Home Care U - What To Do—8 Things the Most Successful Franchisees Are Doing (Matt Ericksen Pt. 2)

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Top performers are intentional about how they think about and run their business. Matt Ericksen is back to share a specific list of tactics that he’s observed while visiting top franchisees around the country.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, everybody, to Home Care U. This is Miriam Allred, Head of Partnerships at CareSwitch, your host today. Great to be with you. I hope everyone's having a great week. We're just going to jump into it. We had an awesome session last week talking about lessons learned from underperforming franchisees. Today, we're going to flip that script and talk about eight things the most successful franchisees are doing inside of their business. So disclaimer again, this episode, we're going to go kind of wide, not necessarily deep. So if you're listening to this, I highly recommend grabbing a paper and pen. We're going to cover a lot of ground on a lot of different topics. And I'm super excited to welcome Matt Erickson back on the show.

Like I mentioned last time, he's a, you know, kind of behind the scenes type guy, but he's an avid listener of the podcast. He also really knows his stuff. So super excited to have him back. So Matt, thanks for being here. Yeah, excited to return. It's going to be fun. We did a deep dive on your background on the last episode. It was phenomenal. Highly recommend everyone goes back and listen to that. Just his story, his background, personally, professionally, you know, how he's gotten to where he is today. Let's just do kind of a quick introduction today, if you're good with that.

You know, just kind of current role, responsibilities, a little bit about Griswold Home Care, and then we'll get going. Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Matt Erickson, Director of Sales and Operations for Griswold Home Care, based out of Bluebell PAs. We're just north of Philadelphia. In my role here, we support the franchise owners, not only launching our new owners within their first year, all the way up to we have owners now that are past 35 years in active operation.

And my team and myself, we work very closely with them to in all aspects of business and helping them to level up, develop, implement new strategies, user processes, and really just be of service to them and achieving their goals. Griswold itself has been in the home care industry now for just over 40 years. We provide personal companion care services in over 30 states. And we have over 180 territories nationally, including Hawaii. And we're just really excited about what our owners are doing in each and every one of the states and locations. Awesome. I'm going to put you on the spot. Extended intro here briefly. What is your favorite thing about home care? You've been doing this for a while. What's something that just like resonates in your soul that keeps you motivated to stay in this industry? and think out of the box. And that taps into like my, the way my brain thinks is, it's definitely not point A to point B. It's creative.

It's trying to find a unique solution to a problem. And that's part of what our clients and our caregivers bring to us a lot of times is that they have a, they need a solution. And I like to be able to help either directly or through advising franchise owners and other teams to create solutions that

not only empower them to reach their goals, but are consequently, you know, they're helping families, they're helping caregivers to either stay where they love to live and age independently in their home, or for a caregiver to grow with a grizzled location and receive the hours they need to reach their personal goals, whether it's to become a nurse or just take care of their family. It's like, we can put systems in place and I can help do that. That's what keeps me here for sure. Yeah. I like the word you use, dynamic. This is a really dynamic industry. Or the other thing that comes to mind that resonates with me, problem problem solving, you know, this industry is not for the faint of heart. I just got my start about five years ago, but you know, the pandemic tried us, the labor

shortage is trying us ongoing. Like there's just a lot of problem solving and that's mentally, you know, emotionally exhausting at time, but it's also like you said, super fulfilling to, you know, really create solutions that better people's lives. I think that's, you said, super fulfilling to really create solutions that better people's lives. I think that's a big part of why we're all here doing this. So that was awesome. All right, let's jump in. So like I mentioned, we're going to cover eight things the most successful franchisees are doing. Matt and I are just going to kind of go down this list. We're going to deep dive on some of them. We're just going to kind of talk high level about a

few of them, but let's get into it. So the first one that we're going to talk about is these owners are great business owners. They're not necessarily just like home care operators. So dig into that one a little bit, Matt. What do you mean by, you know, these top performing franchisees, they're like great business people. What does that mean? What do you mean by that? Yeah. So this is a, there's really a separation at a certain point in the business, whether it's from how you approach the business on a day-to-day basis and or in the size of it. And some franchise owners, they have the objective to be a very large, successful, you know, 5 million plus dollar operation with a large team behind them.

That's not necessarily their goal. But in either model, whether small or large, you could be $1 million annual revenue, or you could be $15 million annual revenue. The best operating owners are the ones that are approaching it, not just from buying a job and just from managing it themselves, but have put teams in place and systems to where the financials margin, their caregivers and clients are being taken care of to where it's a sustainable, profitable business. And the way that they're approaching their home care business, the strategy, the mindset could be replicatable in maybe another

industry, right? And that's the proactive mindset. That's hiring strong team members that compliment you, not just hiring task doers or hiring a bunch of part-timers to just be rabbits, essentially, while you're holding on to the critical things, that can be self-inflicting in a way. And so our most successful owners understand that in order for them to achieve their goal or their ultimate vision, that they need to bring it on others and they need to financially and from a measurable standpoint have control of the business compared to the business controlling them and then being a reactive operator. Something that you've mentioned to me, you're speaking to like hiring a really strong team,

like how important that is and hiring problem solvers, critical thinkers, like independent people, you know, that don't need to be micromanaged per se. Something you've mentioned is hiring and developing a really strong number two. What's the value there? How, maybe any examples of businesses that you've seen that have kind of brought in and hired and developed a really strong number two and like how that comes into play? Yeah, absolutely. So the hiring a strong number two for an owner, especially as you grow in skill and we're talking over, I really like to say from a, let's turn that two to $3 million range is starting to identify that in any revenue, starting to identify that individual because it's going to give you freedom as

the owner to call your shot in a way you're the business owner. And so you do have the, you know, you have the right to, if you feel like you want to do this part of the business, having a strong number two allows you to do that so they can handle the right to, if you feel like you want to do this part of the business, having a strong number two allows you to do that. So they can handle the parts of the business, maybe that you're not a fan of, of having done in the past to get the business where it is today. But you want to really kind of say dabble and really focus on just the sales and marketing. You're giving yourself that freedom on the number two.

