The Bobby Bones Show - Episode 8: To Be Good At This Job, You Just Have To Be...Good

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

For those of us fortunate enough to be able to work from home during the pandemic, our new normal finds us juggling the pressures of work, family and health in ways we hadn't previously experienced. Imagine being responsible for 45 elderly folks spread across three bucolic residential homes during all of this? And not just accounting for them, but catering to their every need, honoring their extremely specific food requests, staging an elaborate Easter party and tending to their life and death medical needs in the face of an especially threatening virus. For Josh Winn, it's not just a labor of love, it's a compassionate calling. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Make every day feel epic in the all-new Hyundai Palisade hybrid. The Palisade hybrid is packed full of features, cutting-edge tech, and up to an EPA estimated 619 miles of range on select trims and class-leading interior space. Seating configurations for 7-8 passengers,

available H-track all-wheel drive, so you can be ready to go anywhere in style. Learn more about the Hyundai Palisade at HyundaiUSA.com. Call 562-314-4.4.4. 4603 for complete details. All right, if you have ever dealt with a traditional home security company, you know the drill. Expensive monthly fees, contracts that lock you in for years, and waiting around for a technician to set everything up. It's a lot.

Well, now they're Simply Safe. They have completely changed the game. Simply Safe has no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, no being trapped. They earn your business by actually keeping you safe, not by locking you in. Setting up is so easy. You customize your system at SimplySafe.com. It ships to your door in a few days. And with the app guided setup, you can have everything installed and armed in under an hour. No technician needed. And it's not just a camera. It's a full ecosystem of sensors, cameras for inside and outside and 24-7 professional monitoring. If there's ever a break in, a fire, or a flood, SimpleSafe's agents are on it immediately. They were also named America's best customer service by Newsweek, which honestly tracks. Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting Simplysafe.com slash bones.

That's half off at Simplysafe.com slash bones. There's no safe like SimplySafe. Owning a home comes with a lot of things nobody really prepares you for, including yard care. Sunday is a company trying to make that part easier. They start with a soil test and climate data to build a yard plan tailor to where you live, then ship everything directly to your door. no guesswork, no dragging bags of fertilizer.

And instead of harsh chemicals, Sunday uses simple, nutrient dense ingredients like seaweed, molasses, and iron. Everything hooks up to a hose, which honestly sounds like my speed. If your yard feels more stressful than satisfying, Sunday's approach makes a lot of sense. Go to get sunday.com to get your free custom yard analysis. That's get sunday.com. You're listening to a podcast, so you're doing something. else too. Like maybe scrolling home listings on Redfin

saving places you like without thinking you'll get them because that's what house hunting has become. But Redfin isn't built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents, which means when you find a place you love, you got a real

shot of getting it. Redfin helps turn saved listings into real addresses. Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. This is on the job. This season, we're speaking with folks who are finding their professional stride in a tumultuous job market and learning how to double down on their skills and their experience to overcome challenges. We'll bring you inspiring stories of people making themselves essential,

an important skill set in any economy. For a lot of people, working in nursing homes or elderly care is a calling. It's a tough job that makes a huge difference to a population that often feels pushed to the side. And as the elderly have been put at higher risk with COVID-19, essential workers continue to be by their sides helping them live fulfilling lives in old age. This past May, I met up with Josh Wynn for a socially distanced glass of wine on his porch

after one of his many 12-hour days. You must be exhausted, right? Yes, the wine helps. He kind of has a unique position. He oversees three residential care facilities here in Vermont owned by the same company, the escutney house, the Davis home, and the Brookwood Estate. So my official title is,

the general manager, which is a fairly vague title for my position, to manage three facilities can be complicated. I wake up earlier than I should, and I come home later than I should, but I wouldn't have it any other way right now. I just feel more comfortable being as hands-on as I can. Each of the houses has between 14 to 16 residents, ranging from ages 50 to 100. And the way he describes the residential care facilities is like something between a nursing home, where residents get 24-7 care and assisted living communities, where older folks live within gated communities that have amenities but are very independent. So we're smack dab in the middle.

