Home Care U - What Performance Metrics Should a Home Care Agency Be Tracking in 2024 and Why (Jensen Jones)

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

How do you know if you're using the right KPIs? Jensen Jones, CEO of the Home Care CEO Forum, regularly gathers with home care owners in the top 10% of the industry—he's here to share his deep research on metrics and how to pick the right KPIs for your business.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

Welcome, everyone, to Home Care U, brought to you by CareSwitch. I'm Miriam Allred, your host. It's great to be back with everyone. Today, I'm joined by Jensen Jones, the CEO of Home Care CEO. Jensen, it's my pleasure. Thanks for being here with me today. Thanks for the invite, Miriam. Let's get going. Today, we're going to be talking about KPIs, business metrics, whatever you call them in your business. That's what we're going to be focused on today. Before we jump into the episode, Jensen, I think you're pretty well known in this industry, but as always, there's newcomers and new faces. So I'd love to give you some space to introduce yourself, talk a little bit about your personal background, your journey to home care, what you've

been up to lately. And then after that, we'll talk more about the Home Care CEO Forum and those mastermind groups. So why don't you give the audience a little taste of yourself and your background? Sure. No problem. So, you know, originally I didn't come from home care. I came from outside the industry. I was working for this large fortune 500 company running about a $65 million piece of business. And during that time, I was moving up the corporate ladder, decided to go to school to earn my MBA. And the universe just had a different path for me. In 2015, my dad was diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer. And during that time, I was full-time MBA and traveling between the offices. I ran the Pacific Northwest at that time, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming.

My boss was actually located in Colorado and our headquarters was in Florida. So there was a lot of travel. And essentially I was taking my dad to his appointments. And then, you know, as the cancer progressed, became more of his caregiver. And at that point, something had to give. So at that time, I made the decision to go ahead and leave work. My personal values are family education and service to others. So it's no surprise when you look at the values of home care CO form, it's community education and service to others. I try to stay close to my core. But I took time off. I actually ended up taking two years off. So I cared for my dad. And during that process, I was never actually exposed to home care. And so I cared for him through the

end of his life, which was a lot, a lot of learning from dad. Shortly after that, though, you know, we were focused on dad. I noticed something was going on with mom. And I think it was four or five months after my dad had passed, she was diagnosed with early onset dementia. So then I became her caregiver. With lessons learned, we got the estate set up and started planning and doing all those things. And after I had finished my degree, you know,

I love my mom to death, but I had to get back out there and get working. So I started looking for care. And that's when I ran into home care. And serendipitously, there was a owner in Seattle that wanted to grow his business. It was a single office. And he hadn't had experience with multiple offices in the past. And we talked and I said, oh, yeah, we can grow this thing and expand it. And at the same time, I'd be able to have care for my mother through the organization, which was great because there was a lot of learning there as well, too. So we expanded that business into three offices, three counties, and ended up selling in 2020. My mom is still doing actually fantastic, which is great to report. During that process, we were actually a part of the Home Care CEO Forum when Stephen Tweed was running all the groups.

That's how I got introduced to the Home Care CEO Forum. We moved up through the group to the 7% group before we sold. And shortly after we sold, I get a call from Stephen and he was inquiring if I'd be interested in facility becoming more involved in the Home Care CEO Forum. And, you know, I said, absolutely, let's go ahead and grow some of these groups. It was the middle of 2020. And I thought if we can grow this, you know, during the pandemic, you know, I don't really have anything to be worried about. And so I facilitated for two and a half years and in January of 2023 purchased the home care CEO forum. And so now the home care CEO forum, really, it's just a place where owners

come to share industry insights, discussion topics, solve problems, develop strategies for growth. Essentially, we're helping owners figure out what their next best step is in regards to growth. All of our members have a growth mindset and are in the season to learn. So during discussions, if people are making commitments, we'll hold you accountable to it, but we're also going to help you through it to grow your organization. We currently have four levels of our mastermind groups that are comprised of non-competing agencies. The first group is our strategic growth group, and those are agencies between 1.5 and 3.5 million in annual revenue. The 10% group is 3 and a half to six and a half

million in revenue. 7% group is six and a half to 10. And then our top 5% group is 10 million plus. We actually have two groups for strategic growth. And it looks like we are going to split the 10% here shortly. This last year has been pretty great for the CEO forum. We really try to create a community feel. So a lot of the members outside of their own group know each other and connect and share strategies as well, too. It's been a fun journey. What a journey. Holy cow. I hope, yeah, I don't know if a lot of people know that full story, but just like you said, you know, I think home care comes to all of us when we're least expecting it. A lot of us from, you know, personal examples, family members, relatives, neighbors going through it. But, you know, look at the last decade for you, you know, coming full circle from caregiver to now leading some of the top agencies in the country and in this industry.

I think that's incredible. And I'm glad you just broke down the different mastermind groups, because what we're going to share today, you can speak from really every lens. Like you said, there's that strategic growth group, which is that 1.5 to 3.5 million, all the way up to the 10 million plus or that top 5% of the industry. So you are regularly conversating with really every different, you know, kind of owner profile size in this industry. So I'm excited for a really rich conversation today about KPIs. Before we start, you know, kind of disclaimer for everyone listening to this. If you're listening and you're hoping for, you know, a KPI blueprint, a template, you know, a scorecard, a framework, apologies in advance from Jensen and I both, but that does

not exist. And that's not what we're going to give you today. I think in thinking about it, that's probably your mantra. I'm sure Jensen people approach you all the time, like, give me the silver bullet, give me the scorecard, give me the framework. But I think you and I both agree that that really doesn't exist and everybody wants it, but we're here to kind of set the record straight and talk about, you know, some of the universal concepts, but also just like the fluidity and dynamics of home care aren't conducive to that. So that's what we're going to kind of demystify and jump into today. So here at the start, you have done a ton of research about KPIs and I'm curious, you know, how did you go about that research and what were some of the biggest

takeaways that you found in your research and kind of study of business metrics? Yeah, you know, I would say that really the catalyst of the research started when I became involved with the mastermind groups. You know, we speak with agencies all around the country. There's over 50 agencies. And of course, you know, one of the questions that we always get is, what are the KPIs? What's the list? What's the magic solution of the things I need to be following to make these decisions? And so it's through that, through those shared KPIs, you know, I had my previous KPIs and I work one-on-one with agencies as well and do some deep dives. And really, I think that's what's helped

is to figure out, you know, and I say this quite a bit is, you know, we need to know where you're at before we know where you're going. And so when I do my deep dives within organizations, there's a lot of very specific questions I ask around lifetime value of clients and referral partners and caregivers and really looking at the numbers so we can get a baseline to figure out, okay, now what are the things that we need to do to help manipulate behaviors in a way that's going to help grow revenue? And so I think a lot of it was just over time collecting and have these conversations. I have some specific tools that I use to record all the data and they're consistent tools. So the more and more I've been working with agencies and collecting this information,

