Little Decisions That Had the Most Outsized Impact on His Business (Kunu Kaushal Pt. 2)

[ 00:00:03 ] Welcome back to Home Care U a podcast brought to you by Careswitch. I'm Miriam Allred your host thank you all for being here I want to start out by saying thank you for all the love I’ve gotten so many messages the last couple weeks about just the value and the takeaways of the show and I’m just happy and honored to have a platform like this to share so many great insights with you via these experts and thought leaders that I’ve got across the table from me so uh thank you all my only request in return is that you continue to share this show you know post it on LinkedIn share your takeaways share the value that it's driving the Actions that you're taking in your business based on what you've heard...

[ 00:00:42 ] Shoot it to a colleague in a DM or an email, uh, that's really the only thing I can ask for in return is just continuing to share this show and share the insights that you learn from it. Today we're back with Kunu Kaushal and I'm so excited to be here with you today. We're back with Kunu Kaushal for part two. I myself listened to part once again this morning as I was having breakfast, so many insights tucked away into that episode. We talked about some of the larger mistakes that Kunu has made over his time in home care and in his business, uh, we really just covered kind of three large mistakes, but there's so much insight and value tucked into each of those, so I highly recommend if you haven't that you start there and listen to that um on last week's show we did a little bit of a talk about the mistakes that Kunu has made over his time in home care and so today I want to really just get after it so we can cover more ground um just one uh

[ 00:01:39 ] two quick questions for you Kunu to get us warmed up uh for the show today I'd love to hear one of your hot takes on home care one of your maybe unpopular opinions about home care you've been doing this for a long time, so I'm sure you have, you know your own point of views on things but I’d love to hear you know your own point of views on things and I’d love to hear your own put you on the spot here and have you share an unpopular opinion oh boy um well I’ll tell you one that I have found is a real challenge and I’m going to put the hat on for a second of just purely talking about this as a business as an investment as a like what to do next and I’m a popular opinion I think I have is that um I don't know that being acquired right so when you think about these private equity and venture cap companies

[ 00:02:26 ] and people who are funded and backed Who are they when the money's good, and the economy's right, and the financing is correct? Um, they have this really strong ethos of trying to go out and purchase companies. And I'm not going to use any names, but I think we can all think back to just a few years in the last two to three, and you saw this wave of acquisitions happening. I think it's really good for the owner if they can, you know, if it makes sense for them for an exit ramp, and you know get there is kind of a tongue-in-cheek comment that's made about small and mid-sized companies anyway which is, you really only make money when you change hands with an organization um it's In the, you know, the selling of that company at some point the part that's unpopular to me is I'm not sure that the net number of companies that survive past that or continue to do a good job is as I as I think it's somehow um represented.

[ 00:03:27 ] I think after the checks are signed and the deal making is done by and large now there are success stories out there, but by and large I think it's such a culture warfare. So, if you remember from last week's episode where I talked about you know even just doing a small company acquiring another small company that in itself is tough when you've got a big company that does all their due diligence and all their stuff, and they're really good at it. And they can potentially have a big wallet to write you checks and things like that. Um, really understand how this is going to change the business for your relationships for you as an individual, as maybe the owner or one of the top directors in the company, and also your teams.

[ 00:04:06 ] It really is a very big step and change for organizations. The good news is, I think, for clients and caregivers that there's a lot of companies they can work with. Right? And the thing that I've had as an unpopular uh opinion here is that what are truly your assets in home care you've got a client list and a caregiver List and how you maximize, I think your organization. I would tell you, for everybody who can stick it through and apply really good business operation skills to it, do not operate your business at a loss for a long period of time thinking 'oh you know like we'll get there' there's a lot of great books um there's things like 'you know profit first' um there's a lot of business acumen literature out there also great content to help you really revive what you're doing in your business.

[ 00:04:56 ] You have got to get to a point where you're getting paid, you're creating a profit for yourself and in your business to whatever level that satisfies. You, but I will just tell you, I think the hoping for one day somebody's going to sweep you off your feet with just a really sweet deal can happen; it has happened, but I do think it leaves a pretty, you know, pretty wide wake, um, and creates a little bit of a hole. And along those lines, an unpopular comment. I also in my competitive areas of the areas I operate, one of the best things I can ever hear is somebody sold their company to a really big company, because I don't get threatened by that; I actually go, oh well, there's another one off the list, you know, just we know they're going to lose total focus and control and relationships.

[ 00:05:45 ] So, on in the marketplace, um, so I don't know, I mean, I think we all want this really, especially obviously if you're out there trying to acquire. I'm sure there's a few people listening that are, you know, you're not going to be able to do that. You're, you know, some of these big companies that want to go do that, hey, all the power to you is, you're doing what exactly your business plan says, so that is not uh throwing shade in any way, but I think the reality of what's happening is it is tough, it's really tough. That was great. Own these opinions don't uh you know don't second guess yourself, that's why I asked you, we got a lot of

[ 00:06:19 ] big names on the show you've got a really wide listenership and so I like to just give you a minute to you know share an opinion that you feel strongly about that was great um I like you said just a few years ago we saw a lot of outside money coming in I would say today we're still early days seeing kind of like the ripple effects and I too am very interested to see you know over the coming years the longer term trends impact of you know what this outside money is doing and means for the industry but I think we're still kind of early you know we're just kind of keeping like an eye on what's at bay and what's happening uh One more quick question for you before we get after it, um, who do you look to for business inspiration

[ 00:06:56 ] and you know maybe answer that in terms of like in-home care and outside of home care, you know, name names just who do you draw on for inspiration, yeah I have um, that's a really good question I'll tell you it's also changed for me as time has gone on, or where I was and what I needed at that moment um, I think there's a future session you're going to have come out pretty soon with Home Care CEO, but you know Steven Tweed, I give him a lot of credit um, historically when I was maybe two or three years in the business I knew right away that I was going to need to be able

[ 00:07:34 ] to interact with people who knew what they were talking about and beyond just going to a conference and you know having a coffee or a drink with somebody I needed to that continuous masterminding type uh element so uh really appreciative of my time with him with all those experiences meeting a lot of home care owners I think um within the industry there's so many conferences and things to go to and I think that's a really good question I think that's a really good question I think um within the industry there's so many conferences and things to go to um I’ve noticed at the national level The Home Care Association of America, which I was a member from really the beginning of our company. I was a member and had the extreme honor to have asked us to just even apply to be on the board for HCOA, which I continue to do that today.

[ 00:08:14 ] It is to me really valuable to be able to see leaders at that level not just talking about operations but thinking about advocacy, thinking about the broader industry as a whole. And I am there at this point, I guess in my maturity where the operations piece isn't where I need help; it's I need a better understanding of the powers that be right that influence this business and for those of You who think that it's just Medicare or it's just some VA program, you have to understand that the federal level a lot of like, we're talking about immigration, wherever you sit on this right, get out of politics for a minute, you know. You're going to need more labor and workforce, and we all talk about it, well how will we do that?

