5 Principles of Exceptional Home Care Agencies

Simone 00:00:00 Welcome to the Flychain Reaction, a podcast designed to empower health care providers like you to master the business side of running a practice. Each episode sparks a chain reaction, where actionable insights on financial management, operational efficiency, and growth strategies build upon each other, creating a powerful ripple effect to help your organization thrive. With Flychain's financial expertise and insights from industry leaders, we'll dive into everything you need to ignite success. Join us, and let the Flychain reaction spark growth in your healthcare business.

Ethan 00:00:39 Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Flychain Reaction, where we love to bring together industry experts and leaders that have a really a proven track record of success and and often work with supply chain to support our shared customers and and kind of elevate the conversations in our industry. And it is my pleasure to welcome one such partner in today's discussion, Becky Reel. How are you doing, Becky.

Becky 00:01:07 I am great. How are you?

Ethan 00:01:09 I'm doing great. Doing great. Really excited to chat with you today. And a little background here. I've had the privilege of kinda getting to know Becky over the last year and even went to one of her, kind of CEO retreat summits and got to see firsthand, you know, how Becky operates and the programming that she puts on. And for me, it was awesome just to sit in a room with, I don't know, 40 other owners and hear all of their problems, reservations.

Ethan 00:01:34 And I just wanted to kind of give that context here because it's been a pleasure working with you so far. But with that, we'd love to just learn a little bit more about yourself and the work that you do, what got you into this. And then we can kinda jump into some of the other programming that, you know, we know that you are really excelling at these days. So yeah. Becky, welcome.

Becky 00:01:56 You're so nice. Well, thank you. I fell into the home care world by accident, I suppose, like many owners I speak to. But my background is in marketing and sales. I led a Fortune 500 teams, product marketing, and was in the corporate world for most of my career. My parents started a home care agency. I'm in the Chicago area after my grandfather, who I call papa, had a tragic end of life in a nursing home. And so my parents wanted to do something to keep his legacy alive and to give families an alternative to a facility or a nursing home.

Becky 00:02:31 Neither one of them really had any business background, so I wanted to help them build it up so they could sell it and ultimately have a decent retirement. That was always my why. I thought naively, two, three years, I would go in and help a little bit and then sell and go back to corporate. Ten years later, I was still there. We grew about 300% year over year, and we were named the number one home care agency in North America by Home Care Pulse, which is now Activated Insights. And, you know, I take that award really seriously because it's not one of those awards that you are nominated for.

Becky 00:03:09 It was an award that was based off of client and caregiver feedback in ratings that they specifically gave us and ranked among the other thousands of home care agencies that were part of the system. So I take a lot of pride in that. We sold the agency in '23 to private equity, and now we are taking a lot of the best practices and a lot of mistakes we've learned along the way in helping agencies either get started or helping them if they're plateauing and they can't get past, you know, if they're stuck at 500,000 or they're stuck they can't get to the million mark or 2,000,000 mark. Help them have a refresh in how they approach home care and build strategies to help them get to whatever their next steps are.

Ethan 00:03:52 Amazing. Your journey is obviously one that is kind of a successful endeavor, obviously, and you're imparting a lot of that knowledge to, you know, your customers in the universe. One thing that I wanted to just highlight is you have these -- the real principles. Right? And I would love to just, like, learn more and dig into that because when we went over that at that retreat, I found a lot of value in that as someone who is candidly a little bit of an outsider, more from that financial perspective. But, yeah, I would love to kinda dig into those because I got a lot out of it. I know our customers that we share get a lot out of this on a continuous basis. And so, yeah, maybe, like, walk through kind of those principles, and we can go a little bit more granular into those.

Becky 00:04:39 Yeah. I mean, I think that I mean, every agency is unique. And so we really try to have a very customized approach for every single agency we work with. Nothing is gonna be copy and paste. But with that being said, you know, I believe there's five principles that are really rooted in compassion strategy experience overall. But at the end of the day, to me, it's really about an exceptional client and employee experience.