You're also giving yourself somebody that can manage the business at a much deeper level as it grows than you can yourself because you are going to be spread so thin. Mistakes ultimately will happen. And if you have somebody that is invested in the business that cares about it, hopefully as much as you do, but that's hard to find. Ultimately, you're going to care most about the business as the owner, somebody as close to you as possible in that caring, that's going to matter as far as just continued growth and scale of business, because they're going to be the second set of eyes that think like you, that act like you in a way from a leadership and management standpoint. They should be able to think very differently than you in all other aspects, but you want to be closely aligned with them on the approach to business management, leadership development of your team, accountability and so forth, so that you can speak the same language without being the same necessarily.

The thing that's coming to mind for me, too, is you kind of mentioned that like two to three million range, like that's just be thinking through, you know, who I'm going to bring on, what I'm going to bring them on, developing that person potentially from the start. I don't think it's very uncommon to bring on someone, you know, day one or like day 90 early on. And that person, you know, that like sees every aspect of the business from early on can be, you know, a prime candidate to be kind of molded into that role. And so just something for really every stage owner to be thinking about, you know, a prime candidate to be kind of molded into that role. And so just something for

really every stage owner to be thinking about, you know, who that person is, how you're priming them and training them and prepping them. That coordinator role is great for that. And one of the, one of the, I would say ways that we recommend looking at that and our franchise owners are doing it right now is they're hiring for next level. So that person they're interviewing in front of them for the care coordinator position, whether it's a scheduler or the recruiter, they're interviewing them, but they're watching for the soft skills and the capacity of that individual to grow into a higher level role. And if you're approaching that higher, not just as a something to plug into a seat for a fixed position, but can they add value down the

road and at a greater level, you're going to put players on the bench that you don't know what's going to come down the road from a business opportunity standpoint. But if you have the potential on deck, it's going to help you be able to pivot very quickly and effectively and put people in those higher positions from an internal standpoint, which is ultimately far cheaper from an acquisition standpoint than trying to have to hire really reactively to that need. Yeah, I think that's a great point. The last thing that I kind of want to talk about on this subject, great business owners have a business objective or, you know, kind of like an end goal, like what they want to achieve. You mentioned that kind of in your first comment of there's owners that are in it for growth. You know, they want to grow it as large, as stable, as best as they can.

It's not uncommon for there to be kind of lifestyle owners in this industry as well. And they may get the business to 2 million and just want to maintain. So I think another indicator of just a really good business owner is like they know what they want out of the business. And I'm sure, you know, at the franchisor level, you see the full gamut of owners, you know, the lifestyle to like the

high growth owners. What would you add on that kind of subtopic? Yeah, I would agree that there is a very clear vision and purpose behind what they're doing in their planning. And so we have owners that absolutely have reached that level where they're able to take four vacations a year, where they're able to be in and out of the office as a police because they've set the systems up for success to what they want. And all of that is they understand exactly at that level, what's required not only to sustain, but to keep their, I would say their staff and their business engaged, which is when you reach a level, now what? Now, if you have somebody on your team that is an aggressive,

is also aggressively grow or develop, how do you sustain that and keep them interested when you yourself, you're happy at that level? And so being able to understand your team and the dynamics there and how you keep them functioning at a higher rate, putting those goals in front of them, putting those challenges. So while you may not want to be a $5 million location annually,

but how are you more profitable? How are you better utilizing your funds so that you have more in the pot at the end of the day? Is what we're seeing owners look at. They're running very clean businesses that are not so much worried about margin compression because they're managing the business so well at that volume. And that's where the office internally

is looking at just being competitive and tapping in your top talent and to manage a very good business at a fixed size. And you're not losing that top talent because of, you know, they're competitive or they want to win. You're helping them through the goals that you set because you know the business so well and the vision you want for it. Yeah, absolutely. My kind of last thought here is I think the pandemic

kind of highlighted business owners and like what they wanted. You know, I've talked to dozens of owners who like decreased in hours over the pandemic, you know, kind of a lot of these like lifestyle owners, either like the pandemic weeded them out or, you know, they were hit pretty hard and lost a lot of hours. And then, you know, I see, I see and talk to a lot of them that are, you know, we're kind of out of the pandemic, but coming out and it's like, wow, I need to like ramp back up. And like, I lost some people and I need to rehire and I need to like increase hours again. I think the pandemic kind of like, I don't know if weed out is like a really strong word,

but just a lot of like the lifestyle business owners like maybe struggled during the pandemic. And I think it was just, you know, a good reminder of like, what do you want out of this business? Do you have the systems in place? And like, can it withstand like the test of time, you know, maybe or maybe not. Yeah, absolutely.