We are three old Vermont farmhouses. We function a lot like a bed and breakfast, except the guests never leave. These are old Vermont country homes, with beautiful, creaky staircases and wide plank floors. There's a lot of charm and character. They definitely offer that home vibe, which is, I think, why, a lot of families gravitate towards us to bring their families because they walk in and they feel like they're walking into a friend's house and not into a facility.

Josh oversees about 30 staff members between the houses, but he's responsible for making sure that they're all in running order and the residents have everything they need. My days never look the same. In different days, I have different responsibilities. I'm responsible for placing all of our catering orders for the week's menu. The houses serve three meals a day and snacks that Josh collaborates with the house cooks on designing. So he essentially oversees an entire catering operation. He helps everyone get their medical supplies. Like oxygen tanks and certain narcotic medications and stuff that require hard scripts in hand. On delivery, I'm responsible for those. He helps residents with their bills and finances, making sure they don't get behind on anything.

He files all their medical records and speaks with their doctors. And then I do all of their transportation. Monday through Friday, anytime they have a doctor's appointment, I'm driving them home and back. The hospitals he drives them to are sometimes an hour away, and each of the houses are about 15 minutes away from each other. And I'm at each house every single day, multiple times a day. Yeah, that's just kind of a Cliff's Notes version of what happens. So basically your job is to cater to the unique needs of about 45 individuals. Yep. Yeah.

It just doesn't seem like there's enough hours in the day. There isn't. There literally isn't. Regardless of the workload, Josh says that the characters he gets to spend his waking hours with is something he looks forward to every morning. Oh, for sure. So we've got Dolores, who I call Miss Long Island,

and you know immediately when you meet her, because she'll never let you forget it. And she commands that household. And then we have who I call the princess. I will not mention her by name. During breakfast time, she does this thing that drives me up the wall. She asks for like five different drinks. Janet, she's just the sweetest, most loving smile for days.

I mean, she's adorable. You know, she wants her warm milk, which is in a small cup, not a medium cup, not a large cup, the extra small cup, microwaved for 30 seconds, not 31, not 29. It better be 30, and she will know. Joanne, kind-hearted, but extremely blunt person. She will never eat the breakfast that we have on the menu. She always asks for something completely different that takes an entire afternoon to prepare the night before.

Joanne, we let her get away with murder because she's Joanne, only to not eat it when we finally serve it. And she walks up with her walker and waddles off to her room and sits down and eats a couple crackers. And every single day, and that is the princess. I'm seeing a lot of love from how you talk about everyone, even the princess. I'm sure it's impossible not to get really close to everyone. Absolutely. The residents feel like a second family.

You know, I look at a lot of them like extra sets of grandparents. I could listen to them all day. I mean, if I didn't have actual work to do, I could just listen to them, tell me stories all day. Because I'm just fascinated by them. I just love them. Long before he spent the entirety of his days dealing with people, Josh was an introverted kid growing up in Southern California. I was very quiet and shy and insecure.

Not much has changed, and I'm 31. And I had a very wonderful home life, but a horrible life at school. I was just bullied and picked on and just abused at school like crazy, and I never said anything about it for years. For some reason, I just ended up being a target. When Josh was in seventh grade, his family moved across the country to New Hampshire. He was hoping his new school life would be different, but he says middle school was the toughest two years of his life. It wasn't until he got to high school that he started making new connections and saw doors open for him.

