Home Care U - What Not to Do—Lessons Learned from Underperforming Franchisees (Matt Ericksen Pt. 1)

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

Sometimes it’s better to learn from the mistakes and failures of others. Another owners’ misstep could be an avoided pitfall for you. Matt Ericksen, Director of Sales & Operations at Griswold Home Care, is here to share uncomfortable truths and stories about franchisees that are falling behind.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. All right.

Welcome, everyone, to Home Care U. I'm Miriam Allred, head of partnerships at CareSwitch. It's great to be back with you. I hope everyone's having a great week. We've got a lot to cover today, so we're going to get right after it. I am really excited to welcome our guest today. We've got Matt Erickson, the director of Sales and Operations at Griswold Home Care, located up in Pennsylvania.

Matt, thanks for being on the show today. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Let's start with your background. I was just telling you this. I love to do more of like an in-depth background when we've got guests on for two weeks, let people get to know you a little bit, learn about, you know, pre-home care, why home care, what you're up to now.

So why don't you start there and just share kind of some insights on your background, a little bit about yourself personally, and then we can get into your home care role today. Yeah, sure. So I like to say I'm a little bit of an accidental home care person. I've never, I probably still technically don't know like what career I ever wanted to get into. Like it was just kind of like I wanted to enjoy my passions and just have time and ability to do my hobbies. Right. So I'm here literally because I like it just kind of life took me that way. Following my passion. Right.

And I started like helping people and coaching people. So that brought me here, but predating that and kind of ultimately what got me to what I love about my position, about working with franchise owners and their teams and the coaching and just it's a million different things every day. So that's wired into my brain. I'm not sure if anybody can see or not, but there's a picture of a business guy with a whole bunch of colors and like just graphics, images, things just like coming out of his out of his head um behind me on my wall here and that's that's me that's uh i'm wired uh a little different let's say about high self-awareness i have um dyslexia and adhd and that um manifested very early in my life i had to learn how to read using clay and And so I just approached it in my mind differently. And I love it. I think it's a superpower.

And it's really helped me excel in this role now. But it definitely caused some confusion. And I didn't know what I want to do with my life and my college years. And in those formal years when everybody wants to know what they want to do. Right. And they have that they're super clear. I'm like, I have no clue whatsoever. So I went to school for ultimately for a degree in history,

but I only chose it because really I had to go to school. I went to college so that I could be an athlete, right? I was an athlete for school. So that was, that's how I was wired, right? It was, you know, whatever I could do to keep it, do you enjoy track and field? I was gonna do. So I went to college, got a degree in history

because I thought I want to be a teacher. And that ultimately I took one education course and I was like, I'm going to have to teach the same thing every week, every month, every year for 20 years. Then I'm going to retire. And to me, that was a death sentence because I need that variability in my life. And I've had fantastic teachers, no, nothing against them. My mom's a teacher, but I was like, I can't, I can't do the predictable. Like I need that variety. But ultimately that, you know, that just kind of abandoned the whole education, you know, route.

And I just ultimately graduated college in 2010 and went to go work at GNCs, the supplement stores that you often see, because I was familiar with health, wellness, supplementation from my years as a long jump, triple jumper. And I was like, I know this, I can do this. And that's really where the seed was planted for ultimately where I'm at today is that I'm not a sale like a car salesman, right? I know I'm good at sales. It's one of my, I would say gifts as far as what's given to me by my dyslexic thinking, but I'm not, I can't just, I can't negotiate with you to buy something that you don't want to buy. And so at GNC, I was really, it really helped me shape my relationship-based sales approach as far as understanding the product, the value, my audience, what they need, and then obviously building a good relationship with them for repeat customer base and to build that. And so I was really successful with that for a couple of years there, about three and a half years.

I spent, as a manager there, ultimately running one of their flagship stores in Central Jersey, which was really cool, great experience in the industry and to learn from a lot of people. So I have a really random junk drawer of supplement knowledge that I don't use anymore. But the skill set as far as working with people and working with people of all different types, you come different approaches, right? So back then I was a bodybuilder and so and i'm 62 so i know i can be intimidating when somebody walks in that has no clue about this stuff um or had a you know a low self-esteem right and then trying to talk to me so i was able to kind of understand that and use that and learn how to how to break that down to talk to somebody felt something uncomfortable and to get the outcome desired for them as well as for me.

But ultimately, you know, that ran its course and that timed out. And my now wife, girlfriend then, walked into the store one day and was, saw me just miserable behind the counter. I'm like, I love what I do. The core here, I don't like the everything else around that, you know, the retail. Anyway, that's where retail before knows that just you know they do it all for the same reasons you love that customer interaction that the fast pace the just the excitement buzz that can be in retail but it's the back end it's the the business management it's the some of the personalities i had my fill of it and uh so she

was like you know you're miserable i know you've talked about getting you into into the office space, into a more formal, like, you know, nine to five position where you have some somewhat of a personal life. And she was like, I found this position. It is it gives you HR recruiting, gives you everything you're looking for to be well-rounded because i didn't can't translate that for any retail situation to into um into a business you know office spot right it's just they're not going to hire you with that so i was like all right it's not my forever job but i need something to kind of give me that that spot and so she was like there's this company called epic health services um they have a they have a client service coordinator role that's going to let you do kind of take what you do. And so you apply, you have an interview next week and you need to go read up on them. So I did that, showed up for the interview, got the job ultimately.

And that was like, full circle like what i loved about the teaching and developing and and all that i found in there is where i could coach develop i could help my nurses that for anybody that knows by the way epic health services now is aviana health care essentially so i started off with them that uh that well that job gave me everything i wanted that well-roundedness it gave me all the kind of the structure um talked on sales going out to visit families and clients having to work with uh children that were coming out of the children's hospital so i was working with very very high acuities children's on trach spends really sad stories unfortunate circumstances and uh having to you know really have true empathy and understanding of the difference you can make.