Becky 00:05:08 Every agency, for the most part, it has the same service lines, right, for the most part. There's some that do different things and do things a little differently, but it's it', you know, the ADLs are ADLs, and home care is home care. And so you have to really be able to differentiate yourself beyond compassionate care, which is what everyone always says.

Becky 00:05:28 So we bucketed into five different categories, and these are ones that we holistically approach with our agencies throughout their tenure with us. We don't go one through five. It kind of just navigates in its own organic way based on where we're at or where the agency's at. And just like running an agency, we have to be able to pivot. Right? Because things change very quickly in this industry.

Becky 00:05:53 So empowered ownership is the first one. And that comes from a place of, as a former agency owner, if you and I -- I can speak to this all day every day. This world, this environment will eat you alive if you don't have control. Right? If you don't set boundaries for yourself. And that is really important. And if you don't have those processes and policies and confidence to have the right people in the right place, it's gonna diminish your entire life. Right?

Becky 00:06:31 And I lived that world for a long time where I could not do anything because I was stuck to my phone all day. So empowering ownership, that's reclaiming control over your business and your life. That's setting boundaries, setting expectations for your clients, their families, for your caregivers, policies, procedures to hold people accountable and reduce stress, building the right team. So sometimes we even get as involved as interviewing candidates for our client's office to make sure they have somebody else to vet them through and to ask, you know, different specific questions, to make sure you have the right people in the right place and how to delegate.

Becky 00:07:13 The second pillar is going to be caregiver management, and it's creating a team that feels valued. And this is where I do a lot of my speaking events on. It's really empowering your caregiving team and your office team. But as you hear time and time again, the caregiver shortage is, you know, is top of mind for so many people. But truth of the matter is this has been a problem for years, since ten years. When I joined the organization over ten years ago, there was a caregiver shortage.

Becky 00:07:45 This isn't a COVID thing. This is something that's existed for a long time. You need to be able to attract and retain caregivers that share that passion and share that same, you know, way of looking at this industry. You need to equip your team with meaningful training and development. Even if you're in a state that doesn't require it, you should still be doing training because that's going to speak to the caliber of who's on your team, and it's gonna just overall from liability standpoint, from a client satisfaction standpoint, everything. It's really important.

Becky 00:08:20 And then developing proactive scheduling systems to ensure you're prepared. As we know, call offs are probably one of the biggest frustrations in this industry, but being proactive and getting ahead of it are things that we really talk to our clients about and work with them on building that strategy. Chime in, Ethan. I'm talking a lot, so chime in.

Ethan 00:08:39 Oh, no. I love it. I love it. It's all valuable insights. Going back to empowered ownership, it does feel like kind of a foundational, like, mindset shift where you have to go in. And what we see a lot, especially with those earlier stage home care agencies where, you know, it sounds like you were in that boat where you're always attached to your phone. You're doing a million things. And because it is oftentimes, like, your baby, this is your business, you're in it, and you care about it, it's hard to delegate.

Ethan 00:09:07 And so in that empowering ownership, it really feels like delegation is one of those, like, core principles. Do you have, like, you know, some examples or things that you've seen work from an owner who might be a little overworked, overstressed? Like, what do you say to that business owner? Is it, hey. Stick to your strengths? Or is it, you know, hey. Do we need to hire more people here that I can trust and delegate? So just any examples around that where someone might be feeling a little overwhelmed because they aren't delegating. And what are some of those, like, exercises or steps they can take to basically take work off their plate without losing control?

Becky 00:09:44 Yeah. I mean, I think -- I'm a control freak. Hands down, I am. My team will attest to that. It was really hard for me to give up control. And it's not that I necessarily didn't trust people. It's just that I like things done a certain way. At some point, I had to surrender, and I had to acknowledge that while not everything is going to get done exactly how I would have done it, it's gonna get done. And it's gonna be done well. Again, it might not be exactly how I would have ordered it or exactly what I would have done, but it's gonna get done.