I've been able to kind of extract some different ways of looking at KPIs to create influence in the organizations. Yeah. So no, no doubt there's trends, you know, I'm sure you could, you know, dial out like very specific trends that you see across different orgs and different regions, etc. But like you're saying, there's so many nuances to the business, to the market, to the employees, to the culture, like there's so many factors that you can't really, you know, laser in on a specific scorecard. That was one of the biggest takeaways too, is, you know, I'd look at these KPIs and either they were too general or they were task specific where it wasn't like an overarching key performance indicator that was going to drive the results that you wanted,

right? Like a good KPI is going to trigger multiple actions to happen, right? Within a workflow. And, you know, and if they're too general, they're not specific enough to really influence the revenue, maybe in the way that the owner's thinking versus the person who's figuring out, how do I end up in good standing at the end of the month, right? So, you know, I want five new referrals every week. Okay, well, to an owner, they're thinking that'd be great if we can get some 86 hour or 168 hour clients and, you know, to maybe someone who's out marketing,

that's, Hey, I got to make sure I get five, you know, if three or four of them are hospice and one of them's a short, short term or short hours, that's still my, my five I have to hit. And so it's really about getting a little bit more specific within that to drive the behavior to get the revenue results that you want. Yeah, you've already mentioned that a couple of times of like driving behavior. Like that's something that I've heard you share multiple times is just KPI should drive behavior.

And I think that's like an underlying message here is, you know, they're not just numbers. They're not just like statistics or trends. It's like a measurable that's actually driving the behavior at the end of the day. Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the two main goals of KPIs, at least for me, when I'm working with agencies is, yeah, what is the behavior that you're expecting out of setting this expectation? And is it tied to revenue growth and revenue generation? Yeah. So digging in a little bit there,

I mean, that's pretty specific. Like every KPI should influence revenue. I think another thing I've heard you say is like cost savings. You know, either the KPI is driving like revenue growth or it's also contributing and or contributing to cost savings. Are those like relatively universal from what you've seen?

Yeah, I mean, in regards to cost savings, you just want relatively universal from what you've seen? Yeah. I mean, in regards to cost savings, you just want to make sure that you're covering whatever the expense is to either, you know, hire or sell or, I mean, those are the two main funnels, right? You have your client funnel and then you have your caregiver funnel and then your recruiting and sales teams are driving those. And so you just want to make sure that those KPIs that are tied back are driving revenue. It's not costing you because I guess one, not to get too into specifics yet, but one example could be, you know, you onboard a client and you still have a continued cost to provide services, right? So let's say that initial investment is $2,000. Well, if an agency,

and I'm just going to throw a random number out there, but if an agency is making $10 an hour in profit after direct expense, and you're spending $2,000, that's 200 hours of billing before you even hit breakeven, right? And then will you consider a good client after that? Is it a 100% return? Is it a 500% return? And that's going to extend the amount of hours that you're going to need to be able to bill in order to hit those expectations to consider it a good client. And if I have a client that's at 20 hours a week, that's going to take a heck of a lot longer than somebody who's at 40 or 80 hours a week.

So the thought that's coming to mind before we do kind of get into it is, are there any universal metrics in home care? What would you say? Yeah. I mean, top line revenue, gross and net, I think are really the only universal. I mean, you could talk about hours is definitely a metric, but there's so many variations on how people look at hours. So you could say, yes, ours is a KPI, but not everybody views them the same way. I would say retention as well too. And that's retention across caregivers,

clients and your admin staff, I think are all key parts as well. That's gonna be cost-saving. We know it's expensive to hire new people and train them. And every time you bring someone on, it could potentially change the culture as well too. So I think having good retention strategies is also something that needs to be universal across the board. Can we talk about revenue for a second, particularly gross and net? So you mentioned like baseline tracking, both of those. I've come across a lot of agencies that are focused on gross.

I don't know if that's, you know, like lack of like business acumen or size or what, you know, what the root of that, but I'm assuming you're saying like gross and net always applicable. Like, are you seeing businesses that are focused too heavily on gross or is everyone that you're working with like focused on net? Like, I'm just curious what you're seeing and what you recommend in that regard. Mixed bag, I guess, is the answer. Yeah, there are some folks who are really focused on gross, which is kind of difficult. I mean, you have your direct care expense. It's there, right? And to influence that, it doesn't get adjusted as easy as maybe your indirect expenses. So we talk about growth. I mean, overtime is going to influence that rate of pay things like that,

but it's not going to fluctuate. Well, it shouldn't be fluctuating a whole lot, right? It's like, you should be able to know that if I'm billing this much, this is how much my direct expense, and this is, this is my gross. And then it should be consistent across the board, how much you're, you're making there. Again, maybe some OT and things might adjust it a little bit. But then, you know, it's that indirect expense that every agency owner is so different on how they spend their money. Right. And so I've seen operators that, you know, like rent, for example, where it's fifteen hundred dollars a month for an office.

And I've ran into operators are spending1,500 a month for an office. And I've ran into operators are spending $12,000 a month on an office. And that's just the way they choose their money. And that directly affects net, obviously, you know, so any adjustments you can make on the bottom of the P&L are huge as far as what your net percentage is going to be. Yeah. So I'm guessing it's just like the difficulty and maybe defining net is what hangs people up. Like gross is obviously relatively easy to calculate, you know, but net is where I think you're, you're alluding to, it gets trickier. And so I think maybe that's where it just like purely deters people. But I think there's a lot of value in, I think you're using like indirect or I think of like variable costs. Like there are a lot of variable costs

and defining those, you know, may take time or effort to put together a spreadsheet. But I think there's a lot of value in knowing all of those variable or indirect expenses, and then being able to tie those back to like you said, when you when you think about, you know, calculating like lifetime value of a client, like, you know, all of the factors that play into that, it's not just, you know, wage and rate. There's like so much more behind that. Right. Yeah. And those indirect expenses, they just get tricky. You know, for example, you know, when you're talking about your admin staff, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, do I hire somebody and pay them, let's say 80,000 a

year, right. Or 90,000 a year, who's a high performer, or do I have three admin staff who are making $40,000 a year, right? And that's costing more money. And it's also, you know, that's a higher spend. So it's like, what decisions do you make in order to help cost save and get the most value out of your dollars that you're investing as well too. And that's a simple one. So rent, you rent, I think even when you hire your admin staff, those are all decisions that folks have to make in regards to what their indirect expenses are gonna look like.