[ 00:08:56 ] And I think it's important that we get there somewhere in there, we have to fit into the immigration policy debate, and make sure that we are being recognized. Um, you know, it's great to have immigration happen with nurses and you know engineers and it professionals, but what about caregivers, and so we have to think through that um that influence within the industry has been really important to me state association so the Tennessee association of home care has been a really big piece for me too not just name dropping but giving examples for wherever people are I would tell you just going to your annual conference is not enough join committees right whatever element of that business that

[ 00:09:34 ] you really feel like you are curious about or influential with you got to jump in it's not about I’ve never been I think a resume chaser where I’m like you know just I need to sit on boards and not do anything I’m if anybody knows me From any of these boards, they'll actually tell you I can be almost irritating right because the question I have often is: what are we doing here? And what are we doing here? And what are we doing here? What impact are we making? Where are we making the change, I want to be very involved and that's all for the positive; it's either to understand or truly make a difference for what we do as an industry as a whole. Um, outside of home care, I've really been leaning into more the customer service world.

[ 00:10:16 ] I think there's a lot of lessons there for those of you who love the story of like Shake Shack is a good example. You know, there's a great Book, I think it's called 'Setting the Table'. I'd have to look back but the founder of that group of Shake Shack, who now owns that brand, also owns some really high-end restaurants in New York and other big cities. But their approach to their clients is so unique, um, to their people who actually come to the restaurants; they are not trying to be like every other restaurant. So, what does it sound like right? Where are they different? How do they provide a better experience, um, just understanding, for example, you know how are different companies that maybe are at a really big brand level, how do they still keep it local and how?

[ 00:11:03 ] do they make that happen so in in search of that I’m often doing lots of webinars um do read a lot of books in order to try to gain knowledge in that way another one I think is um I think I’m driven enough we all have room for improvement so let me start with that I certainly know I have a lot of things that I could improve for me it's not so much my personal experience it's not so much my personal experience it's not so much my personal approach I am the kind of person that probably wakes up too early goes to bed too late and oftentimes I’m like attached to work in some capacity so this need or desire for motivation has not been my thing Tony Robbins, who I'm a big believer in.

[ 00:11:44 ] When you get away from the personal space and even on the business side, I went to a thing that he does call Business Mastery and I've actually been twice, which a lot of people are like 'You be a slow learner' but it's actually because of me right five years apart that I attended this conference. It's a multi-day thing to be around people that are that jazzed up truly, and each of them isn't like 'Oh, I want to lose weight', which is a personal journey; they're about their business. You've got people... I still remember my first one, I sat next to this guy who his entire business line was going into hotels and putting in.

[ 00:12:23 ] now what we call the cardless key readers where you can use your phone and do it he was so you imagine seven eight years ago where this was not a thing that was out yet his entire business was getting accounts like Hilton and whoever else to just let him go put those in places and he was driving his business from nothing, had found a manufacturer that had these locks, to all of a sudden was in the $50-60 million dollars a year in product sales and services to support that kind of thing. You have to be around those people, and I would almost tell you it is as beneficial to get out of home care and understand what.

[ 00:13:03 ] Are the things they're doing and what you find are so many similarities there's a big focus on yourself, time management, project management, leadership; um, surrounding yourself with really good people and also really how to deal with chaos; um, people love sharing their stories. I think back to our session last week as a good example of this for someone listening to it you either get validated and go, 'It's not just me'; or two, sometimes it's a big warning sign of, hey, this is coming for you; right? You love um, your leadership team, and what happens when somebody moves; somebody's husband or wife has a new opportunity. Somebody has a big life change and now your whole leadership team is maybe swirled up, uh, in change; how do you survive through that?

[ 00:13:50 ] So, those type of things I think that those are Tony Robbins would be a big one. Um, there's so many more I think it actually goes into some of the stuff I was going to talk about today, but one of the little changes or decisions is to be open right your mind be open for being influenced in its right way; it's like just new knowledge, new information, so, so powerful. Yeah, well that's a perfect segue, let's you know just kind of make our way there, I just wanted to say I love what you said about like your maybe. Infatuation with customer service and customer service, I hear more and more from larger owners like you said it's not that you're deprioritizing home care knowledge, expertise, content. It's just you know, drawing ideas, inspiration, innovation from other industries.

[ 00:14:39 ] Shake Shack is a great example, um, and I think there's just yeah good insights for everyone to just you know be knowledgeable about this industry, you know, be present here but it's not a bad thing you know to look elsewhere and draw inspiration and ideas elsewhere and I think that's a really good example of how you can be more as well so um if you don't mind. Miriam, let me pull on that string because you like that Shake Shack thing, so I'll tell you the story in it that made it so powerful for me and it was kind of a little decision we - I'm reading this book and um the founder kind of talks through this idea that at his restaurant one of his best restaurants he ever had, in which he said we're going to make it all about the customer in New York City and what they do is when you make a reservation,

[ 00:15:23 ] they are one of the first few restaurants that that level that was integrating their CRM to their booking system, okay so the person who works, let's call it the maître d' because it's probably That nice of a restaurant, um, you call in if you've been there before, you pop up on their screen and it's your entire profile, so they don't answer and tell you the name of the restaurant, you know who you called right? So instead, they answer, and they say, 'Oh, Mr. Kaushal, thank you so much for calling us again, um, are you looking for a reservation?' And you go, 'Yeah, I am looking for a reservation.' They go, 'Okay, how many will be dining? Is it just going to be like you and your wife this time or something else?' And then they put in the reservation.

[ 00:16:03 ] What's important though is that their entire meal ordering process is also in the system when the waiter Or, server comes to your table, they review your profile, and so they'll greet the table right and they'll say 'Mr. Kaushal, you know, are you going to be having an unsweet tea with no lemon again or would you like something different? And then they'll say, 'Okay, I'm going to have a meal with no lemon again' and they'll say, 'They've got that.' Like what was your last experience? I've reviewed the thing. Well, number one, everybody at the table is so impressed; they're like, you must be a local! It's like, well, I've only been here once this experience journey was so big and obviously there's a lot more here than with our own company, we've got a.

