yet, have a few of those clients to agencies that are a few years in to... I have a client that's 20 years in right now and they're looking for their exit strategy 5 years out. There's a different approach. And I'm not going to come in with just one approach for everybody. We're going to figure it out together. We're going to put together a roadmap and I'm going to be with you every step of the way. And I just, I love this industry.

I love what we do for our communities. So this was when I sold, I was excited for the opportunity to continue to help people, but on such a larger scale. And so my website is realhomecareconsulting.com. Again, that's R-E-E-L. And also my phone number is 312-590-3225. I'm on Instagram and Facebook. So please follow along for fun tips and stories and things just to help you along with your journey. And your Instagram handle is, I would assume, just the same, realhomecareconsulting? Yeah, I think it's real underscore home underscore care underscore consultant. Yeah, just type in realhomecare. I'm sure you'll find me. Okay, sounds good. For those using your phone number to get in touch, do you prefer texts or

calls? Whatever's easier for you. I'm pretty agile. Sounds good. Well, I'm sure that you'll get some inquiries that way from people listening. This has been really good. And again, this is part one of two. So we talked kind of about some of everything today, but focused more on the story, on the ups and downs, on the why. Next week, we will go into more of the how, more about the processes and culture and the specific nitty gritty things of how Becky ran her business. So thanks to those who joined. Thanks again to you, Becky.

This has been really, really good. I'm excited for next week and everyone have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much for having me. 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.