And it can be a challenge for sure. Yeah, can I put you on the spot and ask about margins? I don't know if you have this off the top of your head, but just good rates for gross profit margin, net profit margin. You know, what are you seeing? What's healthy? Do you know that offhand? Yeah, I do. So the home care pulse benchmarking study pretty much has it correct. Well, obviously it's correct because it's shared by agencies out there. So, you know, we're seeing, and even my one-on-one clients, gross. I mean, your margin, you have about a 60% to 63% direct care expense. Anywhere in between there is kind of what I'm seeing right now.

And then when it comes to net, it really is all over the map. I would say a healthy net with some of these organizations that are growing, they're landing anywhere between 20% and 30%, which is high. But you're going to see that more on the private pay side. You're not going to see that on the Medicare side. And I've seen margins as low as 7.5% to 10% as well to net. But again, if you're a large Medicaid agency and you're driving volume, that's not as scary. Now, if you're a private, small agency and you're sitting at, you know, 7% net, then there's probably some decisions that you need to make on your indirect expenses for sure. Yeah. That's validating this point of like everything's so fluid and dynamic, you know, a 20 to 30% net profit margin is healthy, like you're saying, but it's not uncommon or necessarily a bad thing to have, you know,

seven to 10% margin. It's really just dependent on, you know, the business structure and the payer sources, et cetera. So I think, I think that was good just to kind of talk through like revenue, like you're saying, revenue is pretty universal. And I wanted to kind of go down that path of like gross versus net, because I also see it all across the board and I don't, you know, there's not necessarily a right way or a wrong way, but just curious, you know, what you're seeing in these high performing groups of, you know, what they're, what they're doing or what they're not doing and where they're focusing their time. So the way I want to kind of take this is talking about departments. Like we've talked about, like, there's no silver bullet. It's all very circumstantial, but you have worked,

you know, single-handedly with a lot of businesses and a lot of really successful businesses. And you have also like dug deep into like departments and individual contributors and, you know, specifics of these different departments. So I want to kind of talk through each kind of core department or function of the agency and let you share examples, stories, you know, things that people are doing right or doing wrong, and kind of just talk about all of that from the lens of metrics and how to establish those metrics within these departments. So the one I want to start with, we're going to categorize as HR, which really also buckets like recruitment and retention in most cases. So how do you see some experienced

agencies, operators approaching kind of HR and HR metrics? Yeah. So I can give you, I guess, just a couple of examples of things that we've looked at that I know tie back to helping generate revenue. So for example, you know, I think one key metric is from application to first shift completion, right? So we know through research, the longer that process takes, the less likely that person's going to come on board. You know, caregivers are economically fragile, right? And so if I'm a person living paycheck to paycheck, and I'm having to wait 10 to 14 days for a process or the agency across the street can get me working in five to seven, they're going to take that agency that's able to get them to five to seven days

versus a two-week waiting. Because then they still have to wait for the actual paycheck to get processed after they worked, right? So it's kind of a heavy burden for them to bear if they're in between jobs. One example I can give, I was working with an agency and we were going through their process and it was a lot. We talk a lot, especially this application to First Shift about reducing friction and not reducing friction for the agency, but reducing friction for the caregivers. And something that I think my

people are tired of probably hearing me say is, it's a matter of like, how do we make it so simple? It surprises them. You know, what does that caregiver experience look like as they're onboarding? Or if you went through your own process, would you be excited about working for you? And I was working with this agency that, you know, they would have a phone interview and then they would schedule an interview, but only on specific days and specific times. So right there created a barrier. And then, but before you came into the interview, there was four or five free, you know, sheet things that they had to fill out. So now they're doing that on their own time. And most of the time it didn't get completed

anyways. And then they would have to come in, then go through orientation, finish the sheets and and then go through the background check, which was taking, you know, another five, six days before even offering this caregiver position. And so what we ended up doing really is we got rid of that pre-work and put it within the orientation, pay people for their time. It's not expensive. You know, it's, it's 30 more minutes, but that way there wasn't a barrier being set up to, to getting this thing done before I'm, I'm actually coming in. Availability, we changed that. We have to be flexible. We need to focus, it's really a, we got to focus on the caregiver and when's it convenient for them, not necessarily for us. So we opened up the availability to make it convenient for them to be able to come into the office. And then now when they were in the actual orientation, they were, you know, it went from the phone interview, interview, a lot of folks as well

too will book the orientation on the back end of the interview. They're already in the office. So again, to break down another barrier of trying to reschedule and have them come back and, you know, God only knows if they pick up a shift or do something somewhere else so they can earn some income. And so if you already have them there, they've, they've been able to add that to the backend and have that orientation go through. We changed the, the background, you know, we just went through a third party company that checks it in the first 10, 15 minutes. You know, the expense was low enough that the free application was just causing too much of a delay, which could cause you to lose a client and not be able to provide care and have

enough caregivers. So we got rid of that. And now the process just flows really well. It's pretty simple. It's just a phone interview. You come in, if they can stay for orientation, they get paid for that time. They go through the background check. And before they leave, you already know that they're going to sit with that scheduler, pick up some shifts, and then be able to get to that first shift in a timely manner. That's just one example. Retention, I think, again, as a universal KPI, I think is really important. And there's a lot of talk about the, you know, 90 day retention, which I think is important because that's your first impressions with them to get them excited about working with your organization. I worked on this quite a bit and I have a 90 day retention plan is what I used to call it. But

I started thinking about it in a different way where, you know, we have these agencies where we're able to create care plans for every single client. And the reason why we create these care plans is so that they're happy and healthy and we can retain them for as long as possible. And it's the right thing to do. So no one wants to be retained. And so now I call it a care plan for caregivers. So, you know, how difficult is it to create a 90-day care plan for caregivers? So what actions and steps are you going to take in the first 90 days to keep them engaged and to have that communication so they feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves? And then the post 90-day.

So what's the care plan after that? I was working with an agency and we were having a discussion about their retention. The first 90 days was fantastic. It was really high, but when we looked at their turnover, so again, retention being the time you hire to the time they leave versus turnover, you're just looking at, you know, how many people actually left during a period of time. We started looking at the retention and noticed that 18 months, these caregivers were leaving. So first 90 days was solid. They were great.

18 months, huge drop off. They started losing caregivers. And it was the engagement really, because they didn't have a post 90 day care plan set up to keep these caregivers engaged. And so they, they become loyal to their clients and something happens with the client, the client goes away, well, the caregiver goes too because they no longer feel this connection with the organization.