And I was like, this is what I was looking for. I had no clue about it. All I knew about home care and home health care was the Bayotta commercials from the 90s. When you had the nurse show up in a thunderstorm. And that's literally, I had zero knowledge. And so there's this whole world that opened up to me from that. Took off and excelled with that role. Learned a lot.

That was not it was not an easy road. That was that was a where I learned all the hard things that I work with franchisee franchisees and franchise owners on now about what not to do. A lot of it comes from personal experience of what I did personally wrong myself, whether it's from the wrong decision or just simply not taking action and letting something happen. A lot of that was from those former years. I did that role in a coordinator role for just under a year and then took over managing offices for them as a director in a couple of spots in Jersey and Pennsylvania before I ultimately moved over for the next opportunity to work with in the franchise realm with a brand new franchise owner for Bright Star Care and help them start their business on the main line here outside of Philadelphia. And it was a fantastic experience because I'd gone from large operations and the home health care, home care space and understanding what does that look like at multi, multi-million

dollar volume to you have no clients now. You have zero. There is nothing. I was like, this is a great, this is what I need. This is that fresh kind of, you know, this is that learning opportunity that I always love to chase and apply that knowledge from being a large size. Now, how do I reverse engineer that into making them successful? And that was dual license.

So same situation, home health care, home care experience there. That was was a dual license. So same situation, home healthcare, home care experience there. That was like the whole thing that I kind of completed was a complete picture where I applied my knowledge, but learned a great deal as far as how to manage with referral sources, build relationships from scratch. You know, when it's not given to you on a, on a silver platter, essentially, right. How do you make something out of nothing, roll up your sleeves and really get after it. That was a fantastic learning still very much of a learning experience great experience fantastic owners and uh ultimately got a message one day on linkedin and was like yeah you know hey there's this position or this

opportunity i'm like i love you know that's that's all the hard work and like the difficult situations was all for like this and so then then joined Griswold October 2020. And it's been a blast ever since then. Just been, we'll work with such great owners, different opportunities just to learn, grow, help, support. And ultimately, you know, we see our roles here as franchise business coaches and as aggregators. Take all the years of history, knowledge, and so forth,

that all these owners have compiled hundreds of years of experience in total. And how can I take and give that to like a new owner and all that's struggling or looking for the next level up? So it's all kind of come full circle now to this. That was amazing. I learned, yeah, some new things about you. I hope people enjoyed that. Just getting like an inside look at your background

and where you're coming from and how your experience has just snowballed to what it is today. And the thing that's coming to mind, you said at the beginning, like accidentally got into home care. I think a lot of us can relate. Obviously there's a lot of people with clinical backgrounds and that's like a more maybe organic or natural progression, but a lot of us are accidental. And you know, the phrase of this podcast is nobody went to school to learn how to run a home care agency. Like that was just ringing in my ears as you were sharing that, because that's so true. Like nobody went to school to do this, but here we all are like trying to figure it out.

And that's why we talk to people like you that, you know, have just learned over the years. And it's like, how do we surface all of your knowledge and experience and share it with others? So that was amazing. Really quick, maybe. And yeah, 60, 90 seconds. Will you just recap kind of your role at Griswold and then give us just like a kind of overview of Griswold, like what sets you apart, some of the demographics or stats, or just what people would want to know about, you know, who is Griswold? So director of sales and operations. And I lead the support team here at the home office and Bluebell PA in direct

support of our franchise owners, as far as coaching, advising on best practices, resources, overall friend, their, their franchise unit success. And that requires collaboration with all departments here, our marketing finance teams are our learning and development teams and really be a, you know, kind of pull everything together, you know, and be the coordinator for the resources and tools. And that means going to do franchise field visits, that's hopping on calls any day of the week,

and just being available and accessible and being a value add, most importantly, to that interaction with the franchise owner. Any of those touches that we have, whether verbal, nonverbal, as Griswold goes, um, where, so we are, uh, we are one of the, I would say the longest tenured in the home care space. Um, having started in the late eighties, um, Jean Griswold, uh, we have a fantastic legacy here, which was what was on the big drivers when we joined us. I just love the culture. Everybody was so nice when I joined, joined the office.

It's like, this is, this is, these are great people. These are good people. And you can see that in our franchise owners. I think that's a differentiator in itself. It's just the authenticity and the true passion behind not only people here in the place they love, you know, their home. And that was extremely obvious to me coming here shortly after COVID started. It's just the importance of the position and helping individuals and families stay home and where they want to be. And from that, you know, we will get involved with the veterans and the VACCM program, long-term care insurances. We try to really kind of coordinate that non-medical care for the families however best we can. And really almost kind of like a care management level of service where we're looking at their needs from a holistic standpoint, not just a kind of, hey, I need a caregiver for these hours. It's how can we impact the community overall? Awesome. Yeah. Thanks for sharing. I think it's great to hear, you know, like what you're doing day to day, what that role looks like, and a little

bit more about Griswold. The last thing I'll call out on your background, you are a father of two. You do have a brand new little baby at home. You're running on little sleep, but you're off to a great start. So just keep it up, you know, and thanks for being here. That's great. I want to just, yeah, let everyone know Matt is a big fan of the show. I would say he's one of our most avid listeners. And so I wanted to bring him out of the shadows per se and get him in the hot seat. So let's get after the topic. I want a couple of disclaimers and kind of expectation setting as we get into this. Today in this first session with Matt, we're going to talk about what not to do, lessons learned from underperforming franchisees. I put Matt on the spot with this one. The original objective was just to talk about the most successful franchisees.