Once high school started to come to an end, I knew that the rest of my life was really going to matter because I was just extremely optimistic that I would be a completely different person when I left high school and it was exactly that. Josh's life pretty quickly started to veer in the direction of elderly care. He said the seeds were kind of planted by his extremely close relationship with his grandparents. My parents in some ways are probably a little jealous that I have such a close relationship with my grandparents. But they're my closest friends. I was always told at a young age that I was an old soul and that I was too mature for my age. And at the time, I thought that was kind of an insult.

being a kid I didn't want to be older than I was, but it actually worked out for me. Anyone who knew Josh knew this was a big part of his personality. So while he took other jobs after high school like working in a print shop, people would just naturally ask him if he was interested in working with their older family members. They would say something like, oh, my mother has liver disease and she's living at home, but we can't afford a nursing facility. Would you be open to being a caregiver with the right training or whatever? And it really did happen like that. The first time it happened, I was 19. So he started being a caregiver on referral, and he was a natural. He got out of it for a while and started doing wedding and event

planning, which he also loved. It gave him a chance to get really creative in making experiences for people. But I still felt that ball even then that it wasn't enough. You're getting to know these couples and these families for a certain amount of time, and then this event happens, and then you never see them again. And, you know, I wanted work to be a little bit more personal than that. So eventually, he and his husband, Ben, moved around while Josh went back to working as a private caregiver. They'd always wanted to live in Vermont. So when they landed there, Josh connected with the woman that runs these three residential facilities.

And it was a no-brainer. Josh has been working at these three houses for over a year now. And what surprised me talking to him is how accessible of a job it really is. Yeah, absolutely. and that's kind of the best part about it. You know, we have people that come to us and we are either their first job, sometimes we are their job

after retirement. He says, if you're someone that really wants to help people, this is work where you don't need a ton of training to at least get your foot in the door. And there's lots of different jobs within these facilities. You could specialize in one-on-one care. You could even be a cook for the resident.

And then we have sleepers who do exactly that. They come and they sleep and they get paid a flat rate. and it's the best job ever. Sleepers, just to be on call? Yep, just to sleep in case of an emergency. Wow. So maybe besides being a sleeper,

the precursor to being good at this job is just being good. Yeah, absolutely. Hands down. If we could get good people to apply, they're hired. Going into it, there is definitely no sugar coding that it's hard work. You have to be able to think about someone else for the entirety that you're there. You just have to be compassionate and these people would be

so grateful to have someone with that capability. I just look at them like how I would want to see my family and my grandparents specifically treated if they were in a facility like that. Josh says that you can learn tons of

invaluable hard skills on the job, but the first priority is always making sure that everyone feels deeply comfortable in their environment and completely cared for beyond expectations. That's why I say we function a lot like a bed and breakfast, because it really does feel that way. They're living their life as if they were living it at home. We just happen to feed them.

So while the limit to Josh's task has no real boundaries, he's taken pride in his ultimate job of creating a safe place for people to simply be happy in. In the wake of COVID-19, the job confronted a whole new set of challenges. Elderly care professionals around the country, like Josh, began to offend the havens that they'd created for their residents. as older people became more at risk than any other population. Absolutely. They are as high risk as you can be. And that really got put into perspective very quick. More on Josh's story after the break.

A strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done. Sweats over the details. This is the kind of person you need. Express employment professionals can help. Finding the best people requires more than sorting through applications. You need to conduct a thorough search. Express understands what it takes to hire the right person. It takes real people, real interviews, discovering the talents you need.

We find good people, matching their skills with the right jobs. At Express, we find people for jobs and companies of all sizes and industries. from the production floor to the front office. Sometimes finding the best new employee really is about who you know. Express knows jobs. Get to know Express. Go to Expresspros.com to find a location near you. When COVID-19 hit, Josh and his staff were dealing with a new normal,

just like the rest of the world. Complications in how they operate in their daily lives in an uncertain atmosphere. But the complications with the residents is a different world. that I had to educate myself really quick on how this was all going to pan out, and I certainly haven't done it alone. The staff have really gone beyond what we've ever required of them, and it's kept us that much more kind of vigilant in how we handle this whole situation. Everyone at the homes Josh oversees has medical complications that prevent them from living on their own.