And so we developed a post 90 day care plan of interactions and communications in order to make sure that they felt like they were a part of the organization still. It was pretty unique. So I think looking at retention, not just turnover is key. And then even in the hiring process,

and this goes to the general, we need to hire three caregivers, we need to hire four caregivers. I would take it one step further and say, okay, well, if I hire three caregivers at 10 hours a week, that's not the same impact as if I bring, let's say two caregivers who are willing to work 30 hours a week or 40 hours a week. So it's also looking at the hours that you need to be able to cover and not just necessarily throwing bodies in there. Cause we know that the shorter shift caregivers tend to have a shorter employment

lifespan with, with the agencies versus those, we call them semi-professional, professional caregivers who are working 30 plus hours. And so it's really a matter of, you know, how do you have those conversations with someone who potentially might come on to be able to get those larger hours. And then another point, and this again ties back to revenue, there's a cost to onboarding and there's a cost to manage caregivers. So I did exercise with, I don't know, probably about a dozen or so agencies in regards to what their cost of onboarding was and cost of continuing to manage these caregivers. And a couple of examples that

came up based on that cost was, well, in order for me even to break even, my caregivers have to work eight hours a week or they have to work 12 hours a week. And so we set an expectation to say, okay, well, if they're not working at least those, let's say 12 hours, then you're actually losing money because that cost to manage them is more expensive. So they set an expectation in their agency of a minimum of 15 hours a week in order for those caregivers to work. It was really interesting because we went through their current roster of caregivers and there was a whole bunch that were just an hour or two under and they just something clicked. We started making phone calls

to see if there's any way we can get more hours on the schedule and get those carriers up. So that way your revenue was in the black and not in the red. So it's just looking at it, I think, a little bit deeper to say, OK, it's one thing to have bodies put in there. It's one thing to have these these carriers come on board. But is it also going to be healthy for the business? Is this going to be a long-term solution? I'm not going to act like brand in the market if you have all this turnover and now, you know, and you're losing money at the same time. I mean, that all lie. This is the first time I've heard you say that maybe the first time I've heard anyone say that. And it's kind of like this aha moment of, you know, we, we conduct reassessments or supervisory visits for clients. And those are, you know, maybe in some States mandated to be checking in, you know, do we have a similar process in place for caregivers? That's what you're getting at is like, how do we be checking in with them regularly? And I think

just that concept of like care plans for caregivers, you know, and I've heard you preach, you and Steven talk a lot about 90 day retention, but look what you're, you're seeing. Maybe agencies have started to focus on that and it's going really well. Okay. But what about 180 days, six months, 12 months, 18 month retention? What processes, what metrics do we have in place to be focused on long-term retention? I think that's kind of the dynamic shift here, right? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, and the thing is, you don't necessarily have to create a plan for every single caregiver, but have a, you know, you have your 90-day plan and then you have your, what, your 180-day plan or your 12-month plan, 18-month, like what are the things that you're doing? So to go back to this agency

that had those folks leaving, besides the newsletter and, you know, the thank you cards and stuff, those are all great things. They started bringing in caregivers and it didn't matter if they were new or old, but they started bringing in regular feedback groups where they'd bring them into the office, buy them lunch. They would select a caregiver to actually be the person who's going to take the information because conversations change when mom and dad are out of the room, right? And so they would leave the room and say, okay, here's a list of questions. We call it a stay interview because it's really hard to talk to people after they leave.

So there's actually five questions in any standard stay interview. And you can add a couple more on there if you want feedback and feel free to Google it. It's out there. And then they would ask those questions and one caregiver would report all the findings and then they would come back in and receive the feedback from the whole group through that one caregiver, right? And so now the caregivers felt like they were involved and that their feedback was being taken into consideration. And it was something that was consistently happening where, you know, eventually over several months, it if, you know, everyone either had touched it or been in one of those or had heard about it from another caregiver that, oh, they're doing this thing now. And so they felt like they mattered

and we know that's important. That's awesome. That's a great example. And I'm glad you brought that up because I think like stay interviews, you know, I think some people are conducting those, having a caregiver, maybe take the lead on, on that environment to really get that transparent feedback. I think that's an incredible idea for people to pick up from this. I'm sure you've seen this as well. Really, you know, sophisticated, larger organizations are focused on culture and are focused on retention. It's not uncommon to see an agency, you know, that's thriving. Their retention rates are incredible. Like they're holding on to maybe 50, 60% of their people for three to five, you know, years plus. And so I think, you know,

focusing on short and long-term retention go a really long way. So don't, you know, I guess what I'm maybe picking up is like, don't get so hung up on the 90 day retention. I think that's a great place to start, especially if you're seeing the turnover or the drop off at around 90 days. But if you are holding onto people, you know, make sure you're putting these processes in place to really keep an eye on longer term retention as well. And, you know, I understand there's a cost and sometimes it's hard to get caregivers in the office, especially if you're in rural markets too. I have one agency that does it a little bit, you know, more unstructured. I mean, they're on these calls with these caregivers every day, you know, with the schedulers and the people in the office.

And so they'll incorporate one or two of those stay questions on a call while they have them just to get feedback real time. And so theirs is more of a consistent kind of ongoing. We'll continue to ask these questions as these calls come into the office. So, you know, there are other solutions where it's like, okay, it'd be great to get the group together. But if you're not able to do that, you can still gain that feedback from just asking those questions

if they're already on the call, right? Yeah, bake it in wherever it fits. And arguably that's probably the most important interaction you have with them is yeah, they may be calling about scheduling or their paycheck, but yeah, throw in those questions when you have them. And that will leave like the lasting impact on them of like, oh, wow, they're actually checking in with me, you know, care about me

and my wellbeing. So, you know, making a time and a place for it, like you're saying, like, you know, this is not like a one size fits all, but making a time, making the time and the effort goes a really long way in long-term retention. Let's keep going. You talked a lot about like applicant to first shift. Obviously there's a lot there, but I think you broke that down really nicely of like, there's so many steps in that process. Look for ways to optimize every single step in that process. You know, maybe even have a metric around each of those steps, have a metric around how long it takes to hire. I think you covered that really well, but that's another just really like natural place to, to push KPIs and metrics to really like laser in on that process and make sure it's like a fluid, but also be, you know, timely and

like you're, you're making sure people are pumping through that process seamlessly. So, so I think that was great. Let's, uh. And just a point to bring up on KPIs as well too. And again, I think sometimes we get bogged down with saying, okay, how many applicants came in? How many calls did you make? All the little things. And we're trying to measure all those things, but no one can remember 20, 30 tasks or it's just hard. And so by giving them a, okay, well, we're going to look at time of application to first shift and we want it at this many days, that's going to force them to complete all those tasks anyways. Right. And so they know that I'm going to be graded from application to first