What are they doing? What are they doing right, et cetera. We thought that would be great. And then I challenged him and thought, what can we talk about, you know, the people that aren't performing well, what can we learn from them? How can we, you know, take their mistakes or failures and, you know, not bad mouth anybody, but just, you know, expose some of the obstacles, the mistakes that are being made so that people can learn from them. So that's what we're here to do today. We're going to cover eight areas. Matt and I have talked through, you know, some of the trends and areas that he commonly sees. So we're going to go through those eight areas. We and I have talked through some of the trends and areas that he commonly sees. So we're going to go through those eight areas. We're going to go about knee deep because we've got now 45 minutes to go through these eight areas. We're going to go about knee deep.

This episode is going to have a lot of stories and examples. So it's going to look and feel maybe a little bit different than an episode where we go 60 minutes deep on one topic, but just kind of setting the stage, that's what we're going to get out of today's session. So Matt, if you're ready, let's get after it and let's go, yeah, one to eight. We're going to go through these relatively quickly, you know, and just kind of talk through stories, examples, et cetera. So let's start with the first one, which is common mistake, you know, number one, running your business like you ran your college bank account. You know, the phrase that you put was like, is there enough money for pizza? This sounds horrible, but you and I, many people here, you know, have seen it, heard it before. Big, big no, no, big mistake. So what do you want to share on this, this area

specifically? Yeah, it's a, I see it's common. And I will say I'll, I'll be the first one to throw myself under the bus, right? As far as what not not to do because there's a lot of things that I will talk to, including this. I did myself as the director of a franchise. I wasn't the owner, but our owner was a bit more passive, and I had to handle everything. So I'll throw myself under the bus all day long on this stuff and give you examples of what I did wrong. Or not wrong. I hate the word wrong, but just you don't know what you don't know. And so, and if the way shows you that or educates you on that, that that's not truly,

you know, don't beat yourself up about it. Right. Just learning opportunity. And with this, it's really looking at comfort. Comfort is a poison in my mind. It's something that we just get complacent and understanding, you know, that the business is not a hobby in a way, right? You can certainly, some people would like to buy themselves a franchise to, you know, be their own boss, right? But they're not trying to be a $5 million, $6 million business. They just want to keep it, you know, a certain size to reach that comfort level and that autonomy. But even in that world, the lack of a formal like accounting platform is really has, you know, that void, if you call it that, it sets the stage really for, you know, that phrase of, you're just checking your bank account, you know, can I cover my bills?

Can I cover, the question is, can I cover payroll this week? If I can cover payroll this week, everything else I can kind of figure out on my own. Like that's the, the, what I've seen the approach be. Not necessarily the kind of like looking at it and being strategic with planning out the understanding your float, understanding money, you know, the, the bills do when, and timing of everything. It's just, that's the biggest, it's just that comfort level with if I can cover payroll, I can figure everything else out. And

that's that comfort comes, you know, that's it gives you the comfort, but then the goals don't pull you to be better than that. If you don't have the goals set in place, if you don't have, I mean, you know, you're bringing quarterly monthly goals, small ones at that if you don't have um if you know you're bringing just quarterly monthly goals small ones at that you don't have those set there's no pressure necessarily to break out of that comfort zone you know that you kind of created that complacent culture of just i as long as i'm not pissing anybody off by not paying payroll then i'm good so that's really the most frequent mindset. And that's not intentional. I don't think anybody ever sets out to do that intentionally,

but more so just it's kind of a, it's a, for whatever reason, they arrive at that point. And then it's very, very tough to break out of that because of the comfort level, because of you've got a process. It may not be a perfect process, but that's your process and it works. And you're able to keep your hours,

keep your caregivers happy. But are you happy? Are you happy with the money at the end of the day for yourself? Or are you just an operator of the business and not an owner to where you're actually getting your tank replenished in a way? Yeah, the most common, you know, example that I hear is like, don't use your business as an ATM. You know, you hear that and that's kind of that like horror story that you hear that's all too common.

Any other specific pitfalls that you would advise to watch out for any other, just like really common things that you see early franchisee owners do that you're like, you know, stop doing that immediately. Any kind of specific examples? Yeah, I would say it's over, and especially for your first year owners or your early owners in that, you know, zero to $800,000 annual revenue range. Maybe you have one or two employees. I think that size office is the,

especially for initial ones, the over, the over, what's the word I'm looking for here? So quick to say yes to vendors and their vendor solutions that are provided out there and essentially outsourcing core business processes that all cost money. And oftentimes I've seen a, maybe absolutely extremely useful resources

but are underutilized. So you're paying a bill for a product that you're only using a fraction of percent of the resource. You're not getting a product that you're only using a fraction of percent of the resource. You're not getting the value that you need from it. You're mismanaging that allocation of funds. It's a waste. And you're digging yourself into a deeper hole.

And can I run leaner and keep my profitability, get to profitability sooner and then implement these things during those stretch periods of growth where the need is higher and the value is greater on the ROI side compared to just saying, oh, yeah, on-call service. Great. Here, I can outsource my recruiting. Great. There. But what you're doing is you're also you're piecemealing out your culture and the quality. And so you have to be very we coach to be very shrewd and purposeful with those decisions. Yeah, that's a good one. I honestly wasn't like thinking in that direction, but I think that's great. You know, it's, it's natural to just want to like offload tasks that you're not good at or that you don't want to do. But I think like you're saying, you know, you can't really shortcut processes. You can't shortcut quality. And like you could

be wasting a ton of money on tools that you're not using or maximizing. And that's, you know, waste early on. I think that's great. And what they all add to that is just it's that first year, especially for newer energy. And even if you're not a new owner, but you're just a smaller operation, what's your identity? And if you're outsourcing a lot of your processes early on, you're robbing yourself of that ability to create that identity for yourself, which is ultimately your differentiator within your market. And I think that's extremely critical for long-term success as far as knowing who you are and what you're good at. I knew I was really good at concierge care in my past life. And that was what got done. And then when you have confidence, confidence sells. And that's where there's the opportunity to build that for