[ 00:16:42 ] voice over Ip phone system we've obviously got an EMR like most companies one of the things that was really powerful for us is we thought about enhancements in 23 and 24 so just recently I said I want the experience to be in our own system which is the same as what we've got for our um my mobile system which is the same as what we've got for our um our app and I’ve had the experience that when somebody calls here there's a screen pop on whoever's answering the phone and you know who you're talking to if they're in our system client caregiver referral source family member whatever and we made it happen you know through a lot of um hard work to get it to that point today if you call senior solutions homecare and you're already in our system when somebody answers the phone they already have

[ 00:17:18 ] your profile pulled up and so they can get to work like are you calling about your schedule is you know what I’m looking at it right now there's none of this like hold on let me find you can you spell your name again that kind of stuff but just as in that's a like maybe a good one to kick off of theirs it's not just about reading and being exposed to these things the true magic in this would be you've got to then process it and say what part of this could we put in our System or as an enhancement, and it may take you two years to get it done, and that's okay. You just have to put it on your radar of these are things to be striving towards, and I were talking about it before, just how tight margins are.

[ 00:17:59 ] No one's a stranger to that concept, but at scale, you break it down by minute. I imagine you're breaking it down by second like you said on those phone calls, you know. It can be 10, 20, 30 seconds to get a conversation rolling, and you could cut down on 30 seconds that goes a long way when the call volume is hundreds if not thousands of calls every single day. So, uh, great, great example, and like you said, you Know this restaurant, look at the innovation, look at the optimization of every part of the process, and how applicable that is to home care. There are so many workflows, so many processes. How do we drill into every single one and look for time savings and efficiencies? Yes, it takes time.

[ 00:18:45 ] I love what you just said, and I think that's a great point. And I think that's a great point that it could take two years to optimize one process extremely well, but if it you know if it's worth it, if it has the ROI, you know it's worth the effort to go down those paths. So, let's keep going. You've prepared a few you know decisions that you've made over the Years in your business that have shaped the company, that have shaped your people, that have shaped your mission; and so, I'm really curious to hear you know what you've prepared. What were some of these like altering decisions that you've made, uh, over the lifespan of your company? Yeah absolutely, and I will say I think what happens is when you ask somebody like me about decisions I'm probably not going to do as good of a job as explaining all of it; so, some of you may have questions.

[ 00:19:33 ] I would encourage you; I know Miriam's going to use the Q&A box and the chat area; so please drop in stuff if you want me to clarify. More so, the first one I would tell you is around positioning of the company. It's a lot of work and it's a lot of work and it's a lot of it sounds like such a little it's a big decision, but it's a small thing I had to do early on is just go, who are we? And are we going to try to be um? Go back to the restaurant world here for a second: are we trying to be like the Applebee's of food service or are we trying to be Ruth Chris, and there's a certain expectation that you also deliver.

[ 00:20:07 ] I think what we knew the little decision for my side was that we would never be able to compete with somebody who was looking for a really high-volume business in the early Days we only had so many caregivers, I only had so many staff; me personally, I only had so much time on my own plate. And if you remember from last week, talked about how many relationships can you truly manage? So, we'll tell you a small decision that was made: was I had to be very conscious about what if they say yes. So, if I go into Vanderbilt Hospital and I say, 'I would love a staffing contract with you all to staff, you know, CNAs or nurses or whatever' - which some people love that business; the danger there was, what if Vanderbilt goes, 'Yes'?

[ 00:20:53 ] We would, and we need 14 people for every holiday for the next, you know, six months. And you go, 'Oh no,' like That's not what we are built for, it's not exactly what we want to do, I think. For us, um, when I think about who all was really involved in that conversation as well, it was at every turn we've brought in our leadership and we've brought in our leadership team, and we've always said, 'Hey, how are we positioning ourselves like at this stage maybe to uh help bury the lead here in some way? I can tell you we're a highly technology-forward business which you've probably caught on to um, and when we say technology, it is we think that by playing with multiple payers is one of the differentiators for our brand; we like to work with Medicaid, it.

[ 00:21:42 ] Makes sense in our state, so for anybody that's about to poop on that, I mean right. It depends on the state, it depends on the reimbursement, it depends on the margins, but in Tennessee, it makes sense. Um, we want to be able to say we are as sophisticated as you are at the managed care level, all right. And then the other is that we're really high on customer service, and so when you combine those three things for us, like the decision there is if we have said that, then we have to deliver on it. So, a lot of our future modeling, our investment of time and energy, um, our financially backing up those type of maneuvers is what I would overarching. Call just positioning, and by the way, you don't have to stay in that lane forever.

[ 00:22:23 ] I think it's one of those where you go, 'be honest with people.' I'll give you an example: early days when we were pitching our services, when I was pitching our services right, we didn't have a big team at the time, um, we purposely went in and would ask for referrals from the typical sources a home health uh, you know, nurse, charge plan or whatever. And I would tell them my ideal client; I didn't say 'just send us anybody' and that takes, I think one sales training: you have to be really comfortable doing that making it sound like you're not cherry picking and all. Of it, but I remember saying multiple times: 'we just really want to do a good job’, and this is how you know the kind of client we can do a really good job with; this is what kind of situation we can really excel with.

[ 00:23:12 ] And when you position yourself really well, I think you'll really talk that through and give the other person a vision of that. We also told caregivers: right, we are heavily focused on compliance; we're very big on professionalism. Um, when you know anything's going to happen here's things you can expect from us, and here's things that we expect from you. Once again, it just comes back to this little decision of saying what's Our positioning going to be some people might describe that as a brand, and go, what does your brand represent today as it sits, and for many years prior to this? Anyone who has worked with us will tell you, good or bad, exactly the brand of Senior Solutions.

[ 00:24:01 ] So give you an example; the same thing is a double-edged sword, um, for example, we're very big on process, and so, for us, clocking in and out as a caregiver is very important. We have caregivers who have been in and out for a long time, and they're... we have worked here for many years, who go, 'You're the only company that is this strict about clocking in and out,' and that's okay because we also...' Payroll faster than anybody else, we bother them less than anybody else. We have more documentation from them than anybody else. It feels comfortable for them. Cannot tell you the hundreds, if not thousands, of caregivers over the years who have left our company because they go, 'I do not want to, you know, be working under this hive and expectation.' Which is after five minutes of me not clocking in, you're going to call me.

[ 00:24:48 ] If you know like I didn't turn in the time sheet on time, you're going to push my payroll to the next payroll period. What you allow is certainly what you're going to get. But once again it goes to positioning and Brand, it sounds like a very simple thing to say, the execution of it, the ripple effect off of that is incredible. And I would just say the integrity and accountability that's required to keep that up is really tough sometimes. I mean, you get to a point where you go, 'Oh, I really like this caregiver, but you know they're just not very professional.' Once again, it's like, what are we positioning ourselves for? We have to hold to those standards as much as we can, yeah.

[ 00:25:29 ] So, I want to play kind of devil's advocate here for a second, in terms of maybe like a referral source. You mentioned just like this high standard and expectation, I'm assuming at some point, there's been a time when you've maybe overpromised and underdelivered, and that's when you're like, 'Oh, I'm not going to be able to do that.' It could be in regard to staffing, or you know whatever it may be. But how did that shake out because I'm assuming like you said, positioning and brand can evolve, quality can improve, but there was probably a time where you know you said early on that Vanderbilt example, you know you said yes, what you know what really happens if you couldn't, you know so that's a really good question.