It helped force decisions. What I saw from my perspective was that people were almost like on autopilot in a way. So if things were stable and now you throw a wrench into that and they're forced to look in the mirror and like, what do I want for myself? And I'm just kind of shut them up to the point where they either adapt or die if, you know, in a way as blunt as that sounds or they, you know, they were like, all right, this is exactly where I want to be. So finding their identity, it almost was very helpful in that way, not only for going up against your competitors, but also with a lot of

owners, you know, at that point when I was an operator, it kind of helped to find your place more clearly. Yeah. You said that way better than I, that was awesome. Like forced decision-making. I think that's really good, which kind of leads into the second point. Let's let's keep going here. The second point that you being able to be proactive in those like difficult or challenging moments rather than reactive. So what would you say on this point? Yeah, it's one of my favorite sayings to that is comfortable being uncomfortable. I mentioned comfort a lot last week, but it holds true here in that we're in the I forget the name of one of your past guests, but it's a logistics business essentially. And that's what we're talking about. And so as you ramp up with the demand and there's more need, the systems are going to have to change, costs are going to have

to change. And if you continue to operate to a higher level of demand, but you don't adjust and change systems to meet that demand, whether it's in the financial recruiting, marketing, and you're going to find yourself meeting points of friction and become frustrated with that. And yourself will become frustrated, or your team will become frustrated. And we're seeing really great owners understand that it's dynamic and that there's always going to be, there'll be points and brief moments of rest or say stability, because you've ironed out your process from just the reps and you kind of know, but that they know that that's,

that's fleeting and that they're already kind of thinking, you know, where they're looking for the next potential pothole with that. And I felt, and that's something that we're seeing on our C, really every like 8 to 10K in weekly revenue is where you're almost going to get that spider sense, right? That, all right, we're adding a bunch more revenue very quickly here. It's going to put pressure on a lot of our systems. We need to look at which system hasn't been updated lately, which system's aging, which system is most hasn't been updated lately, which systems aging, which system is, you know, maybe we're seeing clues or hints from comments or staffing issues, recruiting. There's recruiting issues with geographic regions or shifts.

There's clues throughout the business. And when you're looking at your measurables, I will tell you that there, you know, where there's smoke, there's going to be fire if you continue to add growth at this rate. And that's from growth. There could be variables just from market conditions that are going to influence you for those owners that are at that lifestyle level, that you're going to have to change. Now, maybe that's frequently for your growth-oriented offices, but you will have to change in order to remain at that lifestyle level. And owners that are successful at maintaining that level know that how it did things five years ago at this level is not going to be the same. It's going to be in a year from now. Yeah. I like the phrase you said,

pressure on the systems. I have this visual in my mind of like, you know, like pressure on your people. To clarify or just to have you restate it, you said like if you're growing like 8 to 10K weekly, that's a, you know, that's a point of like, okay, you're growing really fast. Like be analyzing. Weekly billable revenue will clarify. So when you're seeing, when you're jumping from 30K in weekly revenue, right? And then next, and then, you know, a week or two from now, you're at 40K in weekly revenue, right? And then the next, and then, you know, a week or two from now, you're at 40K in weekly revenue, right? Though that's, we're seeing those pressures. That's where the friction can happen. And, you know, that's actually, there's more, more gears turning, more caregivers, more hours of staff. Yeah. Yeah. And that sounds like a lot, but there are absolutely points in time when you can experience that type of growth. You know,

you think of like the growth of home care businesses, you know, like there's points of like massive growth. There's also plateaus. There's also sometimes some, you know, months where your billable hours or revenue actually decrease. So like home care is so like sporadic and jumpy. And I've heard from a lot of owners even just earlier this week of like, I've never been in a business where I had like, you know, my revenue went down like month over month. Like that's just like not normal, but that's just the nature of this business. I think that's what you're getting at is like being so mindful of maintaining consistency, but avoiding complacency, you know, like be, be really mindful of like being consistent in your training and in, you know, the services you deliver, et cetera, but also being mindful of like, you know, not getting complacent and doing things the way things have always done because your growth, your people, like there's

so many variables that change that you want to be mindful of. Yeah, absolutely. Let's go on to the third. Let's, let's get into some of the meat here. The third thing that you've identified is that successful franchisees are doing the office staff are held accountable to three to five core business metrics. So we're going to kind of jump into KPIs here, which is great. But I think the most important thing is like accountability. People's accountability is tied to metrics. What do you want to say on that? Yeah, that's I can't emphasize that enough.

It doesn't necessarily, what I'm about to share, these measurables, these are just a sampling, but you could choose whatever measurables you want. The most important thing that reigns supreme over all of these is that you are having consistent conversations, tying in the story to the numbers as far as why do these matter. It's one thing to hold them accountable to the numbers, but if they don't understand the why behind it of the impact, so making sure you spend the time in your weekly meetings, in your one-to-ones with each individual and helping them understand that the focus on this number is because down the road, it can have this impact. And if we don't watch it here, it will hurt us at a much larger level later. And so the first one that we really, I think, emphasize, and we implemented an adjustment

here at Griswold coming out of COVID in my first year here was going from caregiver application to offered going to caregiver application at first billable shift. And when you look at it historically, a lot of it's been application to offer application to hire. Hiring that individual, that point measurable is not an actual revenue generator. It actually drains your revenue.

It costs you money to hire somebody. So it's at the inverse. And so by measuring the first billable shift, we're looking at not only the point of orientation that they come into the office, but how effective our team is. And I have them walk out of orientation with a shift in hand and going to work generating revenue to recoup the hiring costs, but also to move the needle forward for us. So speed to solution has been a key measurable that we see most all of our offices use and hold it and hold their teams

accountable to and then recruiting and staffing um aspects of the business because it just it simply helps them towards an action mindset um the second one being caregiver turnover in the first 90 days turnovers is the popular subject we're seeing higher levels of it recently. But when you focus in on where can you really have the most impact into the future and future part of the business, it's the influence and the first impressions that you provide those new hires, those new caregivers, and that top talent retention. You may not know who your top talent is in that first 90 days, but you definitely won't find out who they are if you lose them before the 90 days.