Becky 00:10:19 And it allowed me to focus on bigger -- I'm a strategy person. I'm not a details person. Kristen on my team is the details person. We're a great team for that. But I needed, as an agency owner, to focus on the strategy and the relationships. And so all of the minutiae of the day to day stuff that my team could take care of, the best advice that I can give somebody is baby steps and incremental changes in order to know that your team's gonna be okay doing it.

Becky 00:10:50 And have checks and balances in place. So, you know, whether it's like a team distribution email where everyone's getting copied so that way my big thing is, like, I just wanna know something got done. Right? I don't wanna have to micromanage you. I don't wanna have to ask. I just want you to manage up to me and say, this was done.

Becky 00:11:06 So the team distribution email for us was a way to copy in the entire team, myself included, to basically say this was done, but we would use it as, like, a follow--up mechanism. So, hypothetically, there's an update to the schedule. Right? Or there was a client, a family meeting or whatever needed to happen, we would send an email communication to the stakeholders, the family and anybody else involved, recapping that conversation. Right? And we would position it as I wanted to recap our conversation to loop in the rest of my team.

Becky 00:11:40 Really, we were documenting everything, and they were letting me know that this was done and making sure that everything was was communicated, documented. But then I'm getting copied on it. So that way, I don't have to follow--up and and say, was this done? So I'm really big on managing up and making sure that your team understands what you're expecting out of those tasks.

Becky 00:12:01 But, I mean, it's hard to give up control, especially if you start the agency and you put everything into this. If this is your baby, it's really hard. You have you can't grow. And I literally just did an Instagram post about this yesterday, I think. You not gonna be able to grow if you're the bottleneck. You just can't.

Ethan 00:12:20 It's kinda crazy. Like, at FlyChain, we're building, you know, not a home care agency, but a lot of the things that you're saying around delegation, like, I'll put myself into that camp, wanting things done a certain way and feeling a little, you know, hesitant to turn the keys over to someone. But I love that notion of baby steps. And, like, hey. I've done this a certain way. You might do it slightly differently, but as long as that outcome is the same and having those checks and balances, it kind of gives you that ability to scale without you having to, you know, do every single thing within the organization.

Ethan 00:12:52 It's interesting too because it almost does feel like it segues a little into what you were talking about, compassionate caregiver management. So, like, you know, you're delegating certain things, but also from, I think, like, an operational just challenges standpoint, like, human capital management is so critical in this space and having your caregivers, your office staff, like, feel empowered.

Ethan 00:13:16 You know, we've actually heard some, like there's some softwares out there that, you know, do, like, rewards and, you know, positive reinforcement, maybe bringing some transparency there. On that front, because we do realize, like, the opportunity cost of someone leaving, then you have to hire someone and then train. And that can cause a lot of issues in the organization from a time waste to cash waste as well.

Ethan 00:13:39 In the sense of, like, that specific, you know, compassionate caregiver management, are there any, like, tactical things that you've implemented that you've seen work? Fully understanding that every business is different. Every business has a a corporate org composition that might look different. You know, is there anything that you've seen in particular work knowing that this is not a one size fits all solution? Are there best principles? Are there things that, you know, you do to empower those caregivers so that they feel valued? And I think one of which is you alluded to it. It's like training. Like, giving them good training should ideally make them wanna be more attached to your organization they felt, you know, taken care of.

Becky 00:14:18 Feel more confident. Yeah. I mean, yes. Training is huge. Ongoing training. Listening to what they -- you know, we always -- listening is so much more than what we think listening is. I feel listening to what things are not being said is also important a lot of times. But, you know, asking your team what else, like, actually asking your team what they're looking for and following through with it. Right?

Becky 00:14:47 So I remember our team really wanted to be CPR trained. It wasn't a requirement of us. So we partnered with our fire department, and we made it happen. Because I wanna be able to -- it wasn't gonna hurt us. It was only gonna make us look better for our clients and give more confidence to the caregivers. So, you know, we're kinda talking about culture.