So it's in the job description that Josh is going to help out with these health issues, But now it's those issues that make them immunocompromised and most at risk with this new virus. Many of our residents are oxygen dependent, so respiratory illness is an understatement. A lot of them have existing heart conditions and all sorts of medical conditions that could easily kill them. Josh and his staff took tons of precautions. They followed all the state's guidelines as they came out. If a staff member had so much as a cough, they were sent home, leaving them perpetually short staff. residents were quarantined to their rooms where the staff catered to them.

If someone is quarantined in a room and you have to serve them lunch, you have to fully regown face mask, face shield, gloves, everything, have two people do so, one in the room and one out of the room to collect the empty tray, to take any laundry, and you're doing this a dozen times or more a day. Each time, they'd be throwing all of this equipment away as a sanitary procedure. And like many medical facilities, they began to run out. We couldn't get it fast enough and we were using it quicker than we could receive it. We've had some close calls where we've had residents who presented symptoms of COVID.

And the problem in the beginning was that it was taking roughly about a week to get results back. We would go and get them tested and then still have to quarantine them in the house with the other residents still present. They took every precaution they possibly could in isolating everyone. A handful of facilities within a few miles of them had positive cases between residents and staff. But when I spoke to Josh, three months after they first started quarantine, his residences had not had a single case. When I say that I'm grateful that we have had zero cases, I can't even describe. The hard work has paid off, and so it goes to show that if you follow really serious, simple guidelines and you keep a sanitary environment and you really care for these people as if they're

your family, you know, you can really be in good shape, for sure. Josh's connection with the residents is what makes him such a good caregiver. He becomes an intimate part of their lives and they become a part of his. I know a lot of the residents very personally. A lot of that is because of the car rides from their house to a doctor's appointment. You get to know people pretty intimately in the car ride while Dolly Parton's playing on the radio. It's so great and so fun to kind of get to know them and put the puzzle pieces together on how they got to where they are. The other side of the job is that you care a lot for people who are at the end of their lives. A week before I spoke to Josh, a resident he was close with named Abbott passed away peacefully in a nearby hospital.

He was a Vietnam vet. And Josh says he never felt more patriotic than when he was listening to Abbott's stories. He reminded me so much of my own grandfather. He just had so much pride in being a U.S. soldier. Did he impart any words of wisdom that stuck with you? Ironically, he told me to find a good wife. I told him I was settled. He told me that coffee ice cream was the best flavor on the planet.

And I kind of agree. The one thing that he and my grandfather have probably the most in common is their sense of, family togetherness and that was the thing he promoted the most. You know, since I've been there, I think I've seen four residents pass away. I thought for sure it would get harder. It actually has gotten easier. Knowing how well they're cared for and how much the staff cares for them, it's a sense of closure almost in a lot of ways. Josh says it's especially comforting knowing that they were in his staff's care, because unfortunately, funding for elderly care facilities is often far more scarce than it should be, which makes it hard to give residents all across

the country the resources that they need to be happy. These are people who have had an entire lifetime full of stories and experiences, and they have so much to offer, I feel, to society, but because they can't contribute in other ways to society, people often write them off. and that's just no way to live. Do you think part of your desire to care for people who might not have as many defenses as others goes back to you not having as many defenses when you were a kid? That's probably true. I even now don't defend myself.

I don't stick up for myself. And there is a part of me that I feel definitely shows. up more for other people than I do for myself. But I just feel like we live in a world that already people are in it for themselves. And when you have people that literally can't fight for themselves, you need people who can fight for them. And if someone wants to fight for me, call me, but I'll fight for other people as long as I can. While Josh knew he wanted to work as a caregiver when he moved to Vermont, his long-term plan was to get back into event and wedding planning.

It's funny, my priorities have changed in a year. The more that I immerse myself into this job, the more I want to continue immersing myself into this, and expand it. In a lot of ways, he gets to create those same experiences he's always wanted to within these homes, going out of his way to do new things for the residents, like bring musicians in every week to play for them. Do animal therapy where he brings in golden retrievers and baby goats to hang out with them. One of the things that we did during Easter,

we had set up in each house a little photo booth, and I had made all these props for a photo booth like you would see at a wedding, except it was all old people, wearing bunny ears and fake noses and holding Easter eggs and daffodils, and they ate it up. It was so great. and I love that. The families love that, and the staff love doing it.