And so that's really critical in watching that window of time to see what your team's touch points are or the lack thereof. And offices that are really good in 90 days are also, we see that ripple effect in other areas of business. Next, my third one being is just simply gross labor percent and having excellent management of the OT within that report. So understanding, you know, how much your labor cost is, looking at it from, you know, we usually say 55% at most, right? And try to factor in three to 5% for overtime as a healthy, you know, we usually say 55% at most, right? And try to factor in three to 5% for overtime as a healthy, you know,

it helps grease the wheels in a way, but you want to manage to it. And that's going to be business health. If your team is aware of your gross margin of where the OT stands, then you don't have to worry less about, you know, just overall margin compression from outside variables.

And it's going to allow you, it'll pre-position you for business growth during high opportunity areas where if you get a lot of referrals in or you have to break into a new account, you're going to have the discretionary spending available to you by having responsible management of this number. Fourth one being average revenue per hour build. This is really great for revenue potential for every hour coming in. This is also really a good indicator of how much money is coming in per hour staff, which is in direct representation of the labor that your staffing managers and recruiters have to invest. And ultimately, your internal payroll has to go into the business to generate this revenue.

And you can become upside down on this very quickly if you find your office having low bill rate and predominantly staffing more and more low hour shifts. And so this is a great tell as far as just a potential future burnout if you're seeing lower revenue for the hours that are coming in. So good trend on there. Last one being client and caregiver NPS scores. We like to use Home Care Pulse and the experience management surveys.

This is a great, these scores are great for not only for process improvement, but situational awareness. I can't tell you, and it's always, it provides a nice laugh for all our owners of how many times that we talk with them

and a client or a caregiver that says straight things to their face, talks terrible about them on this and vice versa. This is, these are great for holding the mirror up to your face and simply understanding trends and how you, your perception is not reality when the reality that really matters is the caregiver and the client reality. And it's a great way to help understand as an umbrella way, how all the systems that you're building, scaling, changing, are they having a positive or negative effect on the audiences that matter the most to you being your caregivers and clients?

Awesome. Awesome. Couple thoughts. And then I want to dig into a couple of these. At the beginning, we mentioned accountability. And some of these metrics bode well to an individual. Some of them bode well to a team. Some bode well to an owner.

The thing that I want to hound on this point is being really mindful of who owns the metric. If nobody owns it, then it doesn't get done and it doesn't matter. So that's one of the things that stood out to me is owners need to be really mindful, like who owns metrics and who's accountable to them. And you need to make sure that the individual has direct influence over that metric. I think that's one of like maybe the more important things to consider when you're establishing KPIs. You mentioned at the start, like getting buy-in from those members and then being really mindful that that metric directly ties to that person and then being really mindful that that metric directly ties to that person. And they're the person that influences it most. Because, you know,

if not, then, you know, KPIs are kind of in vain. We talk a lot about data and metrics and measuring KPIs, but, you know, they really don't mean anything unless, like you said, there's like a why behind them and the right person is accountable to them. Yeah, I would say definitely guard against becoming the puppet master to where you're just the one doll seeing eye that sees everything. Your team is blind to it, which we have seen owners do and I've seen competitors do as well.

But the best owners, the ones that are operating are showing some level of transparency and accountability. The recruiters owning the caregiver return in 90 days. That's owning the application for a billable shift. Your office manager may be on the gross labor, you know, when they're reviewing payroll. That skin in the game is going to help them really understand root cause at a much deeper level than an owner could.

If they are managing all of these, they're not going to have direct engagement on all the, on all the things that influence these numbers. And so empowering your team to own these on that accountability level, you're actually going to get a much truer sense of what's happening with your business by pulling your team in to report to you and you hold them accountable to the accuracy of that information. And then that will take your business and serve you well as you scale across all revenue levels.

Yeah, absolutely. One thing that we're not really going to get into, but that I want to just like illustrate on this point too, is rewarding based off these metrics. You know, it's one thing to hold them accountable. It's another thing for them to be motivated by these metrics. You know, if you reward based off their performance, based off their metrics, you know, I think that's too, where you kind of unlock the secret sauce with metrics is you're holding them accountable and then you're rewarding them based off these metrics as well. Um, one thing that I wanted to ask, I think with two of them, you reference like the gross labor costs, gross margin, um, where does like net net profit, like net margin fit in there? Are you more keen on measuring just gross,

or is there a time and a place to measure net as well? There is absolutely. And that net profitability, that net margin really sits, I would say, if you're director of operations, you're ops manager, who's going to have more control over, say, your staples account, office supplies, food orders, orientation costs, oversees the marketing budget for discretionary spending. Aligning that measurable to the role of responsible, that won't necessarily that net margin of profitability. Maybe it's good to share once a month with the team as far as overall operational health, but the recruiter may not necessarily have

any, if by all influence on that number. And so you want to show them really kind of keep their eyes on what matters most in their world. And then having still have that, that not your number two, really managing the net profit number to tie the whole picture together, making sure all systems are flowing well. But I would, that's when I would, I would, you don't want to,

I caution against distracting too much, too frequent, but maybe in a monthly meeting compared to your weekly meeting, you hit on a few more of these, but definitely operational health will matter, especially if you, to your point, cause I'm a big believer in,

in tying into performance based incentives is if everybody's doing their job to manage orders on Amazon, Staples account, lunch orders, over the course of the month, if you share, guys, hey, we are a net profit, we're seeing owners as well do that and share in their performance-based incentive is a portion of that net profit is shared with a team in the bonus frequency. Yeah, absolutely. I've got more thoughts on this, but I want to make sure we get through everything. I think this is a topic for another day. The last thing I want to say here is Matt just shared these five metrics. Doesn't mean those are the blueprint for everyone to follow. Like he said, these are like some ideas, some things that they coach their franchisees on.