Becky 00:15:07 Culture is such a buzzword, and it drives me crazy because well, it's, you know, culture means so many different things to so many different people in different organizations. But at the end of the day, culture is not once a year holiday party. Right? Culture is having an ongoing effort that people want to go to that holiday party. And I've had clients that do a holiday party. No one shows up, and they're baffled. It's like, well, you're not doing this year round. You're not consistently showing your caregivers and your team I actually care about you. There's other ways I really feel that we can empower our team.

Becky 00:15:42 A mentorship program is something I really believe in. I saw it firsthand be really beneficial. You're not only helping a new caregiver feel supported and give them, like, a buddy to help them through their first ninety days. Right? You're also empowering the person that's mentoring to help them, to help them grow, to give them more than just you know, you wanna give them as much confidence and exposure to helping lead. So I love mentorship programs. I love doing ambassador programs. We didn't have a -- I didn't have a salesperson in my organization. I had mixed feelings about that role. I think it's -- you have to do it very carefully if you're gonna do a marketing or community liaison role.

Becky 00:16:26 Our caregivers became our ambassadors, and they were incentivized to bring us clients. And we had a whole system. Right? They were incentivized to bring us caregivers and to bring us clients. And it happened all the time. But they believed in us, and they loved, for the most part, I think, that we had a team that really enjoyed working for us because we treated them well. We cared, and they were more than happy to shout from the rooftops about what it was like working for us.

Becky 00:16:51 I think, you know, I love recommending town halls for agencies. As an owner, as you grow, you have less and less insight to what's happening and less face time with your caregivers. But if you can show up once a quarter, twice a year on a town hall, whether it's Zoom or in person, and use it as a forum to talk to your team. What's going well? What's not going well? Let's talk about it as a team and really open that up to, again, listen with intent. Your team's just gonna be more engaged. They're, you know, it's really about letting your team know that if they wanna be more than a caregiver, they can be more than a caregiver. Some of our best ideas came from our caregivers.

Becky 00:17:38 Last thing I'll mention on this is also building out growth opportunities from day one with your caregivers. I've had agencies in the past question me on that and not understand why are you talking to them about growth opportunities during that initial interview? Well, the caregivers are interviewing for multiple agencies at one time. We know that they're going to go with the agency that, a, is gonna get them work the fastest, and, b, they feel that connection too and that alliance too. So if you can't get them work on day one, at least start to build that relationship and let them know that there is a lot of opportunity, whether it's a head caregiver, lead caregiver, office opportunity, management role, whatever. Like, understand what their goals are.

Becky 00:18:25 That might not be their goal. They might want to be working their way towards nursing school. Cool. We wanna help support you through that journey. If they know that that support is there and they truly feel it, they're gonna -- there might be an expiration date. Right? Because they were gonna graduate and go do their nursing job. But I guarantee you, while they're with you, you're gonna get stellar work done. And even after they leave, you're gonna have an ambassador and an advocate for you. So, you know, it's about a longer term strategy versus just, you know, consistently always just hiring bodies, which, you know, we see all the time.

Ethan 00:19:08 Yeah. I love that. A few things that I certainly heard there too is, we think about so many things from that sort of financial impact and, like, that opportunity cost of not investing. And even to use that example, maybe they do wanna go in, you know, to nursing school at some point, and it's two years from now. But investing in those two years versus having maybe not the right culture, and they leave after nine months, which we kinda see as, like, one of what sort of the average duration tenure of a lot of these folks, that by just investing, knowing that they're gonna leave in two years is actually from a, like, a return on investment standpoint, like, way, way, way higher.

Ethan 00:19:43 And I think a lot of folks and maybe you could speak to this a little bit. You touched on it, like, with things like town halls. But in our world, culture is difficult to build because oftentimes, you don't see your employees. Like, at FlyChain, we all sit in this office, and we're all here five days a week, talk, hanging out and talking and strategizing. And there almost is that constant feedback loop by just the very nature of sitting in this office. Beyond, like, a town hall or anything like that, like, what are some ways to engage more, you know, of a candidly, kind of more of, like, a distributed workforce, to a certain extent?