shift. That's easy to remember. That's just one KPI that I'm going to be measured on, even though there's a lot of activity that goes along with that. Same thing with retention and having these care plans, right? Like there's a lot of little pieces in there to get this thing done. But, you know, I know I need to focus on this one big, big thing, retention, right? And so that's just kind of the way I look at KPIs is just have it be big enough to trigger multiple things to happen. And you'll know if it's working, if they're doing the activity based on the results. Yeah, I'm glad you interjected with that. Before we jump to the next department, that was a question I wanted to ask you is

like rule of thumb for how many metrics per individual or per department. I think that's maybe kind of what you're getting at here is, you know, one person can't have seven metrics or even one department probably shouldn't. So what would you say is like best practice or rule of thumb for individual contributors? And then maybe for departments, like how many are we talking? Yeah. So, you know, when I look at each department, I'm thinking, I always try to focus on three, which is really hard. You usually end up with five. But by having the person who, whether it's your COO or your office manager, they own all of those metrics within that department in that office. Does that

make sense? So if you're able to keep it to three or five and you have five departments, you know, you're going to end up with, you know, 25 maybe metrics, which seems like a lot, but generally folks in that position have a little bit more business acumen. They're paid a lot more to be able to look at that and evaluate that information. And so it's one of the things where, you know, this department owns this, but you get to own all of these KPIs. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And that's natural. Like KPIs roll up. I think what you're getting at is like, you know, individuals can be accountable to metrics and then there's team, maybe department metrics.

And then the leader of that department or like group of departments, like they roll up to that person and they have like, you know, full ownership over them, but it's broken down by the individual contributors. Yeah, and it's hard. So to answer the other part of your question is how much the individuals have. So if you have, let's say three to five key metrics for a department, I wish I could tell you, like, there's a specific amount, but every department, like position is so different in what people are requiring them to do. Right. So if I'm labeled a recruiter, that can mean 20 different things, right. Am I only recruiting or am I recruiting and doing retention? Am I recruiting, orienting and working on the retention plan? Am I also doing these other things? So it really that varies. individually to say, okay, here's the main metrics, but this person is, we're going to add

this thing on since you've incorporated this responsibility within that job. I think the reminder that's coming to mind for me is tying it back to behavior and outcomes. You know, if this person, if this individual contributor had to be accountable or responsible for one outcome, like what would that be? You know, maybe they're wearing five hats, but if they had to drive one or two outcomes, like what would those be? What do those need to be for the business? Bringing it back in that context.

I guess I'm speaking to you from experience. You know, I came from Home Care Pulse, you know, we're big, big fans of EOS and we had scorecards and it was, it was very much that, like speaking from personal experience, you know, I had maybe six, six duties or responsibilities, but at the end of the day, I was accountable for two metrics. And those were the things that I had to produce every single week. So I think that's a way of framing it of, you know, maybe one to three per individual contributor, but it doesn't mean that they're bound to those metrics. Like they can be accomplishing more tasks, more functions, but if,'t mean that they're bound to those metrics. Like they can be accomplishing more tasks, more functions, but if you want them to produce outcomes, you know,

make sure they have metrics tied to those at the end of the day. Yeah, that's exactly right. So let's jump to sales and marketing. This is probably the most tracked department, so maybe we don't need to spend a ton of time here. By nature, sales is very, you know, goal oriented, KPI driven. But talk through some of the, you referrals every week. I said, great. I said, I can go out and grab you, you know, three hospice clients or someone who has just got discharged that maybe we'll keep on service for a week or whatever and get those. But is that going to be profitable for your business? Is there not an expectation of, of hours or, or what you want these referrals to look like? So he just didn't take it a step further. So I said, you know, five referrals, they're going to get their five referrals. Now, are they going to be the referrals you're looking

for? Maybe, maybe not. So you got to get a little bit more detailed in that. So is it a, there's so many ways of looking at this, you know, is it a, you know, if they have a budget of hours, is there an expectation that 25% of those that come in for those hours are, you know, 80 plus hour clients, and then maybe 65% are clients that are plus 40 hours to 80. And then anything between 20 and 40, we only want 10% of those clients, because we know clients that have longer hours, tend to stay on longer. Obviously, they build relationships and connections with the caregivers. And so they just have a higher retention rate. Plus their lifetime value obviously is pretty high. But if you go and set those expectations, now it's not just

that marketer has to look at their funnel a lot differently, right? To say, okay, well, if my expectation is now I have to have this many clients over 80 hours and this many clients between, you know, 40 and 80, I can't always just go to this one bucket. I need to start developing relationships with folks that have maybe more long-term chronic issues like Parkinson's or an Alzheimer's or any other kind of dementia that's out there, Right. And so that is going to change someone's behavior. I had another agency that said that they were wanting to focus on dementia. And I asked them, I said, you know, how many, what percentage of your clients are dementia? I think at that time it was either 40 or 50%. I can't quite recall. And I said, okay,

well, if you want to call yourself a dementia care specialist, what if you set an expectation with your salesperson and said, well, you know, by the end of the year, we want 80% of our clients to be dementia and you're going to be graded on that. Well, that's going to change the behavior on the type of folks that they're going out to visit. So you can actually call yourself a dementia specialist, right? And we know along with dementia, you're going to get longer term clients as well too with ours. And so it's just taking that a step further to be a little bit more detailed to drive that specific behavior for that marketer. Another thing I look at is, you know, we talk about growth and budgets and I think that's great. And, you know, folks will say, okay, well, this person has a budget of 20,000 hours this year that they need to bring on. And so we're going to grow. But I think

sometimes we miss the fact that we're going to lose hours as well, too. It's like, for some reason, that concept doesn't sit with us like, oh, we're going to lose a bunch of these hours during the year. That's just part of being in this business. And so with an expectation of, let's say 20,000 hours for the year, how many of those hours are designated as net positive hours, right? From the floor. So, cause you know, you're going to lose hours, but how many of those hours are going to be considered your, your growth hours, like that are actually being net positive on top of whatever hours that they're making up for, for the losses of hours during the year. And that's going to drive revenue. Yeah. A lot, a lot here as well. I wanted to ask

kind of backtracking slightly. We talked about like the, the hiring funnel, you know, applicant to first shift in the sales terminology. Are you a big fan of tracking like inquiry to, you know, start date for clients or what's your take on like, you know, a pretty strict pipeline in that regard? Yeah. So I think a key thing for me, and this reminds me of another story. So one of my tools basically will look at your referral partners over a period of time, generally a five-year look back. And we'll look at the number of referrals that have come through the average length of stay for those clients. And then the amount of revenue that have come through, the average length of stay for those clients,

and then the amount of revenue that was generated. And it went through this exercise and they had sorted it where we had this referral partner that provided like, I don't know, it was a lot, like 30 referrals. But then when we looked at their length of stay and the actual revenue generated, it was only like $8,000 per referral. And then there was another line that was down there that had four or six referrals in it. But the average length of stay was over 18 months and it was over $200,000 per referral.