KPIs are so customized to the business. So find what works for you. Find what's right and works for your people and be willing to adapt them as you go. You know, what you put in place year one will probably look very different than what you put in place at year five. So, you know, find what's right for you and your people and how you think about your business. Um, but that was great. Let's, let's jump onto number four, which is great franchisees have defined their right fit client and their right fit caregiver. This is maybe one of my favorite, more like maybe favorite topic.

I just think this is so important. And the businesses that do this well are the ones that are thriving. So let's dig in here a little bit. What in your mind, Matt, like is defining right fit client, right fit caregiver? What does that look like? It's really, it's a manifestation of your larger goal and vision for the business. And so when that franchise owner has set out in a business from scratch, they kind of have an understanding or vision of where they want the

business to go, whether it's to have the largest impact possible within the community, whether it's to be a concierge level provider, whether it's to be an advocate for veterans and provide great veteran services. Those goals have subsequently have a profile for both client and caregiver on a compatibility level attached to them, whether they realize that or not. And that, and if you are aware of that as early in the process as possible, if you, if you build that into your system, then the, when you're looking for the right caregiver for the business, having the profile of the right caregiver when your recruiters are vetting, when they're interviewing, this is going to help the operation function much more smoothly.

Same with a client. If you're trying to provide as much service as possible to your community at a volume base, a high needs, high attention concierge client may not be the right fit for the business from a profile standpoint because they would be essentially a time and resource vacuum when you need to provide those resources over a much larger headcount to fit the vision. And we've seen offices have misalignments or kind of, I would say, just like a fog around the clarity here. That can slow the business down or cause, again, friction with operating processes.

So when you have very clearly defined vision for the right fit client and the right fit caregiver, that's going to allow the business to operate smoother because you're going to build your processes in a very purposeful manner to find these individuals, whether that's from identifying the right referral sources, the right recruiting platforms, or placing the community to acquire caregivers that meet that need, it's going to feed into the larger picture and vision. And when you have alignment there, your rate of success can be exponential. Yeah. I love what you said at the beginning, like manifestation of what you want for your business. That's like really powerful. And then what you're saying around like alignment, everything aligns around the same incentives. If you have that defined, I think the difference

between good owners and great owners, good owners define their right fit client. Great owners are not distracted by what's not their right fit and they will quite literally say no. I think great owners know when and how to say no. Good owners will make exceptions. This know, like this is like an edge case, or this is like a one-off client that like we can kind of like mold, but, but great owners, you know, they're lasered in on their right fit client and caregivers. And yes, that can change. Yes. That can be multiple different demographics. You know, we're not saying that like, this is like one specific client, you know, maybe at the start, but 10 years in, it's like you could have like multiple right fits. But I think the best owners are not distracted. They're not tempted, you know, to say yes, when it could do more harm than good in their business. Have you seen that?

Yeah, absolutely. And that and it's, it's tough. It's, it's when you have a case that could have a great positive impact for revenue potential. Maybe you've had a plateau and it's been slow and you have this case that comes in that could, you know, positively impact the business on the revenue side, on the P&L. But you look at it from a profile standpoint, and it's got bad news written all over it from a family dynamic standpoint, from a staffing standpoint. Understanding what that impact is, it's not necessarily worth it at the end of the day, as tempting as it is. And the great owners are okay walking away from that, knowing that the big picture, revenue picture is that they'll actually probably lose money on that

case as much as it may affect the top line. The bottom line, too many of those could negatively infect your office staff. You could have turnover internally. And then there's that compounding of, well, we all know what happens when you lose a good coordinator is you really are going to get hit on your fillable hours for that given week or month. So there's a ripple effect from making concessions on the profile and the identity of the clients that you are best equipped to serve with your processes that you've built out with your team. And so it's hard to say no in your growth phases as a newer, early owner, but sticking to your guns and knowing what your capacity is to provide excellent care

and the vision that you have in mind without sacrificing anything there. So not discounting your services. You can provide too many different profiles of families for care, but can you provide the same level of care across those profiles? If you can answer yes to that question, then by all means have at it. But as soon as you have to doubt or have to second guess or double check, it's probably not a good fit. And you want to empower your team to make that decision as well.

And that shouldn't be a decision that's solely with you as a franchise owner or the director of operations. But you should empower your team with guardrails to understand, you know, I want you to say no and to act quickly and decisively so that we don't lose speed and we're focused on what we can control and who we can impact positively. Yeah. What's interesting to me about what you just said is you could bring on a high revenue client that could ultimately result in losing caregivers, but even one level further, result in losing office staff. That's not uncommon to bring on really, you know, maybe high revenue, but really high demand, demanding clients that can result in a loss of an office staff member. So like you said, there's all these like hidden repercussions, you know, don't just be tempted by the dollar signs, but think all the way through like what this client means for the business and for the caregivers, you know, for the office staff and any other like factors at play there. I think that's really important. Yeah, absolutely. Let's, let's kind

of segue into this next one. I think there's, there's semi-related, but a little bit different. I want to hear what you have to say on this one. The best owners have defined their non-negotiables. What do you mean by that exactly? This again, ties into the ultimate vision of what are we, what is going to shape how we are represented publicly? What are we going to be known for? You're willing to let go of potential revenue or growth or opportunity, potential opportunities, as they might be defined by others in protection of what you're doing, which could be we never miss a shift. Means that we're there, you know, we'll be able to provide you care in, you know, you would, there is zero tolerance for, um, you or the team to, to, uh, I would say make concessions on there to, um, to cut corners, whatever it may be there, there, or to save money. Um, and that can be like what one as an operator, um, we had-negotiable of we don't miss shifts. And our attitude, which really came out of what we read as a team book called Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willick,

where you kind of look in the mirror and you take accountability for any shortfalls of your team, there was that if we miss a shift or if there's a call out or there's an issue, that's not the client's responsibility to solve that. We did not pre-plan or put something in place to manage to that. And that was one of our non-negotiables. And that was the attitude that we took. And when you embrace something like that, you become known for that in the community. And it could be anything. You choose it, but you own it.