yourself as a new owner. I think this leads actually really nicely into the second challenge, which is early owners getting too comfortable behind a desk. That's something that you mentioned, like maybe an air quotes, like too comfortable behind, like you're not a physical desk, but like the conceptual desk. What do you mean by that and what are you seeing in home care you can it's a really good business to get into to find something that all you'd be busy at so there's always something that's going to your attention there's never enough time in the day and so it comes down to that what do you choose to make the priority and staying you know getting too hard behind the desk is all right well technology has enabled me to i can call the clients that go visit them i can email that referral source i can video call

that referral source instead of go visit them um and you absolutely can and it's convenient and that convenience and that comfort those your abilities you know to communicate to have eyes on a situation um and to bring just the the highest level of care possible um or just the greatest value so to those individuals whether it's referral sources your community or so forth and especially for um smaller offices that have um the need to create or looking to create that presence in our community. You're behind your desk. There's no amount of SEO investment that is going to penetrate your market like you being out and involved and engaged with them. So at the most fundamental level, just that is critical. If you want to grow and or just maintain the business,

not if you've reached that number and you're just going to maintain your business, you can't be behind the desk. You have to do things that are intentful and in front of people. So because this is a trust business where vulnerable populations of people, whether it's the individual or their family member are asking you to come into the home

to solve this and provide a solution that they themselves are not capable of. And that's a vulnerability and they have to be able to trust you with that. And if you're not getting out in the community and you cannot make those connections, it's much tougher to grow the business as you would like to.

Do you feel like this trend has become more common post-pandemic? Like, is that an obvious assumption or not necessarily? You know, people have kind of like siloed themselves a little bit and you feel like that's like the core reasoning behind this or do you feel like there's like more there no i think it's always been there i think that it's been there i mean i you know they i've experienced that you know pre-covid as a coordinator and director you know

in that it's called that that old world and the new world now, post-COVID, where I was still operating the Bright Star in the early days of COVID. And I was guilty. I found even just six months in, before I came to Griswold, is that it's a drug. Comfort is a drug. And I was finding that the convenience of the technologies that we implemented to help us stay engaged and manage our cases, we were letting it trickle into other areas where we should have been out and we should have been engaged and we should have done that. And I think, and I see that in the industry when I've talked to peers and I'm interacting with owners is that there's that convenience.

It's still hanging on. It's sticking its claws in and for one reason or another, and it's, I think COVID, that was one of the inadvertent outcomes from all the technology enhancements that we had. Yeah, this is super interesting. One of the things that you mentioned

that stood out to me was complacency later on. You may get the business to a revenue size, a client count that you out to me was like complacency later on, you may get the business to a revenue size, a client count that like you wanted to hit. And then that comfort level sets in. And then there's that level of like, I use the word like complacency. And that can be like an easy, you know, trigger to kind of like, sit back on your heels, you know, shoot off that email rather than like driving, you know, to the referral source. So I think there's, you know, shoot off that email rather than like driving, you know, to the referral source. So I think there's, you know, like early on, it may be just something to avoid and be aware of. But then later on, you know, something also to be aware of, of when you kind of, you know,

hit that comfort level, you get a little bit complacent. It's easy to want to just like use technology to do everything. But there's a ton of value in, you know, meeting with the clients, meeting with the families, meeting with the referral sources, like having an in-person conversation with the caregiver. Like that stuff is so invaluable. And, you know, just be aware of, you know, not getting too comfortable behind the desk at various points of time in your business. We've mentioned this in the context of like a newer owner, but then that's managing yourself at the larger volume offices. It's managing your team to this and to really watching and be in touch with your team to make sure that that's not quietly

happening behind the scenes, which is the most common way I've seen this manifest itself. It's not the individual owner. It's somebody on the team is indulging a little bit too much in the things that can create these solutions for them to stay behind the desk. Yeah. I'm glad you pointed that out. You know, you've got to keep your eye on the team and make sure everyone's accountable. And even like, you know, in a minute, we're gonna talk about like measurables, KPIs, making sure you're putting processes, numbers in place to hold people accountable, even to like in person conversations or visits, etc. So that's great. The third one actually really like these are snowballing, you know, maybe intentionally or unintentionally. But the third one is poor communication skills with clients and caregivers. What are some specific examples

with this trend that come to mind for you? It's the reactive world. So it's the, it's the world of just waiting for the problem to manifest itself and just calling and engaging to solve the pain point to get back to that comfort point, to get back to that comfort level. Right. So, Hey, there's a call out. I got to call this person to take care of it. Well, they said they were good for the shift. So, you know, I'm going to take them at their word that they're good for the shift. And they call them once upon the shift or schedule them. And then you don't talk to them again until they call out again. Right. On the caregiver side, on the client side, it's, you know, whether it's your state regulations, you're not doing the minimal to stay compliant with the state regulations you're just calling them to give them the news

of maybe uh you know of the call out right you're only you're only calling when you need something or something for you and the secondary concern is about them so the um that's probably the most frequent interest it's that reactive mindset compared to the proactive one like hey i did a i try to reach out for confirmation that caregiver that caregiver and call me back or texting me or email to confirm that they're good for that shift even though i scheduled them for the shift last week i'm doing touch base to make sure that we don't have a failure on this shift so i'm calling two days ahead of time to make sure hey are you still good for this i haven't heard back so i'm not just going to assume they're good. I have to continually vet and that proactive communication skill. And that's just one way on the caregiver

side. Um, that's, uh, they can guard against complacency. Yeah. I, I find myself using those words all the time, reactive and proactive, you know, home care is often on the defense, you know, we're both athletes. I use the terms like offense, defense. Do you see owners that can get on the, on the offensive? Like, you know, it's like over time there can be less fires to be putting out. There can be less like reactive communication. You really can like get out of that and it can be more proactive and more like client or caregiver centric per se. Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's and that's by size goals. And so understanding like, you know, there may be, you know, I think any of us can look at the business where it sits now at any level.