[ 00:26:08 ] I will tell you this, I; we had service delivery failures before we learned very Quickly overpromising was not the thing to do, and almost in everything our training today is that we go through 10 ways right to talk about the same thing and make sure we're not overpromising. So even at this moment now, if we take an intake call and there's a referral on the phone and someone says, 'I need care right now', our answer to them is going to be 'We can get you in the system, we can get the process started.' We can't make any promises; it all depends on our staff availability. So there's always this like footnote that we're very forward with of saying: 'We may not be able to do the thing that you want', and I know you think we have a warehouse Full of caregivers that just show up every day and they wait to be told, like hey, you know, like I got something for you, and it just, it doesn't work that way.

[ 00:27:04 ] The way we back it up, I think, is also to have a lot of explanation on the front end to say things like, 'We hire less than one percent of all of our applicants.' Well, how can that be done? And I think that's a really good question. And I think that's a really well... it's not just that our standards are high. You have a lot of people that apply; number one, so they're not all qualified candidates. But from our side, when staffing is the biggest burden, our commitment is to high-quality services, so We're unapologetic when things are not going well, now does that make it easier, no right? Like Mrs. Smith doesn't have services, what are you going to do, and the daughter's upset. We get it, and so we just got to kind of work through it, I think there's other operational things that we can do that are going to make it easier for us to, that can happen, like maybe the manager is going to have to go fill in, maybe we have to pull somebody from another shift, whatever that looks like.

[ 00:27:50 ] But I will tell you the number of times recently this may be a maturity thing that we have over promised has gotten to almost none, and we have some pretty big meetings. As well, I mean, you can imagine. We're one of the largest providers in our state; we have a really large geography. We're also desired by the managed care companies and people who want to do pilot programs. And we're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. We're, and we have gotten really good at saying, 'Listen, these aren't excuses; we're just going to lay out the playing field for you really quickly, so you understand the sandbox it.' We turn it into an educational experience; we turn it into an opportunity for them to understand our business a little bit more.

[ 00:28:32 ] You'd be surprised how many people that are in government. In government positions that are doing contracts, like Medicaid for in our state, it's called 10 Care, and we're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to understand all the employment laws right, and they go well. I don't understand why you can't just have them work 60 hours. I mean, they would want to get paid that, and I'm like, yeah, now you got overtime, and you don't pay us for overtime, and the margins are already very thin. There's that aha moment for them to go, oh, now it's not just your company; these are all companies. You're like, yeah, um, and so I think there's an opportunity when you Talk about it that way, saying that's how professional we are, and I think that's a great way to say that's how professional we are, and I think right, that's our level of standard.

[ 00:29:17 ] And I would tell you going back to the restaurant piece is: if you go in and say 'Hey, you know I am highly allergic to nuts. Can you make this dessert without, you know, peanuts in it?' Don't you want that restaurant to just actually tell you ‘Hey, that's not possible'? Like we don't have that possibility. It's better for us to not be able to serve you than do the wrong thing here and totally screw this up, and you go on whatever right like nobody wants the ambulance showing. Up, you're not going to be able to serve you then do the wrong thing here to the restaurant and so I almost look at the quality of the business is how honest you are with your business practices yeah so

[ 00:29:54 ] I'm curious on the client level and the caregiver level you mentioned these maybe like footnotes or disclaimers that you're very transparent about does that translate to guarantees, I know that's kind of a topic in the industry of do you have guarantees what's your take on that do you all have them what do they look like the only guarantee we have is a satisfaction guarantee and so I'll lay it out if anybody wants to like use it. I don't know how amazing it is, which is we have said that if you are dissatisfied with services, let's talk about the client. For example, if you're dissatisfied with services, you can let us know and we will replace four hours of care by making an adjustment maybe a different caregiver, maybe a different time, maybe a do-over right at no cost.

[ 00:30:42 ] If at the second time that we've tried to do this to satisfy you, you are still unhappy, we will refund you know, whatever that shift was. What we don't do is like our guarantee isn't going to be your 24-7 client. You didn't like care now we're going to retro pay you back for the last 30 days so. we take things as like you know same thing we're going to talk about four hours of gap of time we're going to deal with four hours and we'll put at risk and are now going on close to 14 years of service I can count on you for that so I’m going to let you know what we're going to do and we're going to talk about four hours and we're going to talk about four hours and we're going to the number of times someone has called us

[ 00:31:17 ] on that and said hey I want to do the satisfaction guarantee and part of the reason is I think there's the customer that's really there for that customer who um cannot be satisfied you know like they are going to find Fault with no matter what you do, and it gives them an off ramp to go okay, hey here you go, we're going to credit you back, but obviously we're not meeting each other's expectations. What we find happens more often than not is that there are a lot of people who are not satisfied with what they're doing, and they're lacking trust and confidence on both parties that they say, 'hey I know you're doing the best you can, like this isn't really there's something wrong with the caregiver it's just we don't like her personality and her style so can we like pick somebody else, and we go sure, and they don't ask for a refund or something like'.

[ 00:32:04 ] That from the caregiver side, from a guarantee's perspective, anything the only thing we've ever guaranteed is we have a position called a lead caregiver. It is a certain number of caregivers in which we guarantee them a certain number of service hours a week, so 30 hours a week, no matter what. Because one, we think you're a great caregiver; we just don't know if we're going to have enough hours right away but we're willing to pay you to get you on the roster, keep you on the roster. There's a host of things you have to do you have to keep a uniform in your car; you need to be able to go to a shift if we call you with at least two hours' worth of Notice, you need to be available every other weekend in order to be in that program.

[ 00:32:43 ] When we say, guarantee they're going to get the 30 hours there's no question about it. Like well, we don't feel like it this week; I don't know what other guarantees people are making out there. I would tell you; no caregiver can guarantee you their availability, but they can tell you, 'You know, that's how it's going to go.' Our guarantees are that we will process payroll if you've done everything you were supposed to do, and we will get it out on time. We've never missed a payroll; I've missed many paychecks because, in the building phase, we've never missed a payroll, we've never missed a payroll, we've never missed a that's not what's important. You got to pay your folks and make sure it happens. We knew that.

[ 00:33:18 ] That's what other companies were known for doing is like they would show up to the office nobody's there; they can't get them to pick up the phone on payroll day because they know it's going to be screwed up. Our differentiator was just being a real business, right? Like, process payroll the way it was supposed to happen. For those of you who've struggled with maybe cash flow issues, you got a billing policy. Problem not a payroll funding issue. You've got to be able to do that. You've got to be able to do that. You've got to be able to do that. You've got to be able to do that. You've got to be able to, a little one. I guess we can go into another one which is we are mandatory ACH or credit card. We bill every Monday for the prior seven days.