And that's going to be a differentiator because you're going to be able to so confidently speak to that and be proud of it at the end of the day that that's going to be a selling point in itself. And so you're really kind of creating an indirect marketing tactic through just such a, such a razor sharp, strong identity. Can we go into that example specifically a little bit more? You're saying, you know, you had a zero tolerance for like maybe call outs, you know, like, like we were, we were going to fill the shift, like no matter what, what does the implementation actually look like? You know, when there's a call out, like, is it written in the service agreement or how do you ensure that

you're going to get someone out there like same day? Like, what does that actually look like in practice? So it actually starts way before that. And so it starts with ultimately the hire and when you look at the hire, what are they coming on board for? One of the processes that worked really, really well for us is that we never brought a caregiver to orientation unless that we had their verbal commitment to a particular shift, right? So that they walked out of that orientation with a plan of care, a scheduled date to go shadow the caregiver, and to immediately start assimilation into our world and into work with a client. And if we could not feel that that individual had the ability to do that quickly in that manner,

we would delay their orientation until we had the right fit for them. And to maximize compatibility and manage expectations. And so that's really where they started. It came down to the uncontrollables. And so when we manage that process so effectively by placing caregiver in the right position of success, the right training, slow is smooth, smooth is fast, and really dialed it in as far as making sure that they were competent and understanding the expectations for delivery of care on that case. Then it just came down to managing, you know, flat tires, card in start, you know, those, you know, bad weather, unexpected things that would happen. And we were able to leverage Uber and Lyft were great ways to, in transportation, that's a very, very common cause of problems for us in the staffing world,

right, is the logistics of getting caregiver from point A to point B. We would have Uber and Lyft business accounts that were set up to help facilitate getting them there. And in absence of that, and the caregiver just simply not being available, we would pre-position caregivers through retainers on specific days to be available and with their commitment to stay local to be deployed very quickly to any of the cases within the geographic area of responsibility. And so by pre-planning and putting things in place as far as redundancies go, we were able to cover those shifts. And down to the point where we actually were able to look at our data and our metrics and understand what days had the highest probability of call outs and issues, as well as the time of those days and making sure that we were dialed in with our redundancy plans, as well as additional confirmation calls on our days that we saw that were increasing in volatility and all that work ahead of time helped us to really manage down those issues.

And when possible, you know, then we had the lift, we had those additional caregivers, or simply we had spot bonuses that we would leverage in order to cover those shifts. And through all of this, you're having a constant line of communication with the family to ask them what they ultimately want here. Because sometimes the family does not want a new caregiver that is not familiar with their care, which can actually cause more harm than good. And so we were always making sure that we were putting the ball back in the family's court, providing them solutions and options to make sure that they were happy with whatever plan B we had to come up with that day. And if that included us sending our nurse or caregiver out to do additional training to get it shored up, that's what it had to take. Okay. This is amazing. This is slightly tangential, but this is like so good

because let's just go down like the call-out path here for a little bit longer. Like call-outs are inevitable. Like that's kind of the name of the game here. That's obvious, but everything that you just said, like call-outs can be avoided. Like literally what you just detailed out, you know, people are like, how do I avoid call-outs? What do I do? Like, I can't control my caregivers, et cetera. What you exactly just said, like identify the commonalities of your call-outs. It might be five reasons. It might be 10 reasons. And then work backwards, problem solve. Like what exactly are we going to do when this happens, when this happens, when this happens, what report, like what, what fallback plan, plan B do we put in place for every single one of those reasons?

And then like you're hitting on communication, communication with the employee, expectation setting with the employee, with the family, like there's all of these factors and it, yeah, maybe it's a little bit complicated, but like you said, like it all just comes down to like identifying all of those commonalities, heuristics, like and lasering in on them and then putting processes, solutions in place to combat when those happen because they're going to happen over and over. And then I love what you said, like identifying the days and the times of when those are most likely to happen and then potentially have like caregivers on the bench, like on demand, ready to go and fill in if and when those issues arise.

And one thing I'll add to that, that we've seen successful owners do as well, is you understand the time it takes to cover a call out. So how effective are your processes? Because the time that it takes, the hour, the two hours or three hours that it takes on any given day to cover that call out. That is you are spending internal payroll on a case that's generating no additional revenue from you. And so when you're at scale and you're a larger office, if you are dedicating half of a full-time employee's work week to covering call outs, you are limiting yourself. You are losing money on profitability because you are simply employing somebody almost on a part-time basis, essentially, to cover call-outs. So if you understand the time

an investment takes for a call and you produce that through the implementation of some of the processes that I just explained, then you become more effective and decisive operation to where you can still yield net profitability at a much higher level because you're not losing as much on the top line, but your team also doesn't feel like they're spinning their wheels. Okay. That was really, really well said. That was awesome. Just tying it back to the point here, which was defining non-negotiables. I think the kind of underlying principles here are get really clear on what those non-negotiables are when it comes to service delivery, when it comes to call out policies, overtime policies, communication and communication expectations for clients, family members,

employees, even down to like culture, you know, what are your non-negotiables when it comes to culture, PTO, you know, et cetera. Like there's so many policies, you know, that you should put in place and then be prepared, you know, to not really negotiate on those because they're firm. So I think there's a lot to be said here, but I think, you know, we kind of went down the call out path, but there's, it's just painting the picture of like, get really clear on what are your non-negotiables. Let's, let's hit these last few. We've got just over 10 minutes here. Number six is leveraging franchisor resources. The best franchisees are getting their money's worth on those royalties. They are taking full advantage of the franchisor and the resources and the benefits there. So speak, speak to that.