Becky 00:20:16 So I think it's really important to have different communication channels. You know, like you mentioned, a lot of those reward programs have tools that can help keep you connected or mobile apps that will help keep people connected. Even just like a private Facebook group can go a long way because just as you mentioned, they're -- you know, a lot of times they're working with a client. They are very isolated from the rest of the office, from the rest of their team. And so it's ways that you can bridge that gap.

Becky 00:20:47 That's one of the reasons that I do these dinner series, and that's one of the reasons I do them is because there is this isolation in this industry. And I felt it. I felt it as an owner. Right? And as an owner, you're constantly caring for your clients, your caregivers, their families, your own family. And then as an owner, you're like, who's taking care of me? Who can I go to when I need to cry and vent? And as an independent agency, I didn't have that. And so I longed for that community. And so that's why we started these dinner series. They're very intimate dinners where I almost am positioning them as support groups for agency owners because that's what they end up being. I mean, people cry and hug, and it's so beautiful.

Becky 00:21:34 But building a community, right, is going to be key no matter how you do it or who you utilize. Sometimes it even means that the owner or people up there need to dedicate some time once a month to pick up the phone, which I know, I know we don't like to do. Pick up the phone and check--in with your team. Because the feedback we also see day in day out is that caregivers feel like they only get called or communicated to when they when the agency needs something, when it's a scheduling thing. So you wanna really prove out that we're not -- that this isn't a one-sided --

Ethan 00:22:16 Right. We don't tap you on the shoulder, like, when we need something from you. And then you're now viewed more like a commodity versus part of the family, if you will.

Becky 00:22:23 Over and over again. Yep. Do you want me to go into the other --

Ethan 00:22:27 Yeah. Yeah. We, I know we're not short on time, but we wanna get all the information in here. So yeah. I know this one actually speaks a lot to, like, Flychain, and I think how we can work and have work together. Oh, also plug beforehand. You mentioned the dinner series. Anyone listening that has an opportunity to go, you should absolutely go to these dinner series. They're awesome. You get really candid feedback.

Ethan 00:22:50 And as you mentioned, like, I'll say the same thing. Building Flychain, it's a lonely journey, especially in those early days when you're kind of on island. So that like -- we have support systems here with other founders and our investors, etcetera. So I just wanted to plug that if you have the opportunity to go absolutely, you know, try and attend one of those, and we can send some stuff afterwards to show what that, you know, the scheduling looks like.

Ethan 00:23:13 But, now, next topic, which is very near and dear to our hearts here, seamless process and systems, and you kinda talking about that. And this was a big topic at the retreat that I attended. So, yeah, maybe if you could spend a little bit of time talking about that. You know, what are those necessary processes, things that need to get put in place?

Becky 00:23:32 Seamless process and systems. This is gonna be key for any business. Right? But as we know, in the home care world, we're being pulled in a million different directions. Having these processes and systems are so important to make sure, especially as we, you know, we talk about the delegation. Like, you have your systems. It's easy to delegate. It's very easy to set those expectations. And again, it's different for every agency, but I try to simplify it.

Becky 00:24:01 I try to look at what they -- if it's a current agency, we look at what they're doing. We look at our -- you know, first thing I do, typically, is I look at their P&L, to see where are their redundancies? Where are their opportunities to increase efficiencies? Right? But then we use that information to help build out some different systems. How do we improve communication, not only with your caregivers, but your clients and their families and referral systems?

Becky 00:24:28 Automation of scheduling, right, as much as you can. AI is amazing. Couldn't do my job without it. However, there are some elements of this business that AI, I just don't think is ever gonna fully take away. And, you know, there are ways to use AI to automate scheduling and reduce stress, stay ahead of things. However, I still think there needs to be a personal touch. We're taking care of people, vulnerable people. It's important that there's still a personal element. And a personal element when it comes to the communication of any schedule changes.

Becky 00:24:59 And then also develop more of a process for hiring and onboarding. That is the first time that a potential caregiver is gonna meet you. And that is the time to build that connection, and you need to stay on top of that. You need to show them why you're different, why they should wanna come work with you. And if you have that really built into your systems, it's not that much work. Right?