I said, well, what's going on with this referral partner? They said, well, they weren't giving us enough referrals. So we stopped our relationship with them. And I thought, well, I'd rather take, you know, a few clients of theirs and make $200,000 than service 20 other clients or whatever to try and even match the amount of revenue that they're bringing in.

So again, it goes back to looking at the dollars at the end of the day as well, too. It's not the number of referrals that come through. It's like, how long are these clients staying with us? And how much lifetime revenue are they generating for our organization? And if someone is bringing in one referral at $200,000, I'm not just bringing them donuts and coffee. I mean, we're going to go someplace nice.

I'm going to treat them a little bit differently to make sure that we maintain that relationship with those folks. And so we actually will tier the referral partners, tier one referral partner, tier two, tier three are generally the ones you're going to replace because it's just not generating enough income for the business or it's costing the business money and set up expectations around that. What's great about that, too, is it tells you what type of referral partners you work well with, but we were also able to identify, we use the HPC benchmarking study and said, okay, well, let's look at a list of these other type of referral sources. Are we missing any that have some high dollar value? And sure enough, you know, we, we identify two and we're able to create a strategic plan to say, we need to start creating relationships within these buckets as well. Yeah, I love that example that you just shared.

I think you shared it maybe at HCAOA too and I was just sitting there like eating it up of two referrals equating to hundreds of thousands of dollars versus 20 referrals equating to tens of thousands of dollars. Like that's such a common mistake probably happening in this industry of you have a metric Like that's such a, such a common mistake probably happening this industry of you have a metric that is volume based, you know, give me five new referrals, give me 10 new referrals. But if they're not tied back to revenue and right fit and, you know, kind of fitting this

persona that you're looking for, you know, you're, you're losing money, you're wasting time. And, you know, it stems back to having the right metrics in place and having like the right lens, getting your sales or marketing person to see things from the proper lens and giving them, you know, the KPIs to support that. So I love, I love just like the, the imagery of that example, because it's so stark, you know, I think it's like the cliche, and you mentioned this, like, you know, maybe 20% of your clients are generating 80% of the business. That same principle can stem from sales as well.

Yeah. I mean, just to go back to that was that HCOA, that example, another one of the tools we look at is that lifetime revenue. And this has been consistent with every one-on-one agency where we'll pull the lifetime value over a five-year, 10-year look back. And what we found is that roughly 50%, between 45% and 50% of all the clients generate 97% of the total revenue, which means the other half only brought in 3% of total revenue, or we're costing the organization money. And that's always one of those big aha moments when I go through that exercise with folks is to say, wait a second, 97% came from 50%. So could you imagine, you know, when you

identify those right fit clients, the clients that you're working with really well, if you were able to offload even 20 to 30% of those bottom folks, how much more impactful your organization could be. And not to overgeneralize, but most commonly that other group of clients are the most demanding, most taxing. You know, they're probably like edge cases.

They're not your right fit. So naturally they take more time, attention, focus of your office team, of your caregivers, you know, and so offload those people, like you're saying, they're, you know, this is a competitive space, you probably have lots of other agencies, competitors in the market, and you may think, you know, that's dollars out the door. But like you just said, if you can optimize your time for the people that bring you the most revenue, like, you know, we're talking, you could grow really quickly if you re, you know, shift your focus to the right people. You know, you do that or you change, you change your model for the shorter hour shifts, right?

So, you know, if someone's going to only commit, you know, you always ask, what's your long-term plan for mom? If they say, well, we're just transitioning and we're only looking for four hours a day, three times a week, that's a different model, right? To say, okay, well, we're just transitioning and we're only looking for four hours a day, three times a week. That's a different model, right? To say, okay, well, I know what my costs are on this. And so maybe your rate is going to say we do do short term, but if it's going to be short term, these are what our rates are. And then you get that commitment for that amount of time and those rates in order to make sure you're not losing money. So yeah, I mean, there's options. Yeah, you can offload them or you just, you change that model form to say, well, if it's going to be

anything in this span of time or under this many hours, then that rate has to be adjusted because it's going to be hard enough to get carriers to go to these short shifts anyway, that are inconsistent. So you got to pay them more. So you're going to have to bill more. Yeah. It comes back to knowing your margins, you know, like knowing, knowing your bottom line, knowing your break even. And if you know those things, have them defined, those decisions get a lot easier to make, which is crucial. Let's let's keep going here. I want to make sure we crack through a couple more departments. I want to talk about staffing or scheduling specifically. This too is probably an area where people are pretty good, you know, talking about like your scheduling software.

There's a lot of data in there. Scheduling is kind of like the backbone of the business. And so usually there's a lot of good things happening here. But what do you think of in terms of scheduling or staffing and hours? Yeah. And to tie it back to just revenue and retention. So utilization for me sticks out, but maybe in a, in a, in a different way. And if people have heard me talk, they've probably heard me say this, but when I look at utilization,

it's not, you know, how many hours do you want to work? The caregiver telling you the number of hours, and then you make a decision that that's what their utilization is going to be. It's really how much do you need to earn after taxes on your paycheck? and then knowing how many hours they're going to need to work during that pay period in order to have the finances to be able to cover their bills. Again, these are economically fragile caregivers. So if I know at minimum you need to earn this much, and then you're going to need to work this many hours, now I know my utilization is accurate in making sure that I'm actually filling my end of the bargain and taking care of them so that they can pay their bills, right? And so sometimes it's difficult. We've ran into situations where folks don't necessarily want to

share that information. What we found is a lot of those caregivers are the short shift, short timers. And so, you know, the interpretation there, this is anecdotal, is they're really just looking for an extra gig to pick up hours here and there if they're not making, you know, their wages at their other jobs. But for the most part, we've had really good reception for organizations who have gone through and have asked that question. And they said, okay, well, if you want to earn 500 a week and we back into it after taxes, you're going to have to work, you know, 22 hours or 25 hours. Are you willing to commit to that? And then it's the job of the scheduler to make sure that they're hitting that utilization. The great thing about that too, is, you know, when you look at it, I don't know how many of you want to take a 10% pay cut or could afford a 15% pay cut and still pay your bills.