Yeah, absolutely. So they're just like anything, like I think I mentioned last week, your franchise royalties are going to be a line item on your P&L, just like your rent would be, right? Or the cost for a platform. And so just like anything, you want to optimize that investment, right? Don't write off the royalties just as an obligation that you signed an agreement to, right? It's buying you access. And in this case, one of the things that we see most commonly is our successful owners are talking with other owners. It's not even the franchisor. They have those franchise royalties that have given them access to other owners that maybe have come before them, have longer sheet time, or just have a different way to look at things.

They're buying access to really smart, intelligent people that have approach problems that they're maybe currently facing that they can get a different perspective on, right? And so they're connecting, they're making connections, they're going to annual conferences, they're participating in franchisor-led events where they can connect and they can mingle with others to just simply understand how to avoid potholes and how to

just to be successful. And then from those, they're participating in whether it's if your franchise network has an FAC, Franchise Advisory Council, participating in beta test groups, being a mentor to new owners. You know, there's many different ways where you can take advantage and get information, you know, to benefit your business that may not be at surface level. You know, if there's an announcement, maybe if you have, if your franchise has a town hall or a blog post or a newsletter that goes out, you know, understand what that opportunity that they're presenting to you is, ask questions, submit a support ticket, call your franchise business coach and really unpack what they're putting out there. The home office is full of people that are smart and intelligent, but sometimes we don't get it right all the time and you're communicating it out. And so if you see something, ask questions, help to gain clarity on it. That's going to really help our franchise owners that are very,

very successful do just that. They speak their mind. They share their opinion. They bubble up great ideas. I can't tell you how many great ideas have come from franchise owners that have spoken up because they maybe they looked at something a different way or they saw something that we didn't see. And their idea has paid off in spades for the rest of the network.

And so that's the accessibility. That's the optimization of your royalties where you can't go it alone as much as some people want to think about it. If some of your goal is big enough, you're going to need to pull in some really smart people that are sometimes smarter than you, whether it's a franchise owner, whoever it may be, and pick their brain and age and take advantage of all that you have signed that franchise agreement for. That was awesome. The thing that you and I have talked about that stands out to me that's maybe underutilized and that more franchisees need to leverage are the other franchisees.

You're oftentimes in a network of 50 to 500 other franchisees that have gone down, you know, very similar paths as you. And, you know, maybe you're a little timid to reach out to the franchisor for whatever reason, but there's all these other franchisees that are in very similar stages as you and leverage them, reach out to them, connect with them. I wish, you know, I could take like a poll of all of the hundreds of people that will listen to this. You know, if you're a franchisee, have you reached out to another franchisee in the last three months, last six months, last 12 months? Like when was the last time you struck up a conversation with a peer franchisee? And if you haven't done that recently, you know, in the last few months, like make that a priority

to have those conversations, to engage with other owners. If you haven't reached out to the franchisor in six or 12 months, make that a priority. You know, like you said, give feedback, ask questions like prod. If you're not getting something out of that relationship, like speak up, you know, be honest, be vocal. I'm sure you can appreciate that. Like, you know, maybe it stings a little bit and you can, you know, be a little self-defensive, like we're doing that or we've tried that, but you would rather hear from them than not hear from them. Right. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and if you don't know who to reach out to from another franchise owner, maybe reach, you know, ask your franchise business coach or somebody at home office, Hey, who's really good at sales. Who's really good at marketing strategies. Who's good at

managing finances. Right. You know, having them connect you with somebody else that they've talked with, that they know who is an expert, that's another opportunity to leverage your resource, to connect the dots for otherwise that a private owner may not have access to that. And even one step further, this isn't always possible, but I've seen this done before, where maybe mid-sized, small to mid-sized franchisees are literally traveling to the largest franchises in the network and shadowing their team, shadowing their processes, asking them, you know, a million questions. Again, I don't know if that's always realistic, but that could be something that you

prioritize or send, you know, your sales reps and send one of your coordinators to go to their office and shadow, you know, some of the best of the best in the network. Those are just huge opportunities that are, that are underutilized. Yeah, totally. Let's hit these last two. Number seven, you know, best franchisees are consistent in referral source marketing and networking.

We were kind of just like going down the sales path a little bit. Obviously, this topic is like, you know, full blown its own. But talk to me about, you know, just the consistent effort of referral marketing and what that does for the successful agencies. Yeah. You've had many great guests on here to speak on this. So we'll just hit this at a high level, but it's the vision and the focus of the goals to that vision overall. That's, that's the common theme across all our owners is that they're empowering their team,

their marketers to the exact goal that they know will be or the blocking and tackling method to get to the annual or that multi-year goal. And they've done so in a scalable strategy. So they've laid out for their teams, all right, this is what we want to accomplish in a month of marketing. This is what we want to accomplish in a month of marketing. This is what we want to accomplish in a quarter of marketing. This is what we want to accomplish in annual. Having that three or five year goal is a perfect world.

And some owners are doing that, but at the very least an annual understanding of what's going to take to get to your ultimate financial or impact goal. It's the details. The details matter here. And the owners are tied into the measurables that are. It's the details. The details matter here. And the owners are tied into the measurables that are going to influence those details. And what I would recommend tying to the previous point is co-marketing.