[ 00:33:54 ] If your credit card or ACH fails on Monday, you do not get services on Tuesday until you fund your account; like we are not meant to be a creditor, we're not a banking service we don't want to have a really big accounting team, you know our accounting team spends the majority of their time on a payroll so we've got to be able to do that, so we've got to be dealing with invoices and vendors and things like that. Client-side should be a no-brainer - you pay, or you pay ahead; and we basically bill on Monday, we're funded by Thursday, the payroll process is Friday it's like clockwork. Does that mean no paper checks? No paper checks. We'll have four to five because somebody closes their bank account, they don't let us know or something like that but even those are mailed out and usually they're mailed out with a

[ 00:34:48 ] cash card; we just go, hey, we notice you don't have one here's the envelope this is where it's going to get funded if you Want to put it somewhere else, you can call the 800 number on the back of the card; we don't, we no longer do paper checks. Yeah, incredible, incredible, so let's go down this kind of billing path. Yeah, you're mentioning like a billing policy, I'm assuming your billing policy has evolved over time at some point you were probably accepting paper checks, just talk about yeah, some of the decisions that have shaped you know what's gotten you to your billing process and efficiency today. I think the biggest one is that we had like two or three 24-7 clients and those rack up pretty quickly; and what we found is that we were slowing down.

[ 00:35:31 ] Billing because Mrs. Jones loves to write her own checks, and I may have misunderstood Miriam you're talking about paper checks from a billing side, you know. Mrs. Jones loves to write her own checks out, and so by the time we mail her the invoice because she doesn't do email right, so we mail her the invoice then she writes the check by the time we get it and put it in our system, we're ready to send another invoice, and now we're giving her an invoice that says you still have a balance and all this stuff. We had kind of a decision to be made for us is that what was going to make us a great employer where we couldn't pay more than any other.

[ 00:36:07 ] Option for a worker to work somewhere we knew we were going to have to pay more, and we knew we were going to have to pay more and we that we could pay faster. So, this is even before things like tap check or, you know, any of those payment, early wage access stuff. I'm just talking about getting to a point where even doing a bi-weekly payroll shouldn't have been as stressful as it was. And we, it was, I mean, we, I didn't have a bunch of money just sitting aside. So, when you've got two or three 24/7 clients that owe you in totality, like $30, $40 grand, and you've got payroll to process that $30, $40 grand is really needed right now. We grandfathered the program in because, you know, Mrs. Jones just loves her checks.

[ 00:36:48 ] And well, when I signed up for you and it just takes time, but every net new client was on ACH and credit card, then we would do a price increase for Mrs. Jones and say, oh, but we'll honor your rate if you sign up for credit card and ACH. And so, as we start to pivot, we at this point any private pay client, we no longer take any paper check of any kind with one caveat, which is or exception. If somebody wants to just pay like a month ahead of services, because that's just that's how they like to do it, which is fine. Even long-term care insurance, we do not bill long-term care insurance directly. The client pays us, but we will submit billing to long-term care so they can get reimbursed.

[ 00:37:36 ] It's that kind of, I think from mechanics of the business, understanding cashflow is so critical and is usually the source of stress for a lot of owners and companies. We knew the negative ripple effect of having a poor cashflow would be now you're messing with people's paychecks. On the other side for the clients, they're like, hey, your invoice doesn't make sense to me. I know I've mailed you a check yesterday and now I have an invoice that says I'm two payments behind. We just wanted to make all that a lot smoother. And honestly, we just leaned into our technology. We're like, oh, the technology already does it. I mean, we weren't doing anything special. It's just, we had to get comfortable with the idea of saying, this is just how we do business.

[ 00:38:21 ] Yeah. I want to ask about kind of the backend structure of your billing. Billing, like you said, is, you know, kind of the backbone cashflow is, you know, like what you need at the end of the day and billing. Is a headache for most agencies, small, large, everything in between. Like I just hear so often just these, these struggles with billing. And to me, it seems like, you know, you put this process in place, and it can kind of run itself. So, I'm just curious what, what you would chalk up, like the strengths of your billing process to be like on the backend, when you think of like how your billing is structured, what are like the core pillars that really make everything run smoothly? I think first of all is we,

[ 00:39:15 ] you're, you know, like there are two main principles for that and it's always been true: calling the fine line, calling the bad Sobieski, saying to them, they can't do this. So when we, when our 47 years at Epic and Cisco, that's when like we were, so we're, you know, we started leading a company in a way to try to make sure that our customers didn’t, somebody and then you’re like, the other time money goes away when I have to hire people to my job. So I feel that’s where it starts for us. Not doing so much when it comes to billing slash payroll, which by the way, so connected, it's the same thing. So, too, in my view, going to things like you must, as a requirement of employment at Senior Solutions, have a smartphone is, we think that like, you know, I got caught up myself in this idea of like, nobody has a smartphone. Oh, our best caregivers are older and they don’t have a smartphone. And this whole thing got debunked for me in my mind, the moment we sent out a survey and just asked, like, do you have a smartphone?

[ 00:40:09 ] 90% of our staff had a smartphone. And then it’s kind of, it dawned on me, it's like, everyone's playing on their phones, right? Like somebody's got Candy Crush on their phones. You can be, gosh, you know, in your 40s and 50s and 60s, our clients have Candy Crush on their phones, right? So, when you think about it in that lens and you go, there's really no reason. Now, COVID, really propelled that forward. Lots of places were going contactless. They were doing kind of the device piece was so part of how they do business. And you also have to remember, what are the other things our caregivers might want to do? You can call the gig economy, but I got to tell you, you can go work at Taco Bell and guess how you apply?

[ 00:40:52 ] You got to get on your phone. They don't have a, you know, a thing that you do in the place. They don't even take your paper application anymore. How does everybody do their HR update for their forms? How does everybody do their HR update for their forms? How does everybody do their HR update for their forms? How does everybody see their pay stubs? It's all electronic on their phones. I think we realized if we're going to be in that environment, unlike a hospital where you can go down to the accounting office, I guess, and get, you know, a copy of your stub, we are in a decentralized environment as work. So, smartphones are going to be very much required. Can't emphasize that enough because I think there's a lot of people who are listening right now that go, oh, you know, I, that would work for some of our caregivers.

[ 00:41:30 ] It has to work for almost all, and it will. You just have to make that decision. Because the caregiver’s clock in and out electronically, we have a high compliance rate. 93% last I looked are clocking in and out using EVV, electronic visit verification. Because they do that, we then were able to do things like offer that early wage income, early wage access. We now today use TapCheck after using many different things. And so, when somebody clocks out, they can truly go into the application overnight and advance themselves money if they want that. So, they can get kind of a pre-check. But beyond that, the other compliance piece we do internally is, you know, doing payroll and billing is not as hard when you think about the fact that this morning when I came into the office, by about 9 or 10 a.m., why would I, as an owner or leader in my business, not expect every shift from yesterday to be accounted for?