You're going to look at that utilization a lot different to say, if I don't get this person to 100%, I know I'm creating a burden on them to be able to actually pay their bills and care for their families. And I don't think there's anything more important that we do than being able to provide a livelihood for those caregivers to take care of their families. And so having that utilization be a hundred percent accurate. So, you know that they're earning enough to survive is important. So now if I'm looking at the schedule, you know, of course I have my go-to caregivers and I could easily get them to 150% utilization, but am I willing to do that as a scheduler if I see somebody at 70% or 80% knowing that they're not going to be able to take care of themselves if we don't find them hours. So it changes that behavior. And it changes the conversation too to say, hey, I noticed you're five hours short of your goal to be able to earn what you want to earn.

Let's find you something. Let's do that. So that way you can be whole. Yeah. I love the way that you're talking about this. Like, I think this is just maybe a topic in and of itself. That's like under talked about is, you know, making caregiving sustainable means we have to give them the hours that equate to the revenue that gets them to survive, like pay their bills. And I love that you're talking about like working that backwards, like quite literally having probably a pretty candid conversation with them of like, what, what is your cost of living? Like, what do we need to do for you? And then working that backwards. And then like you're saying, keeping that top of mind for the scheduler, like, you know, be looking at these hours and looking at these people and their needs. And then like,

you know, kind of solving it from that, that perspective is really powerful. I want to ask about overtime. Clearly that's like a pretty big factor in this conversation is, you know, maybe they need 50 hours, 55 hours and overtime is definitely at play there. What, what's your kind of perspective on overtime? Oh, I mean, it's a necessary evil, right? I mean, it's just, it's just part of it with, with agencies. It's, it's something we can't get around, right? We try to minimize it as much as possible, you know, so that way we're not, our direct care expense isn't going up, but it is a necessary evil. And, you know, right now with things being as tight as they are, trying to just source caregivers to, to work, it's not uncommon to see someone with, you know, 15% OT, 10% OT, which seems awfully high.

But if you're understaffed, that's kind of the world they're living in right now. I think the only time that I get bothered when I look at data and examples of what's happening within the scheduling process is if there are caregivers being underutilized. And this especially happens with new hires as well, too, because they don't have that relationship yet with the scheduler. And it takes work to build a relationship. It's a lot easier for me to call Miriam because I know her and ask her to do me a favor than it is, you know, John Smith, who I don't know, who now I have to build a relationship with and then, you know, trying to get them to take the hours. But it really forces them to do that, though, because now with the utilization, you know that they have to earn it. It's not just asking, but saying, hey, I want to make sure that you can earn

what you're supposed to earn to pay your bill. So it lowers the barrier and that anxiety, I think, for that scheduler to try and, I don't want to say sell the schedule to the caregiver, but, you know, I think it does provide an eye-opening way of looking at it to say, you know, if I cut your paycheck by 10% this month, would you be okay with that? And I doubt the answer is yes. So it's just looking at how it impacts the lives of these folks. Yeah. Seeing everything from like a different lens. You know, I think that's really key here. The other quick thing I want to ask about in regard to scheduling and staffing is call

outs. Again, kind of just the reality of this business, the reality of, you know, these people that we're working with. What's your take on tracking call outs, reducing call outs, you know, attaching some metrics to that specifically? Yeah. Oh my goodness. There's so many different reasons why folks call out, you know, sometimes maybe they're working for another agency and they can make 25 cents more an hour. And so they're just going to call last minute. And that's just the reality of living paycheck to paycheck. You know, it doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a lot to those folks. You know, I think tracking it and setting up an expectation is definitely something you need to do.

Having those conversations with caregivers because it impacts those clients. So a caregiver that has a relationship with a client isn't just going to call out the call out because they understand how it impacts those, those clients. And so, you know, as far as tracking call outs, generally you'll see the, the habitual call outers, I guess, or whatever you want to call it. You've got to make a decision, right. On what type of care and how you want to represent yourself in front of your clients. And I think, you know, sometimes that's hard because you don't want to lose the fact that they're still willing to pick up some shifts. But is that really healthy for the business long term? So I would just say whatever policy you have on your call out or at least have a policy

and communicate it, but you got to stick to it and build in some accountability there because you do have a duty to your clients as well, too, to provide that care and their families. That's the promise. That's the promise we made. Yeah, I think I think the key there is, yeah, having policies in place and then tracking the trends like, you know. Oh, yeah. You'll see the offenders. Exactly. Like we talk about call out so much. You know, you jump in any of these home care Facebook groups. It's all about call outs. And it's like, okay, like the issue is present. Like, you know, where are the solutions? Are we tracking the trends? Who are they? What's happening? Are you identifying all the reasons? Like, how do we like you said, like work that backwards, like, let's identify what's happening and why and then we can tackle it, you know, head on once we understand it better. So I think, you know, that principle applies. Yeah.

And that's when OT is probably okay as well too, because they're never, never real time, right? Like one of our policies was you had to call during our business hours. Now we were open from six until 9 PM. So we had a different way. I ran seven days a week. So there was plenty of time for people to call out, right? But you had to talk to somebody to call out. There was no email. There was no text that doesn't, that's not

a call out that you're going to be able to stay on board. You had to talk to somebody. And again, your offenders will, they'll come up and then you just got to make that decision. And our last couple of minutes, let's jump to finance, if that's okay. I think like we were talking about, everything kind of rolls up to, you know, maybe the finance department, the finance person, but I want to just hear from your perspective. Can I say one more thing on staffing though? And I think we talked about that caregiver care plan. So I think in the first 90 days as well to change behavior and force relationships. What I've worked with agencies with is, you know, we figure out what's the onboarding costs and cost to manage for that first 90 days. And so if let's say it was the $2,000 or whatever, and so you need 200 hours

in order to break even on that. So now a KPI for that schedule would be any new caregiver we bring on in the first 90 days needs to complete 200 hours of work. We need to make sure that they complete that. Right. So now, you know, you're going to at least break even, if not be over that. So you're not losing money on that new hire. And it's going to force them to have to communicate to them to make sure that they're completing those hours and develop those relationships. Yeah, I'm glad you snuck that in. Like you were referencing earlier, it's so easy to call those like go-to reliable people, but there's also a place here to prioritize the newbies, you know, get those people on schedule, get them working, get them to that breakeven mark so that we're not losing money on them in the first 30, 60, 90 days. That's huge.