I want to do so much more of that. Even though Josh says there really aren't enough hours in the day to do everything he'd like, it's a perfect job for those who want to go above and beyond with the hours that they have, making life better for people who would appreciate it more than anyone. It's the most rewarding work I've ever done. I, to this day, get emotional thinking of some of the weddings that I've done. over the years. As a professional event planner, I cried at every single wedding I ever did, and this is that times 100.

Elderly care facilities in America may not be as appreciated as they should, but the byproduct of that is a field of work that is ripe for innovation and young minds like Josh, who want to create truly special experiences for people that more than deserve them. It's not only a job that will always be essential, it's a job that will always be essential, it's a job where you can work creatively and compassionately while becoming a huge part of someone's life. And the saying goes that, you know, when you reach older years,

it's like having a second childhood. And it's exactly like that. And we are the parents and the aunts and uncles and the cousins who watch over them. How can that not be rewarding? For On the Job, I'm Otis Gray. Thanks for listening to On The Job, brought to you by Express Employment Professional

This season of On the Job is produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures. The episodes were written and produced by me, Otis Gray. Our executive producer is Sandy Smallins. The show is mixed by Matt Noble for Audiation Studios at the loft in Bronxville, New York. Music by Blue Death Sessions. Find us on IHeart Radio and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard, please consider rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We'll see you next time for more inspiring stories about making yourself essential as you've discovered.

your life's work. All right. If you have ever dealt with a traditional home security company, you know the drill. Expensive monthly fees, contracts that lock you in for years, and waiting around for a technician to set everything up. It's a lot. Well, now they're Simply Safe. They have completely changed the game. Simply Safe has no long-term contracts, no hidden fees, no being trapped. They earn your business by actually keeping you safe, not by locking you in. Setting up is so easy. You customize your system. You customize your system. at simplysafe.com. It ships to your door in a few days. And with the app guided setup, you can have everything installed and armed in under an hour. No technician needed. And it's not

just a camera. It's a full ecosystem of sensors, cameras for inside and outside, and 24-7 professional monitoring. If there's ever a break-in, a fire, or a flood, Simply Safe's agents are on it immediately. They were also named America's best customer service by Newsweek, which honestly tracks. Right now, you can get 50% off your new system by visiting simplysafe.com slash bones. That's half off at simplysafe.com slash bones. There's no safe like SimplySafe. A better help ad. Financial stress affects the majority of Americans, often causing anxiety, sleep disruption, and even depression. It's also one of the leading sources of conflict for couples. When money feels uncertain, it can way on your thoughts, your relationships, and your sense of stability, and that emotional weight can

be hard to carry alone. Finding the right type of support can help. Therapy can give you the space to talk through what financial stress brings up for you, and help you build tools to manage uncertainty with more confidence. With better help, you can connect with a licensed therapist from the comfort of your home on a schedule that works for you. It's flexible, convenient, and designed to make getting started feel simple. If you've been feeling the impact of financial stress, you don't have to navigate it on your own. See if they're a piece for you. Visit betterhelp.com for 10% off. That's better help.com. Taking care of your yard can feel weirdly overwhelming. Sunday is a yard care company that builds a custom plan based on your soil and climate, then sends you exactly what your yard needs. No harsh chemicals,

just nutrient dense ingredients. You apply with a hose. It's designed to make yard care feel doable. Go to get sunday.com to get your free custom yard analysis. That's get sunday.com. Service opens doors. And at American Military University, it can open doors for the whole family.

If you have a loved one who's served in the military, you may qualify for reduced tuition. AMU offers flexible online programs designed to fit your schedule so you can keep moving forward. wherever life takes you. Learn more at amu. APUS.edu slash military. Open doors to the future for you and your family with the help of American Military University. That's AMU.

APUS.org slash military. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.