[ 00:42:40 ] It either happened or it didn't. Like, right, we don’t need to do these, like, people are time traveling to get stuff done. The shift’s either complete or not complete. Somebody either clocked in or they didn’t clock out. Because our expectation is pretend like we’re doing billing and payroll every day, so we take it in small chunks, it’s fresh on our mind, you can call a caregiver. You can call a caregiver. You can call a caregiver. You can call a caregiver. You can call the client. You can get a sense of reality and truth from yesterday. Our expectation is to have everything reconciled for yesterday by 10 a.m. Now, for your business, right, depending on how many people you have to support and what's going on, that might be 11 a.m. But gosh, push yourselves. Nobody's having lunch, right?

[ 00:43:23 ] Nobody's going to lunch until we decide. How many ever shifts was it? 100 shifts? All right, well, by the time caregivers are super annoyed that you're calling them, you're not going to be able to call them. You're not going to be able to call them. You're not going to be able to call them. You're not going to go there or write them up or doing discipline and saying, 'Hey, you didn't clock in and out of your shift appropriately yesterday. That's why I'm calling you. We've got to get you doing this.' In my eyes, also, it's too late, right? You should have known five minutes after they were supposed to be there that they weren't there. The client probably called you and told you they weren't there. At the end of their shift, you can't just walk out the door and hope for the best. We're calling you because you should have clocked out five minutes ago and you still are on shift.

[ 00:44:00 ] What's going on? That type of thing is so powerful. Compliance, professionalism. Going back to the restaurant industry here for a minute, at the end of the night, they pull all their checks, and they go, have all the checks been paid? They reconcile the drawer. This is just good business mechanics. So, in reality, by 10 or 11 o'clock every day, yesterday is cleared. That means billing and payroll for you. By the time Monday rolls around, we're really just working on the Saturday-Sunday shifts because maybe we weren't around for that. By Monday afternoon, we can bill all week for last week. So, send it out. ACH and credit card processes immediately. And then payroll is ready by Tuesday afternoon because if billing's done and payrolls attached to that, then payroll's also ready to go.

[ 00:45:00 ] We're now on weekly payroll. Which, by the way, for those of you who can manage it and your cash flow is right and so on, one of the best benefits as an employer you can provide for our industry is getting caregivers a weekly check. They need it. I am a believer; you could continue to throw out numbers for what we should pay caregivers and they deserve every bit of it. It's the economics of what can clients afford and so on. But when you are in a business in which you've got caregivers that are working 20, 30 hours, they might have two and three jobs. If you're the employer that pays them every week on time and correctly, when you need a shift filled, they're going to come work for you.

[ 00:45:41 ] They're not going to come pick up that shift and move their life around for the company who's like, well, we'll put it on the next pay period. And, oh, I never got your time sheet because it was scanned in upside down or whatever nonsense is happening. Or you have to come to the office to pick up your check. You make those kinds of things frictionless for them, that is customer service for them too. I love this level of specificity. And I just looked at the clock. I don't know how it's been 45 minutes. I thought we were like 15 minutes in. This is like the first time that's happened. I want to ask one more question before we get to something else. This clocking in and out issue, I hear it every single day.

[ 00:46:21 ] And to me, it's like you're saying, it's this granularity. We talk about like plateaus. We see businesses kind of stall at 2 million, maybe at 5 million. I think it comes back to this clocking in and out. You're clocking in and out policy because downstream that affects billing and payroll. And if you don't have your act together on those two things, you can't be like a successful thriving business. So, you've referenced a couple of times like a really strict clocking in and out policy. Can you just like download that really quickly so we understand what that means exactly? Yeah. So, it's basic level. You have to have a smartphone. You have to have our apps. You have to basically; we also now do not call us. And ask about your schedule.

[ 00:47:02 ] Log into the app. There's a soft way. So, you also have to remember, there's the brand-new caregiver that needs to learn your system. So, we do a lot of e-learning in the beginning so that they understand how the systems work. Then we coach and mentor. So, they go to their training visits. They have to clock in and out. They go through their first billable shift. And they have to clock in and out. And in each one of these, we document if they had an issue or not. So, I have to tell you, the caregiver needs to learn how to do that. And the caregiver who's been on with you for six months, who all of a sudden one time ever forgets to clock in, that's a whoopsie moment. You just go, oh, you know, oh, I walked in.

[ 00:47:42 ] The client needed care. And like, I just was having a bad day. My phone was dead. You can tolerate that, right? So be soft, be realistic. People are people. But the caregiver who never clocks in or it is like pulling teeth to get them to clock in, at some point, you have to say, either you can comply or like, I'm going to write you up again. But I have to tell you, if you can't clock in and out, this is so important for what we do. One, it's documentation. Two, fraud and abuse protection. Three, there's some labor law around it as well for timekeeping, making sure you're doing what you're supposed to. If a caregiver is disgruntled because your expectation is that they're going to clock in and out of work, there's at some point you go, hey, this is just a baseline thing.

[ 00:48:30 ] What else are they? And I got to tell you, if you're not shocked by that, what about the caregiver who's like, 'I don't think I have to wash my hands every time I first walk into a client's home. That's hand hygiene. I don't think I should have to do X, Y, and Z. I don't want to follow the care plan. There are actions I think that we all take that make staff more powerful. One thing that's unique to our business, which in maturity or time you can get to as a company, is that's how we bonus. And that's also how we do performance-based bonuses. So, we can, every month, we look back at the prior 30 days of a caregiver's shifts. They have two 'whoopsie' moments that they're allowed.

[ 00:49:15 ] If they have missed a clock in or out more than twice in the last 30 days, they do not get a performance bonus. They are out. Why? Because it costs us money. Now I had to go call and confirm. Now I had to go manually do stuff in the office. When caregivers do things that keep you efficient, so you updated your file without manual intervention. You clocked in and out the way you should. You requested time off using the process that's supposed to be done. Those caregivers that are excelling at doing the things that they should do; I think the best thing you do is you reward those kinds of activities. And you go, hey, great job. Then we send out a newsletter and give a list of all the people that got their performance bonuses.

[ 00:49:58 ] And it makes the other caregiver feel like they're doing the right thing. And then the other caregivers go, 'Why didn't I get it?' It's like, oh, talk to your supervisor and they'll tell you. Yeah. Like, you know how every week magically on Saturday and Sunday, you can't clock in and out right for some reason. And we all know what's happening is they're showing up 10, 15 minutes late. They're leaving half an hour early. And what they know is if they don't do anything, you'll pay them for the whole shift. That's the kind of stuff we don't want to get involved with. Okay. I didn't mean to make this all about compliance, but I just, I hear this time and time again. And so, I just, was so curious, you know, what this looks like for you all.