Yeah. Great, great point. Glad you got that in. If we've on them in the first 30, 60, 90 days. That's huge. Yeah. Great, great point. Glad you got that in. If we've got just a couple minutes, can we jump to finance? Just briefly want to hear your take on, you know, financial metrics, how things roll up, where the finance department's head should be at. Oh my goodness. A lot of the influence happens between gross and net, right? And so it was really looking at what do you want your net to be? Actually, I was having a conversation with an agency today where they were asking about net and, you know, and potentially bonuses for staff and things like that. And, you know, the thing is you, you always need to pay your bills first. And I said, so, you know, you never want to, for him, you never want to fall below 10% net based on revenue. I said, and that can be a

dynamic thing every month, right? Whether you earn a million dollars this month, 2 million next month, that 10% is still going to be held for the business for future investments. And then anything beyond that, then you can look at bonuses, right? Percentage bonuses based on that. So I think looking at your indirect expenses, the example I used earlier, are you paying $1,500 for rent? Are you paying $12,000 a month for rent? Are these really critical decisions to have that expensive of an office space? Does it actually call for it? So I think it's really important for your finance people to be able to sift through that to make decisions. Now, I'm not saying go so lean where everyone's uncomfortable, but generally you'll be able to look in there and see where you might be able to make adjustments to help with net.

Because anything that you do on that bottom of that P&L is directly going to affect net. Open AR is huge too. Sometimes I'm surprised at the lack of either a policy or consistency in executing or in getting those bills and invoices paid. You know, I've seen organizations that are sitting on $20,000, $30,000 in OpenAR. And it's like, okay, well, what's the recovery process for this? And why does this keep happening, right? How do we figure out if this is a continual issue? You know, is it just a certain set of clients that can't pay their bills on time? Or is there something else that we need to do to help negate the amount of opening hour that's taking place?

Because you're spending those dollars, you're paying those caregivers, your bills are still going out, but yet you're not recouping any of that revenue to be able to offset that. It can be pretty painful. You know, generally with OpenAR, if people are still paper billing out there, I highly suggest getting away from that. You know, in our organization, we did credit card and ACH, and we just turned the switch one month and there was no more paper option for any new clients, for any clients that stayed on board. We charged a, I believe it was 8% because you have to handle the mail and all that. There was costs associated with that. And then for credit card processing, it was a 3% to cover the merchant fees and ACH was no charge. But I think as soon as we got rid of that paper billing,

and I think I know as soon as we got rid of that paper billing, it was a heck of a lot more consistent because it's either hitting the account or hitting that card consistently every month. You're preaching to the choir on that one. I wish we could set a goal as an industry to nix paper billing by, I don't know, 2025. Like we've just got to get past that.

So, you know, preaching the choir there. I think, you know, one of the things that I'm hearing around this department is the finance department probably above all has to balance like the short and the long-term, you know, everyone in the office has to be thinking about, you know, short and long, but I think the finance department particularly, you know, they own the budget, they own revenue. And so they've got to keep, you know, everything in the balance of, you know, they own the budget, they own revenue. And so they've got to keep, you know, everything in the balance of, you know, short term decision making costs, expenses, etc. But also, you know, longevity of the business hours, sustainability, etc. And so, you know, that's, that's a lot of pressure, maybe a lot of weight on them. But they're

the department that really has to keep keep focus on both. It is and they have to be able to explain the why for that long-term too, right? Because I've seen a lot of great financial controllers that have created ways of generating more net, but they're just not listened to because the owner doesn't want to, no, I don't want to give that up

or I don't want to do that. And I think sometimes that can be short-term thinking, especially when times are good. Those suggestions tend to go out the window. But we know this is a very cyclical industry, like just the market. Like right now, this is something else I look at with folks is their cycles. So I'll take, let's say, five years of weekly data, so 52 weeks over five years and overlay it. And you'll be able to see

your own market trend when you have the peaks and valleys. And right now there's a lot of agencies that are in the valley. And I just want to say from the various agencies that I've been working with, it's going to go up here pretty soon. So if you find yourself right now at a low, March is generally what I've seen. And this is from, oh God, East Coast, South, West. There's a lot of folks right now that have lost some hours, but it should be back on the rise based on the data. I'm glad you're saying that. I've talked to a lot of owners the last few weeks that have said exactly what you just said. And I, you know, I just reassure them that like, Hey, I'm hearing this, but it's good to hear you even like validate that further that we're in a Valley right now and don't feel like, you know, you're lost or it's on you. I think it's just, you know, the time of year and there's a lot

of factors that contribute to that. Yeah, absolutely. I love what you said about, you know, the finance team, like they're usually pretty good at tracking and they've got the numbers on hand, but you just said like the justification, the why they have to be the ones to tell the story, to paint the picture, to justify the decision-making in the short term, because they know the impact on the longterm. And I think that that's a, that's a big role. You know, those are big shoes to fill, but that's, you know, kind of the nature of that department as well. I know, I know we're at time here. I just want to, you know, maybe give you a couple minutes here at the end to just talk about, you know, in general, anything that we missed or any advice, you know, leaving this session for owners that are thinking about KPIs, you know,

maybe refactoring their current KPIs, like what maybe just general advice do you have for people that are in this state of mind thinking about, you know, how to approach business metrics? Yeah, again, I would, I would really look at, when I look at KPIs, like, why am I tracking this? What's the expected outcome of behavior? And what's the expected outcome that's going to influence the revenue, right? It's always that why, like, why am I looking at this? Am I looking at this because I want to manage this person to make this many calls? Is that really, is that really what I want to do here? this because I want to manage this person to make this many calls? Is that really what I want to do here? Or do I want to go a little bit higher?

And they know that this is the expected outcome from it. So I'd say don't get so, so far into the weeds. We know that there's going to be a workflow under some of these KPIs. And this is an interesting industry because there's a lot of friendly competitors. Have discussions about the KPIs that you're tracking and why. And if something's worked or hasn't worked. I mean, we do that in our community all the time in the home care CEO community. People share and they say, well, I've started looking at this number and this is why and this is what it's done.

But share them. I think there's plenty of room for a lot of agencies to grow as this population continues to age. You know, it's just we're going to have more and more folks that we got to care for. And I think by focusing on the right things to improve our agencies and to build resources for them, it's just going to create a greater experience, not only for the clients, but the caregivers. And then in the end, it's going to benefit the owner.

Jensen, this session has been awesome. A lot of great nuggets here. And I just want to thank you for all that you've done for this industry. You know, I think you're a great example personally and professionally, and you're driving this industry forward with these mastermind groups. You know, when everyone elevates and gets better, you know, it improves everyone and everywhere, you know, in this industry. So you're doing a lot on in that regard. And so I just want to thank you for your efforts. And I hope everyone enjoys the session gets a lot of, you know, great feedback out of it. If anyone wants to reach out to Jensen,

you know, he's active on LinkedIn. He's a busy guy travels a lot. But, you know, shoot him an email or shoot him a DM to to get ahold of him and stay involved. So Jensen, thanks for being here. And thanks for everything you've shared. Yeah, thank you, Marianne. This was a fun conversation. 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.