Becky 00:25:24 The next one is more of -- I mean, it's growth. Everyone comes to us because they wanna grow. Right? They're getting started. They wanna grow revenue. Underneath all of that growth, there's all of these other things we have to look at. Right? You can't just come to us and say, I wanna grow a million dollars in revenue. Cool. There's a lot of things we have to do for that to happen. But it's our job to help really define what that vision is gonna look like.

Becky 00:25:50 We need to understand the competition. We need to do a competitive intel study to understand, make sure you're pricing yourself within the market. Do you wanna be the lower end volume play versus if you wanna be the high end agency, which means you're gonna charge more, but you have more of that elevated approach? We need to understand who you are as an agency in order to grow. And we need to understand too, like, if we're planning on an exit strategy and I went through this myself. Right? But when you're going to sell, you need, you know, I usually say three to five years of positive growth data in order to --

Ethan 00:26:25 At the very least, just three years of financials first is what we see. And you're talking about P&L. You'd be surprised when we walk into so many of these businesses that they've been flying blind. And for us, it's how do you determine what the holes in the bucket are when you don't have anything to measure against? And that's why we love working together here, because we'll button up the data and then, okay, now we actually know where we stand, if you're positive for growth.

Ethan 00:26:53 Do you have money in your bank account? Do you know what amount of money would be required to hire more people? And what's the break even there? And can you do that without getting too over your skis and everything? And so these businesses tend to be like I call them almost like amoebas or amorphous entities where you have, like, patients, employees that's always ebbing and flowing. You've got, like, billing data sometimes if you're doing insurance, and you've got your practice management scheduling.

Becky 00:27:56 Exactly. And especially if you're gonna first question is, you know, I'll usually ask, like, what's your annual revenue and what's your margins? And sometimes people don't know any of those answers. And so I'll say, like, you know, I know typically the ones that, like, have their financial stuff in order, but it's my job. When you do go to sell, that is like a whole another job. Right? So you need to start preparing and make sure that you are fully maximizing the systems you have and that your accounting is correct.

Becky 00:28:30 And, I mean, that's where you guys come in. Right? And I really love what you do for agencies in this industry. But, you know, I'm telling you, if you go to sell and your books are a mess, you're gonna be in for quite the nightmare. And, you know, and so that's really important. It's important whether or not you're just getting started or whether you're planning an exit strategy. It's all important to make sure that you understand the numbers behind your business. Right?

Ethan 00:28:59 100%. And now we always like to say too, it's not something you do once a quarter. Not something you do once a year. This should be not even maybe once a month. Like, this should be as frequently -- you can set up the systems and way to track things, so you can respond to, you know, issues in real time versus not being aware of an issue that might have plagued your business for the last three months. And if you had the right mechanisms to track it, you can identify those things and actually be proactive. Like best offense being a good good kind of defense here. And it all starts with understanding your biz, your organization, your numbers, and then how to effectively, like, optimize those things.

Becky 00:29:37 Yeah. Well, that's why we look at the redundancies. Like, if they have multiple systems that kind of do the same thing right off the bat and be like, well, we don't need both of these. Right? So we can look at your bottom line, and we can right away find ways to have you be more profitable right off the bat. So that's, like, the easiest thing to do. Right? So, you know, that's something we talked to.

Becky 00:29:53 That's kind of the first, like, few weeks of us working with an agency. We're trying to understand the foundation and understand ways that we can help you be profitable without having to actually do anything. And sometimes it's as easy as, like, while we did your market research and you're actually under market value by significant amounts, we have to do rate increases right there. Right? There's a way to increase revenue.

Becky 00:30:17 And then that brings me to our fifth pillar, which is gonna be the exceptional client experience. And something that if you've listened to me in any capacity talk, you know that this is fundamentally when people ask me how we grew so much, I wish I had this, like, profound answer. We don't. Our answer was we really focused on investing back into our team and providing the most superior experience.