There's things that you want to fix or want to be better, right? And there's maybe a bunch of those. And then so prioritizing and choosing one thing at a time and setting really manageable goals for yourself, but most importantly, your team. And that's the biggest, I would say, the big gap that I personally experienced and had to learn to grow through, but then also I see manifest itself now in many different ways, is what the owner wants or the director of the office wants.

So even if the one and two in the office, they're on the same page, there's a gap between leadership and the coordinators and so forth or the supervisors on what needs to happen. And so being able to lead and manage to that goal of, all right, we are going to, say, increase our home care poll scores, which is one of the key, the experience management and the MPS score is one of the key things that we look at when let's say doing a franchise field visit um evaluating what things we need to influence and impact and just choosing one or two of those at a time in a fixed time period so we're talking monthly or not or in a quarter 90 day window so that it stays it stays you know realistic right you're not looking at you're

not biting off more than you feel that you can chew. It's something that is, you know, accomplishable. And that has helped kind of, you know, once a foot in front of the other and you look back six months from now and you're like, wow, all right, this is possible. This is doable. It's just, it's, you may have all the aspirations to get really aggressive with change. The reality is that there's a business to run and there's other things

that's gonna pull you in different directions. So even on your busiest day, can this goal still see progress? That's how you need to look at it. And that's just a simply, maybe it's just a simple weekly call to the families. One extra call. Challenge your team to do that.

It's like very, very small, manageable things that they can check the box on. Small, but tangible and like quantifiable, you know. So if you do this X amount of times and you repeat that consistency of it, that compounding of engagement

is going to help improve that, say, home care post score. I want to stay on communication for a little bit longer. I'm curious how, there's not like a blueprint per se, but, you know, to your franchisees that you're consulting with, you know, any, yeah, very specific, like how often should you like get FaceTime with your employees or get FaceTime with clients and families or referrals? Like what, what would you recommend? Like how much FaceTime is good,

you know, because there, there's a time and a place for technology. Like there's a time and a place for automation, you know, like digital touch points, obviously the client, you know, the caregivers are very interactive with the clients and that's great, but the office, you know, it's very easy to get disconnected, which is harmful for a variety of reasons, but how, yeah, I guess I'm asking you like franchisees, how, when you're consulting, how, what are, how many touch points, you know, with each of the different parties that the office is talking to? So I'll start with the internal team first, because that's where it really starts is setting the example as a leader in the office, whether it's the owner, if you're the owner, if you're the managing director of the office

is having weekly one-on-ones with everybody on your team, having a weekly office meeting where everybody comes together. And so you have at least those two things for your team showing that during those meetings, you're driving the value. And so you're setting the example, the context being that that example, and then by you doing that, coordinators, recruiters, anybody else in the office that reports up to you is going to understand that if they do this for the caregivers, if they do this for the clients, what the value is of those in-person meetings relative to you just firing an email off to what am I direct report saying, hey, how are you doing this week? Drawing that parallel and helping drawing that tone there was the tone for them when they go out to the office out to their teams and first and foremost state regulations so at minimum you need to be compliant with reassessments so forth

um at the very least and that varies from state to state um with your depending on how offices are structured differently so there's i'll try to keep it as concise of an answer as possible um office some offices have coordinators assigned to specific clients some don't um it's you want to be out there um i like to say a perfect world monthly if possible and it doesn't have to be a long visit not and that's where the context i think a lot of there's a miscommunication there's a misunderstanding they get to sit down for a cup of tea and eat lunch with them no it's just a quick pop-in once a month at the very least but looking you teaching the teams to shape their mindset of look for a reason to go visit them so when they call and maybe there's been a carousel

of caregivers through there you're trying to the weekends have been tough and there's um you know they're just not happy they're not ready to leave but they're just not happy. They're not ready to leave, but they're just not, you don't have them where they used to be. Well, instead of calling them, they can get another update. The team should be seeking, hey, you know what? This is a great opportunity for me to go out there and actually just sit down with them. And let's talk through, you know, what we're experiencing on our end. And that transparency of presence, that's going to be key. And so that can be weekly. It has to be,

it has to be every other day. And that mindset there really is, you know, that's what, if there's the opportunity to go out and see them, go see them. With the caregivers, definitely, I would say once a quarter to be able to see every, if you have caregivers that you oversee, just a quick pop in, have eyes on the situation. And just one person from the office. It doesn't have to be everybody. If somebody can have that touch point with them from the office, that's key. So really the coordinator doesn't have to be going out to see every caregiver every quarter.

It's, you know, when was the last time that an office person had that interaction in person with a caregiver on the case? So essentially one person per year to that caregiver ratio, right? You don't have to keep it up. That touches will keep it real for a very isolated role being a caregiver on the field. Yeah, that was awesome. Something that's coming to mind, I shadowed in an office and it was a big operation and they had someone in the office like on the phone, this really like bubbly lady. So awesome, just making phone calls to employees and clients all day long. That was literally her job.