[ 00:50:32 ] We've just got about 10 minutes left. Can I know you've got a list of ideas and thoughts. So maybe you pick and choose like where, where to take this next 10 minutes of another decision you want to share with the group. Yeah. And I wouldn't say we're totally derailed, right? I would tell you like the little decisions are you're going to make your billing process really tight. That sounds like a little decision, but so important who all has got to participate in that. Oh my gosh, everybody in your company, the salesperson cannot say 'like', oh yeah, you don't have to do ACH or credit card. Um, your payroll person can't say like, oh, that's okay. You just keep, you know, not clocking in and out.

[ 00:51:06 ] So this actually, once you rip the Band-Aid off and you make these little decisions and I would tell you, you start by saying, do one thing at a time, right? Um, how we change a little decision about our billing policy is that we said, okay, all new customers will do it this way. We'll start to grandfather some older customers. Then when we go to price increases, we'll create another opportunity. And now today, we really don't have anybody grandfathered in at all because of just time. And we've influenced almost every client to go into the category that we like with that. Same thing with our caregivers. You know, did we, the moment we said we're going to be really strict on EVV, did we go, 'we're going to fire you when you don't clock in and out'?

[ 00:51:49 ] Right? That's wrong. What we did do is we challenged caregivers and said, 'Hey, you have a smartphone, you clock in and out correctly.' Tell you what, we will make you eligible for a raise because every caregiver wants that. And maybe they were going to anyway, quarter here, 50 cents there. And you say for those caregivers who clock in and out correctly, 80% of the time in the month of [blank], we will be doing, and you've been with us for longer than six months. We're going to give you a rate increase. Oh, well now I've got something to shoot towards and I do want to participate that type of thing. Um, I would say, you know, another one that's really been big with us, which, which kind of follows all of this is our use of technology.

[ 00:52:32 ] It's not just a little decision. I would tell you the little decision is to say, we're going to be technology friendly. And what I mean by that is that we are okay with making investments in technology, but it needs to perform for us. I can tell you without a benefit of doubt, we've been really big experimenters. We love the idea of going like, oh, let's try it. Let's do a small, little pilot or test. Let's see if this will make a difference for us. The big thing for kind of the decision internally that we make is to say, it's either going to work or we're going to decide very quickly after a really, you know, the good old college try that we gave it its best shot.

[ 00:53:14 ] We're also going to sunset this and say, it doesn't work. The other element is that we don't have any piece of technology, I'm including our phones. Um, I am surprised I meet a lot of home care owners and I'll use the phone. I'll use the phone. I'll use the phone. I'll use the phone. It's a really good example of this. They have a voice-over-IP system, which just means that your phone is fully electronic. And if they've gotten that far, they've never pulled a report. They've never gone into the system and said like, well, how much time does Kunu spend on the phone versus Miriam? How many calls did she take versus somebody else didn't. And I think those kinds of things are really the difference of whether you're fully electronic or not. And I think that's fully utilizing a platform that you've brought in or not.

[ 00:54:00 ] And by the way, you can't do it all day one. I mean, we kind of, we stage it in and go, okay, in the very beginning, we're going to do implementation and training. Cool. By month blank, 60 days, 90 days, we want to be in the reports. What can we figure out? Is this giving us better business intelligence? We ask that of everything that we use. I'll give you another example. Our HRIS system, the system we use, for payroll processing, even in that, like we want to run reports and statistics out of it, not just how many people did you hire, how many hours and so on. We're looking at, there are some really cool, we use Paylocity. There are some really cool reports in there. Like, there's a turnover indicator.

[ 00:54:44 ] Gosh, who cares about turnover? Well, definitely our industry, right? Like we love that kind of information, but we're looking for predictors. Like, is there a lot of turnovers under this one manager? Is there a lot of turnovers in a specific area? Is there a lot of turnovers? And what's the comparison of that to training? Maybe we're getting a lot of caregivers who are uncomfortable being here, and how it's informed our decisions is gotten to a point where we go, 'Hey, as a company, there's nothing scarier to us than having an under-trained staff member who's put out into, I don't even want to call it the wild. It's they're put out into performing services. And they don't have enough information to be comfortable. And red flag, little wisdom here for you.

[ 00:55:34 ] The caregiver who tells you they've been a CNA for 15 years and have all this experience, having them go through an hour or two of some CEUs isn't going to be the end of it. They just don't want to do it. We have caught more bad behavior and bad skills. They're not bad people. It's just the last five, five companies they worked for their form of training was, 'Hey guys, when you walk into a home, make sure you wash your hands. Everybody got it. Got it. Good. All right. We're going to sign you off of having the skillset, which now, right. We know about infection control. We know about things like how do I deal with a diabetic patient?

[ 00:56:13 ] How do I deal with somebody who has COPD giving them that training in a lot of early on has produced a better product for us, reduce complaints so that when the client says, 'Hey, this caregiver showed up and doesn't seem like she knows what she's doing.' We can say, oh, we have proof of the fact that they've gotten a bunch of training, but we are happy to send out a trainer or a mentor, somebody else to work with this person. I think the technology piece can't be understated. You know, I'm by the way, this is a shameless plug, but I'm so interested in what Careswitch is doing with the AI, you know, piece of it. I think it's that level of innovation.

[ 00:56:56 ] The scariest thing for me, I would tell you for home care in general is for any of us to think that any technology, any workflow, anything that we used in the last two to three years is what's going to be the difference maker in the next two to three. I think innovation is speeding up. I think how we use these things is big. And it goes back to what I said earlier. The little decision is you've got to open your mind, just be open to the idea, that hey, we may do this totally differently. And one of the things that I think we'll see give you a little futurist type of mentality here from last week's session that we did together, I think managing relationships is going to be really big.

[ 00:57:42 ] I think where ChatGPT AI, all that's going to go is we will get to a point in the not too distant future in which caregivers, because there's a lot of them and very few of us, will interact with your brand slash company in some ways in which they are okay with the fact that it wasn't actually a person, but they still need the information. So, I do think a caregiver, instead of calling you might text your company portal and say, 'Hey, when's my shift on Saturday? Can I move it to 10 instead of nine? Cause I've got to do something for my child.' And the system will at least just say, 'Hey, your shift is at blank o'clock.