Becky 00:30:45 So we tried to treat our agency and look at our agency more as a hospitality agency, more than home care. Of course, we did home care. But we went above and beyond. We focused on setting expectations, being very clear, going above it. You know? Just doing things that were unexpected, not only for the clients, but for our caregivers. And to me, caregivers are internal customers. So your team is.

Becky 00:31:14 So this was my job at the agency. I believed that every client, I didn't care if you were with us one day a week or 24/7, every single client deserved the same level of customer service and so did our caregivers. So I believe that you create a client journey that's gonna reflect that commitment to excellence. Right? And you can say that till you're blue in the face, but unless you're actually doing it, it doesn't matter.

Becky 00:31:43 Communication is to me I think, you know, what people fail to remember is that clients and their family members are not often in the right mind space. Right? They're dealing with a decline of a loved one. They're balancing family heavy stuff. Right? A lot of times, the agency becomes, you know, the one that they're taking their frustration out or their anger out or their sadness out on. And it was our job to make sure they felt supported and make sure they understood what was next in terms of, you know, they haven't been through this. Right? Most likely, they have not been through this. And if they have, it's not a lot. Right?

Becky 00:32:22 So your job as an agency is to help set those expectations and to have impeccable communication. So, you know, before you even get started with services, here's you know, you're gonna have a call to walk through, make sure they don't have any questions, and you're gonna walk through the care plan, and you're gonna follow--up with an email to recap the most important pieces that you wanna make sure are really coming across. Update them. There shouldn't be any, like, I don't know who's coming, and I don't know what's next. Your job is to hopefully walk them through what to expect. But a lot of that comes from communication and setting expectations.

Becky 00:32:54 And then, you know, the last piece of this is really matching the caregivers with the clients effectively. But, again, not just who AI says you should be matching. You should be matching based on different pieces of skill sets, personality, where the caregiver lives, the schedule.

Ethan 00:33:14 Language.

Becky 00:33:16 So many variables. Right? It's not just who's available. And that's the misconception that a lot of clients have coming into this is they think caregivers are just kinda waiting in a room with, you know, reading books, waiting to call to go to work, and that's just not how it works. Your job as an agency owner or manager, wherever you are, is to help set those expectations, set the stage. It's going to make that whole system a lot more smooth. It's not -- I say this at all of my events. It's not rocket science. It's about anticipating needs and getting ahead of it and just treating people with respect.

Ethan 00:33:50 Yeah. I love this so much. And like, one through line I heard there is, that's almost maybe the most important pillar from our humble perspective, quality of care, and patient engagement, staff engagement. Because think a lot of the challenges, like getting referrals, getting new patients, hiring the right people for your organization. We see reputation and that hands on approach as being what I would call, like, the biggest double edged sword I've seen in an industry, where it's if you do right by people, they will preach on the mountaintops, whether that's your own employees bringing in patients because they care or your other patients.

Ethan 00:34:28 You know, it's community driven care. There's, like, no there's no if, ands, or buts about that. What that means is everybody talks. And if you're giving a wonderful experience, we see there -- there's actually, like, an exponential ripple effect there, where you're doing that, just investing more time in the quality will actually benefit, and you won't have to spend more time, like, you know, marketing to find patients, etcetera. Double edged sword, though. Not doing that, they're gonna talk, and that could, like, really sync certain revenue streams, sync certain referral sources, get a bad reputation on, you know, some online sites that are rating your industry.

Ethan 00:35:04 And so, we see that firsthand at Flychain despite us dealing with, like, owners that, you know, we're not delivering care ourselves. But it's the same thing. Owners talk. And so we we also kind of approach that with that kind of, like, level of empathy understanding. It's not easy. We're gonna handle, like, this part. Free up some time to handle this because we know that is such mission critical things that you need to do that we have no business to begin to do. But yeah. Yeah.

Ethan 00:35:29 It's been, it's honestly, Becky, like, been a joy. Just, like, working with you and learn like, candidly learning from you. After that retreat that I went to, I came back feeling like maybe, like, I could start a home care agency because I --

Becky 00:35:42 You should.

Ethan 00:35:43 I wasn't confused.