And if or when she came across someone, a circumstance, you know, life event, a change, just something, you know, noteworthy, then she'd put them on a list. And then that month they would go out and visit those people. I love it. It goes, it goes such a long way, even a phone call, you know, we're talking about like, I was pushing for like in-person visits, how often, how frequent, you know, start with the phone calls, you know, to just like build some relationships and rapport. And then if there's something that comes up on the call that warrants, you know, an in-person visit, put them on a list, make it a priority,

get to them within the month. So again, like, and make sure everything's scalable. Like, you know, someone hearing this may think like, you know, that's just not possible. We're always on the defensive. We're always putting out fires. How can we like, you know, make phone calls, but it's, it's all part of, like you said, just like small, consistent steps, actions, processes in place. And you will see how much of a difference this makes when you get on the offensive and are proactive and reaching out to people you know the care in the home the relationships the outcomes like it all improves when you're more intentional and consistent and to give a quick prescription on on to the officers that do that are at that position um make the most of the call and say

just confirming the shift hey how's your kid's soccer game going that was one of the call and say, just confirming the shift. Hey, how's your kid's soccer game going? That was one of the things that we, that we implemented in my past life of just find out more about them that helped and actually helped teach our, our coordinators that we hired, how to get to know the people a lot better because they knew what shift they were working. They also knew their family life and what was going on. And so when time is, is tough for you, look at that, look at, look at the phone calls and find out more about that person beyond what their schedule availability is. And this is probably obvious, but like, you know, jot some notes down, like when you're on a call, you know, take five, 10 notes, put that in your software, just keep track of that information. So then everyone's up to date on, you know, who that client is a little bit about them. You can share that information with the caregiver. Like it just

makes it all, you know, more personable and proactive as those conversations are being documented as well. Let's keep going here. You already were kind of like alluding to this, but the fifth most important, you know, challenge that we're seeing to correct is lack of measurables. It's so easy to get going or be inside the business. And just like we're saying, be putting out fires and just trying to like stay afloat, you know, just trying to like

make payroll at the end of the week. But it's really important early on and throughout to put measurables in place and be aware of, you know, what are your KPRs? What are we focused on? How are things trending? So what do you want to share on, you know, like the lack thereof, like, you know, the obvious, like obvious, how agencies are lacking measurables? It can be overwhelming because nowadays the level of data that we have access to, especially for a lot of our owners here that started in this business 20, 30 years ago, they're still operating today. It's mind-numbing how much information they have access to. And so one of the things I say, when you manage everything, you manage nothing. nothing and so what you have to commit to as a team as a culture as a group what are you know pick three to five and nothing more than that i i love less is more in the

situation so your top three um revenue agnostic kpis right and that could be whether um you choose like a client and caregiver satisfaction um if you're choosing billable shifts, how much their fill rate essentially of the hours that you have available, if it's simply managing your overtime. But we always manage our recommendation was like 3% to 5% overtime. Keep it within that range. Reach the wheels. Help you with your situations and to scale the business but match to it um it starts digestible once that you can even on your busiest day hey where we at with these with these measurables um that is start there get that behavior ingrained in you and then build upon it and so an office um that has to change that

behavior of measuring nothing or inconsistently, sometimes we're measuring inconsistently, which is probably the reality more so than anything. It's like, as they have time to measure, they check in on that KPI. And so that creating that behavior of consistency towards subconscious kind of behavior, almost ultimately start small with easy ones, and then just compound from there and empowering your team to do that too. So it's not on you as the owner of the operating director. Buy-in from your team is critical for growth and for the overall quality of the outcomes that you're trying to shoot for. So if you challenge your one, say one quarter that's really good at recruiting,

hey, I'm making you responsible of these two KPIs. I need you to report these to me on Friday afternoon to be able to speak to them on Monday morning staff meetings. Right. You are still aware as a director, but you don't have to pull that information yourself and you're empowering your team's buy-in. So I think that would be, this is a start. Yeah. I like what you said of like three to five, you know, in this world, like data driven world, it's so easy to get overwhelmed. Like, what should I be tracking? How should I be tracking, et cetera.

But it's like, start small and laser in and get really good at tracking a few really critical things. And you spewed out a couple of great example, client caregiver satisfaction, overtime, shift coverage, revenue, like just get a couple down and get really good at measuring them and then scale up from there. Okay. You scale your team. You were just talking about like delegating measurables, you know, just, you know, start small and then scale accordingly, but be really intentional about like what you track and why and when and how.

Yep. And that's the most important is the consistency across all your growth levels. Right. So, you know, some KPIs are good for a certain phase of the business that you go through that growth, but that requires time and understanding. You have to learn a KPI. You have to learn what good is that benchmark is

and where that benchmark lives for the industry. So that takes time and investment. So you want to find the ones that no matter what, they're going to be with you from day one through the day ultimately, if you decide to sell the business and exit, that you've managed the business to that identity of KPIs. How, how do I word this? Do you see owners struggle with accountability themselves,

you know, early on, or, you know, they pass off too much too soon? You know know i'm just thinking about like measurables kpis measuring like you see owners ever you know sidestep their own accountability that makes sense i think it's i think yeah and i think but i think it's human nature and i'll speak to it kind of like from my from my personal experience uh you know in that in that rule of where my, my advisor from the franchisor didn't bring it up to me, even though I knew it was good for the business, it didn't, there was another level of importance when somebody else was holding me accountable to it. Right. And there are certain KPIs that were set within our dashboard that they would call and ask me about, they would watch, they would know when, if it fell to one end, I'd get a call like hey it's below this right um and so that

level of having an accountability partner um was one of the things i put down my notes is it can't be overstated the importance of being connected with other franchise owners and being and sharing in a simple and really easy practice i love i think we need to do more of it in both franchise networks and across the board to share your P&L with another franchise owner you trust and have open conversations and look at them. We like to do that as much as we can in our roles with our franchise owners. But having it with your peers is another level of accountability where you can talk through things of how to interact with the franchisor, what questions to ask

there's a different dynamic to that and I think that's really really important to help as far as get a perspective on how to keep yourself from giving to the temptation of just like, I don't want to look at that today

the business is, the business has to operate devoid of emotion. So you have to be consistent in everything you do. And you're running it on feeling your emotions or just how your energy levels at that. The outcome is going to be exactly what you bet. It's going to be inconsistent at best. Yeah. I'm glad you kind of ran with that. I wasn't like articulating, but you like kind of took that