Franchise owners oftentimes are going to have neighboring franchisees in your more mature, larger brands is combined forces. And oftentimes one referral source, and especially in our world and home care is going to refer out to different territories perhaps for different owners and if you are combining your marketing strategy and efforts this is going to empower you reach your goals better and through so talking through strategies that align with neighboring owners can be helpful in just clarity as far as the referral source goes and understanding what your brand is and what your company does. But also, and just helping you get yours faster because you're bringing in a second voice. Yeah, I like that.

Working together locally, you know, especially at the franchise, in the franchise system, you know, about like really naturally organically makes sense. You know, I would argue even on the independent side, there's opportunities to partner and work with what may be like your competitors, but that goes back to the right fit. You know, maybe you identify or if someone comes to you, that's not a right fit that is for someone else, vice versa. You know, they have a, you know, a not right fit that reaches out to them that they can pass you. Like there's so much value in working, you know, proactively with your competitors or with your market to really build each other up. I think there's a lot of value there. The other thing I want to call it quickly, just before we jumped on, you mentioned another key point here, subtopic is balancing, you know, digital marketing, online marketing, having a presence there, and then also like boots

on the ground, like traditional knocking doors, you know, taking the donuts around, like successful agencies are doing both. I think I have yet, you know, if anyone here, correct me if I'm wrong, I have yet to see probably like a 10 million plus agency that has just been built on one or the other. It's most common that they have a really concentrated effort on both and are maximizing both. And they're seeing, you know, the growth based off both. You said before this call, you talked to a franchisee that's built their business on digital and they're about 4 million, which is really impressive. But I think you were saying, you know, you're starting to coach them like, hey, you've got to have, you know, the boots on the ground, the local feel to

accelerate. Right. Yeah. And yeah, absolutely. And when you get to those larger size offices where you're going to have a marketer, chances are you're also going to have a standalone digital manager in the office. They need to be attached at the hip. And so that the marketing strategy, both digitally and in the field, is you're speaking the same language. The themes that are being spoken to in the field are resonating in the digital content that you're producing. And that brand consistency is going to be critical in just separating you from the pack because there's going to be a concise, clear voice that people are going to be able to

digest very quickly compared to where if there's two different voices, it's going to create a little bit of confusion in that market and can just can be self-limiting. Yeah, 100%. Again, we could go down the sales path, but I think that really encapsulates like the key points there. Let's hit number eight, you know, two minutes here at the very end. The last one is, and you've teased this earlier on, but unbiased feedback or surveys from both the client and the caregiver population. We're both big fans of home care polls. So, you know, our biased opinion is to use a third party, but at the least, you know,

make sure you're collecting feedback from clients and caregivers. You mentioned NPS earlier, maybe you kind of break down just like the what and the why of this point specifically. Sure. So anyway, you can essentially capture net promoter score, a hundred percent bias on care polls because it's an efficiency and accuracy that I find is unrivaled, but net promoter score. I 100% buy some care polls because it's an efficiency and accuracy that I find is unrivaled. But net promoter score, essentially, you want to find out who your advocates are, the ones that are going to essentially be many marketers for your brand and your business, your passives, the ones that maybe like you kind of, but just don't feel the push to really start speaking about you. And then you're going to have your detractors, the ones that have felt wronged

or slighted and just simply are not happy with the services you provided. When you can quantify your clients and caregivers into those three buckets, you get a picture of where the true, you would say, the outcomes of your efforts are. You may feel you're over investing time and energy in getting an outcome that's that fall short of what your goal is. And so the alignment that can be created by understanding, all right, this process is not working where we have far too many passives. So we need to increase our weekly communication with our our clients and we need to move five percent of our assets to a promoter in the next three months, that ties into what good franchises are, what great franchises are doing. Everything that they're doing is measured and managed. And they're not just making a decision with an ambiguous goal.

They have a clear number that they're managing to and holding accountable the team to. And that's where having this feedback loop is you can measure perception and you can measure how people feel about what you're doing. Because you may think you're providing the greatest care and the best outcome, but oftentimes it comes down to the communication. You could have a solution that you provide a family. There could be an outcome that actually falls short of what they want or what they were desiring. But if your communication is excellent and you walk through the situation with them and they really feel like they're the most important

person in the room, then that person could actually probably be a promoter for you because you were just so good at communicating with them and helping them understanding the landscape of the care need. So it's not always about perfection, but it's about the communication. This is a great way to manage that so that they're happy and satisfied with your scores. Yeah. Feedback is qualitative. So sometimes it's hard to quantify, but like you said, it can be done and you will get some surprises. Those clients that, you know, put a smile on when the caregiver's there, but, you know, behind your back, like there's a lot to unpack there.

There's a lot of feedback. And so I wholeheartedly agree on this point. Like the most successful agencies, the most successful franchisees are measuring feedback, aggregating it, you know, syndicating. And then they are quite literally taking action based off this feedback. I can't, you know, understate the importance of this point. So I'm glad we ended here.

Matt, you're so awesome. This has been a great couple of sessions. You are a wealth of knowledge. Any Griswold owners listening to this, if you haven't talked to Matt personally, like get on the phone with him this week. I'd also advise, you know, anyone, anyone in the industry, I think Matt is a great resource to all of us. So if you don't mind, I plug people to connect with you on LinkedIn, reach out to him. We've covered a lot of ground these last two sessions. So if you've got follow-up questions or want to dig into anything with him, I hope that's okay that I'm encouraging people to go. I love talking with new and old faces and excited any way I can help you grow your business or support you whether you're a Griswold franchise owner or not.

Let's catch up. Thank you for the opportunity and it was great talking with you. Awesome. Thanks, Matt. Everyone have a great rest of your week and we'll look forward to seeing you back again next week. 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.