Becky 00:35:44 I'll help you. And I know we're running on time, but, you know, to your point, like, one of my favorite stories is, you know, I believe in doing the right thing. Right? And I think the money will come. But if you're -- and again, it's a long term strategy. If you're looking purely at what's in front of you from a financial standpoint, you're gonna be hurting yourself in the long run.

Becky 00:36:02 We had a client that the daughter was out of state, and so she was -- her dad was in the hospital coming home on hospice. It was like weeks of kinda like false starts. Right? He's gonna come home. Oh, wait. No. He's, you know, gonna be in the hospital for a few more days and kinda just, like, a long journey of getting everything going. And so, you know, caregivers are ready for 24/7 for hospice. Oh, wait. Never mind. He's not ready yet. And so this was, you know, a thing we were working on for a while.

Becky 00:36:28 Dad is finally coming home. We had twenty four seven lined up with all of our, you know, our caregivers at wellness ready to go. We spent a lot of time putting this together. He passed away in transit from the hospital to his home. And I, you know, I remember the daughter calling us and telling, you know, our response. She said, just let me send me an invoice. Let me know what we owe you. And our response was, you owe us nothing. We're so sorry about your dad. Go spend time with your family. For lack of better words.

Becky 00:37:05 She wrote us the nicest review online, and it's still on there. And I'm actually writing a book right now, and that I put that like, this review was so impactful that I actually put this review in my book. Because it was an example of you put yourself in the shoes of the family. And, yes, this is a business. We're not running a nonprofit. Like, there's reasons why you would still bill somebody in certain situations. But in this situation, her dad died. I did not feel right charging her even though we still paid our caregivers. Right? We lost money. But I did not feel right charging her anything.

Becky 00:37:42 And the review was so kind. It was very emotional. It said, you know, these people, meaning us, would not accept a penny from us. And we got so many clients because of that one review. These potential clients referenced that exact review. I can't even tell you how many times. So that's just an example of you do the right thing, it pays off. And that, you know, that paid off for us. And that wasn't why we did it, but I knew that was the right thing to do.

Becky 00:38:16 And so I firmly believe that, you know, online reputation is so critical. You are gonna get word--of--mouth referrals, but then there's a whole different segment of people that don't have a referral source. And so those are the ones that are googling. They're going on Yelp. They're going on Google. And so we do need a strong -- they're going on on Facebook and Instagram to understand your culture. And so that's a big part of this. And there's a piece that agencies that they don't have that business background, they don't think about. And that's where we come in.

Ethan 00:38:45 It's a people business first and foremost. And the second you lose sight of that to improve your margin. While you might improve your margin that next month by \[inaudible\] invoice that patient, Like, that ripple affects that, you know, perspective from that outside world on your business should be everything from that business owner's mindset and doing the things that might not seem maybe commercially logical, but the right thing to do we'll have a better commercial outcome. I love that story, Becky, and thanks for sharing.

Becky 00:39:18 I know. I feel as bad as you know, obviously, it's my favorite story. I feel bad that someone passed, but it's still it really -- it represented who we were at our core. But it's a good story to help illustrate the power of online reputation, the power of social media.

Ethan 00:39:36 Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Becky, this has been very informative. I appreciate your time. Any closing remarks you'd like to share? Otherwise, like, we'll share all your contact info. Go to Becky's dinners. Go to her, you know, summits. She's been truly a pretty awesome partner and presence in this space, and we couldn't think more highly of you.

Becky 00:39:58 Oh, thanks, Ethan.

Ethan 00:40:00 Awesome. Well, we'll see you around, Becky. And, again, appreciate you joining. And, yeah, that wraps up yet another episode of the Flychain Reaction.

Becky 00:40:10 Thanks for having me.

Ethan 00:40:11 Yep. Take care, Becky.

Becky 00:40:12 Bye.

Ethan 00:40:13 Bye.

Simone 00:40:14 Thanks for tuning in to the Flychain reaction. If you'd like to keep the conversation going, feel free to contact us at info@flychain.us or schedule a demo through our website at www.flychain.us. See you next time.