where I wanted it to go. The phrase that's coming to mind is there's like, it's lonely at the top. There's like some sort of phrase of like, you know, it gets lonely when you're the owner, you know, and you have people reporting to you, but I love what you're saying about like, find an accountability partner that could be franchisee to franchise or that could be owner to owner franchisee to franchisee you know just find someone that you trust that you can bounce things off of that you can you know be accountable to that you can you know compare kpis with etc i think that's like so invaluable at every single stage because like we talked about like you know your kpis that you put in at day one probably won't be the same at like year three so you know as you're learning and growing you know have your KPIs that you put in at day one probably won't be the same at like year three. So, you know, as you're learning and growing, you know, have someone that you can talk to,

bounce ideas off of with, and even, you know, be held accountable to, because like you're saying, it's so easy to run your business off of emotion or, you know, circumstance, but, you know, to keep people in your room. Yeah. Not many people have that. Um, and that's not many, but there's just, there's, there's a select few that have an insatiable drive to push themselves regardless of the surroundings. But often the most common, I would say group of all of us is when there's people in you are in front of, there's that pressure to perform a little way. Cause you want to look the best you possibly can. When you open up to somebody you trust and share this information, that's going to be really where you excel. And that's where I think the value of your royalties

are. One of the things we say is get your royalties worth, right? You pay a percentage to the franchisor. Part of that value is having access to other franchise owners you otherwise maybe wouldn't have as easy access to as an independent. And that ability to just kind of connect with others that have come before you and solve it, like that's an understated value add. That's an indirect result of joining a franchise network. Yeah, learn best practices from people that have done it before you

and be vulnerable. You know, we're talking about like comfort zone. I think of like, you know, owners may be nervous, like expose themselves. Like, here's what we're doing. You know, we're talking about like comfort zone. I think of like, you know, owners may be nervous, like expose themselves, like, here's what we're doing, you know, is it working or not? Or am I doing things wrong? But yeah, be vulnerable and, you know, be accountable as an owner. I think that goes a long way. We got three more to get through in the next 10 minutes. I want to keep going here. Number six is going through the motions. I think this kind of ties into a lot of what we talked about already, but it's really easy for owners to get complacent and to just kind of go through the motions.

What do you want to add on this topic? So this was a real direct response. I won't be long-winded or long-worded with this one. It is set quarterly quality improvement meetings for whether it's just if you're a one-man show, do a one-man show quarterly meeting. If you have a giant team, same deal. Get the leadership together and you do every 90 days, you do a quarterly review meeting on your processes. You look at service failures. You look at complaints, bad Google reviews, bad Indeed reviews. You look at your satisfaction reports from Home Care Pulse. You take everything and you look at and then you look at your processes.

What's reported up, bubbling up to the leadership team. What are the processes that are, that are slowly dying out that are not effective anymore? We say anytime that you're seeing quick growth between five to $10,000 in additional weekly revenue, you know, there's going to be a process or two that are going to be tested or those processes are going to expire in effectiveness. And if you're looking every 90 days at your internal systems, your operating process and communication, as well as the feedback loop from your audience and community, that is going to help to guard against essentially just going through the motions. Every week, I'm going to come in on Monday and Tuesday. I'm going to process payroll.

I'm going to do some recruiting on that day. I'm going to do some scheduling. Thursday, I'm going to confirm shifts for the weekend. And on Friday, I'm going to make sure that my weekend of on-call is not going to be held this week. And yeah, I've done it. I've lived through it. I've caught myself asleep at the wheel with that for too many times that I want to admit. But you need to have that that pull through and if you can go to and you know you have a quarterly meeting every 90 days you're going to have that pull through even if your goals aren't you know you don't have any goals you just want to look at your processes that's going to be that's that break that you need to kind of shake yourself awake and catch yourself so that if you do have accidentally kind of fall into that just going through the motions process, you have that break pre-established that, you know, like it'll catch you. I love what you called that quarterly quality improvements. Did I get that right? Yeah. Like I just like quarterly. Okay. Every 90 days quality,

like focused on quality and then improvements. I don't know that like is really just like strong, like break that down. Like that is exactly what you're there to do every 90 days is like reassess quality and dig up, you know, the bad and the ugly, which are bad reviews. Why did we lose clients? Why did we turn employees? Like, you know, surface the negative in like a controlled environment and then like hash it out and talk it through and start improving. I'm assuming the bad habit here

that you've noticed is like owners going longer periods of time. We're talking like maybe once a year, maybe twice a year. And it's sporadic where it's like, you know, something went wrong. Now we need to like have like a, you know, quality improvement meeting. But you're saying like every 90 days, you know, it's so easy to fall into this like recurring trap of just, you know, falling asleep like the sleep at the wheel. I love that example. But it's like, yeah, make it more consistent and be really intentional about what you're going to go over and what you're going to, you know, take away from that meeting. Yeah. That has also auditors love that. And so coming from the home health world, when I have my auditor in my office constantly between the Medicaid and everything, that will make your audits go a lot nicer when they see that you have an independent quality improvement process pre-established and actively running.

You'll get your auditors out of the office faster. Yeah, and that's like a quick win is like get in gear and have all these processes in place and it will help, you know, quite literally with like regular checks and things. Um, let's keep going on these last two here. So number seven, um, resonates probably with me and with a lot of people, just resistance to change. Um, it's, you hear business owners, not just in home care, you know, across the board, um, who say, you know, we've always done it that way and we're going to continue to do it that way, et cetera. That is such a, you know, an easy pitfall for people to fall into. So what have you seen regarding this?

Like translate this to home care. What are some of the things that you've heard when it's like, okay, we've always done it this way. We're going to keep doing it this way. Yeah. So the most common area where this really kind of manifests itself is in the technology space and in the IT world because that is simply the fastest changing and evolving consistently year over year and what can happen is that what when we see when we see owners franchise owners and I sit and i include myself in this one too is you got to a certain size using a certain system or two or software strategies um and you

and it proved effective and it worked it grew your office and so that is that is put in like it's freeze-framed is cemented in your mind this system works it's good it grew my business using this system and 15 20 years ago you know before they're really like you know crms got really popular and the efficiencies had you're running off an excel file or just a you know paper you know paper timesheets right? That was an effective process. I grew many offices having an effective manual timesheet process. I did those even when I first started, right? Tuesdays, I'm calling caregivers and I'm getting timesheets left and right. I'm driving to find them, right? But that process, it works, but does it make you competitive in today's world?

Having to work through that challenge, I think that's been key is helping owners understand that are now risk averse that have grown and have something to lose is try something. You can always go back. You are never forever committed to a software solution if it doesn't work. But fail fast is one of my favorite sayings. Try something new. It may take off and give you results that you never possibly dreamed of. But you need to try something new because, you know, there's going to be a self-limiting feature to your current situation. And that's where we see owners plateauing in the complacency and comfort level is that that fear of failure, that fear of the unknown is self-inflicting pain. pain if they want to grow that uncomfortableness with with changing technologies or changing

software solutions or operating platforms whatever it may be there's there's a lot of real tangible pushback on changes there simply because it's like i have something to lose here and that's real and i respect it for an owner that has invested their retirement right just because the franchisor said like hey we're gonna go pivot pivot to this new SEO or this new, you know, virus spamware. You know, I get to get home at the end of the day and, you know, it's I'm just the director of sales and operations here. Right. This is their business, their livelihood. And so there's a very real risk aversion. You have to work through that and understand and kind of make help to understand that there's a way that we can, you're not going to lose. It's just got to try something to elevate the business to a higher,

the next level. Am I understanding right that this is most common with more tenured owners, you know, owners that have been in business a long time, they like what they like and they know what they know. I'm assuming those are the people that are more resistant to change in the technology setting specifically. Am I understanding that right? Or is it more like the personality? It's everywhere. So it's not just technology. I mean, you know, we've seen, you know, it's a behavior.

It's a mindset. It's a behavior at its root. And it can be on the recruiting side, on the sales and marketing side. But on a weekly basis the technology changing so quickly so that's it's always popping up there for us yeah i was just curious like in the techno you know i think just more tenured owners they've been doing it for a long time business and you got something real to lose like you you don't want to well five hundred thousand dollars behind your goal for the year right because of this isn't so yeah i'm you're happy here that's that's that's real so yeah but yeah there's there's a lot of

variables here and yeah not to like generalize we were kind of focusing in on technology but you know every owner comes to this industry this business with different skills traits background you know some are more technology savvy some't, some have like really strong clinical background. And so they feel really strongly about like clinical processes. It's, you know, it's just being more fluid and flexible and not getting so set in your ways. I think a great way to like counteract that is when you bring on new employees, like, you know, just let them come and be a sponge early on and let them like comment and have feedback on all different processes, even things that they don't touch. Like let them just, you know, kind of give like a, an unfiltered view of the office of the processes, et cetera. And that's where you can learn.

And don't be quick to say, you know, we've always done it this way. Like, this is how you're going to do it. Like, let it be kind of like an organic conversation where things can evolve in real time. You know, you don't want them like to step into this mindset. Hire to your weaknesses and bring somebody on board that knows more than you is a common trait of the most successful franchises I've ever worked with. And it's something that I'm hiring right now for, you know, in my department. I want to bring on somebody that knows something more than I do. That will help you for success for sure. We'll call that a teaser for the next episode because that's on

the list for next week, which are the, you know, the things that the most successful franchisees are doing. That's one of them. In our last minute here, I'm sorry, I'm not giving you more time on this. You mentioned it early in the conversation, but this is what I want to end with, which is most common, you know, mistake we see is franchisees getting disengaged from the franchisor, not leveraging all of the resources available. They're paying royalties, putting in the effort to get out of it what they're putting into it. Just quickly, what do you want to say on that? Why is that happening and how can we encourage owners to take advantage? Yeah, absolutely. I think first, everything starts starts with trust you have to have trust on both sides and that's that's critical so we you have to have the foundation of

that uh and build that you know to before anything else comes and then from there slowing down and just having you know the franchisor they want you to succeed ultimately and they want you to win and uh just knowing the best intentions. We're not out to get anybody. And not only anybody's out to get either anybody here that everybody wants to win and succeed. And then just taking a step back, like, all right, we have a difficult situation we got to work through here, or we have a question to work through, or you have a personal challenge with your growth, reach out to us and or get your money's worth, right? It's a line item on your P&L, right? That royalty percentage, right? Are you getting, are you

maximizing that for the benefit of the business and engage with it in any way, shape or form? It's a good conversation, bad conversation. If it's a difficult one, easy one, have that engagement and get what you can from, for what you're spending, you know, just like you would from any vendor or software is how I advocate to to our franchise owners and i did myself personally it's just that is now there's a resource you don't have to like everybody but right there's a clear value and we can help each other win yeah in a previous conversation you and i were looking at some of the statistics of you know our underperforming franchisees obviously there's a lot of variables but our underperforming franchisees less engaged with the franchisor and our higher performing

franchisees more engaged with the franchisor. And it wasn't like a very obvious, but it was trending in that direction. You know, there's more touch points with the more engaged franchisees and they are more successful because, you know, they're taking advantage of the support, the resources, the accountability, the metrics, you know know the franchisor has so much to offer and those that are taking advantage of it are quite literally winning and succeeding exactly yeah let's end there this was awesome matt i know i know i just like grilled you for a full hour but you stuck with me which was awesome uh lots of great insights i i love the teaser for next week. So just so everyone's aware, we're going to bring that back next week. We're going to talk about what to do,

eight things the most successful franchisees are doing. So we're going to talk about those top performers and some trends that we're seeing. So Matt, thanks so much for being here and everyone for listening. And we'll look forward to seeing you back next week. Thank you. Take care. Okay. Take care. We'll see ya. 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.