[ 00:58:25 ] I'm going to leave a message for your scheduler so that they can make sure they make that adjustment.' I think just that little thing feels so big. When you look at the number one complaint of caregivers is they don't feel like they get great communication from the company. So, when I look at challenges, I don't think AI is going to do the influence I'm not looking for, for AI to do is, you know, process payroll faster. Although that would be cool. I do think it's about managed relationships communication. Can you get my phone not to ring? As much, or when I'm on the phone, I'm having a lot of really deep conversations instead of just surface-level, surface-level, surface-level. Where's the walker? Where's the medication? Yeah, exactly.

[ 00:59:06 ] I mean, I'll kind of just like, yeah, tease a little bit, but that's what we're seeing as well. How do we reduce the low-yield tasks, the low-yield phone calls that free up your team's time to focus on the deep conversations on the people on the one-to-one interactions. That's, that's the power. That's the power of AI isn't replacing people, not replacing, you know, even key processes. It's replacing and reducing all of the low-yield minutiae-based tasks that are happening in home care. And so, and I love what you said about, you know, even what we've adopted in the last two to three years, we're going to see a very large shift in the next two to three years. I think if the pandemic's taught us anything is a lot can change in a very short period of time.

[ 00:59:53 ] You know, we're already hearing that probably G.P., we'll be coming out this summer, the innovation and the speed at which innovation is happening is so fast and it's startling in some regards, but it's also exhilarating in some regards, the labor shortage, you know, inflation, there are things that we've never seen before. And so, we need to rely on technology to make up as much of the difference as it can, as it can. So, I love like the futurist context here of, you know, care switches at the forefront of it. It should be on all of our minds, you know, how do we do this? How do we do this? How do we do this? How do we do this? How do we make technology an ally? How do we use it to our benefit?

[ 01:00:29 ] How do we shape technology to do and to be what we want it to be rather than, you know, kind of like stiff arming it and, and trying to avoid it for as long as possible. I want to ask maybe just one, one question about tech stack volume. Someone kind of asked me the question, like, when do you bring on all these technology partners? I don't know if you can kind of download like the whole timeline, but you know, where you do use maybe three to four tools very early on today are using 20 tools. Like I'm just curious, like the evolution of technology and even just like from a volume perspective, how many tools are you using today to manage a business of your scale? Yeah, that's a really good question.

[ 01:01:05 ] I will tell you. So, if you remember my background a little bit, I came from the private duty nursing world and that exposed me to the fact they had a really decent or archaic EMR that was helping them build. That's basically all it did was billed Medicare for a Medicaid for certain services. They needed clinical coding and stuff like that. But I saw how this pretty robust company had such a lack of efficiency. So, I think they looked at me as going, yeah, we know that you're the administrator here, but I kind of turned into like the chief technology strategy person and paint a picture for you. We had nurses that were opening their laptop, clocking in, closing their laptop, and then would do the rest of their day.

[ 01:01:53 ] So I think, fast forward 14, 15 years now, and I would tell you for us, early days, I knew we would have to have a real payroll system because you don't want to screw that up. As an employer, there is a ton of liability that comes from you're doing payroll wrong. My kind of operation mentality is I really don't want to invite the regulators, auditors, and other people in. So, the best way you do that is you just go, we're going to always be above board. So, if there's a way to do it more professionally, efficiently, better, compliant, so on. So, in the very beginning, we had three systems. We had a scheduling platform, we had QuickBooks online, and then we had ADP, like their most basic version of payroll services.

[ 01:02:41 ] I was functional on those three. And I think for sure, I needed them no matter what. You need the three big key pieces to be working. We operated for a pretty long time without a dedicated CRM. And I will say that's one of my regrets is I wish we would have brought in a CRM strategy a lot earlier than we did. But if for those of you that have been around for a while, you know that no matter how big or small the CRM is, like Constant Contact or HubSpot, or, you know, that may not have been even out there at that time. But you almost have like, it's a second job for you. You got to go not only buy that, but you got to really have people who can work it and make it happen.

[ 01:03:27 ] And I think the challenge is if you don't have enough people that can master those things. So, what we did was that we found like, for example, a marketing agency that would manage our CRM because we had to let somebody else do it for us type scenario. Today, where we sit for technologies is, I think our application, our stack of technology has come to be more because we've taken the basic level of doing things and said, 'Our need to go so much deeper in those areas is so high that our scheduling software isn't doing enough of that, or something else.' We still have QuickBooks online; we still have a scheduling platform. Our HR system now is Paylocity. So, it's an enterprise-grade platform that does a lot.

[ 01:04:13 ] I'll tell you; we actually have less technology stack today than we did five years ago. And the reason is five years ago, if you wanted to manage applications, you needed to have a lot of technology. So, you needed to have a lot of technology. So, you needed to have a separate ATS. If you wanted something to manage your onboarding paperwork, you need a separate e-documents thing. If you wanted something to manage your benefits program, you need a separate benefits manager. Today, like our HRIS system is one platform that happens to do all those things. So, we consolidated a lot of that work down. So, it's very robust. Our phone system in the beginning used to be like four phone lines from AT&T, when we had literally four home phone things at every desk. It was four desks.

[ 01:04:56 ] Today, we have a voice over IP system that can work on any phone anywhere in the world, you know, all the time, and is very, very robust. So, although it is a new technology stack, it's replacing something that was very basic in the past. The maturity of the business, I would just tell you this, there are versions of every technology out there that are meant for small businesses, all the way up to enterprise. And you can pay a lot of money, you can pay a lot of money, you can pay a little, almost free in some scenarios, and you can pay way too much. I tell you, we experienced, I bought the Ferrari of HubSpot and realized, like, we did not have the bandwidth of being able to drive that Ferrari. And so now we downgraded a lot to a CRM product that's highly customizable for us and is the right fit.

[ 01:05:46 ] And it's kind of something that we can all wrap our heads around. So, with all that said, I would just tell you, it doesn't matter, don't get caught up in how many technology applications do I have, or which one. Start rather with what problems are you trying to solve? If you spend a lot of time on the phone, and you know the phone burden in your business is a big deal, if you're going to spend a lot of time on the phone, at least get a really good phone system that you can then start doing things like, you know, transferring calls a little bit easier, scheduling certain call volumes. When a client calls in, that they go directly to their scheduler, and not just to every phone is ringing.

[ 01:06:29 ] So those are examples of some problems that you might try to solve through that technology. And start slow. Don't sign three- and five-year contracts, you know, like all the lessons learned in the mix. And then at the same time, we realized if we were going to scale as a business, we needed a really good learning management system; it's a good example. And to this day, we still have one. We're going on six years with it, and we feel good about it. It's Relias Learning. But the reason is, it's solving the problem for what we have as an issue. I can name multiple other learning management systems, which are all really good, have great content, and they're the perfect fit for someone else.

[ 01:07:10 ] I just happen to have a really high compliance need when it comes to Medicaid, and they solve one of those issues. So, I need to use that one. So, whatever you choose, be careful about don't buy the Ferrari. So, lesson number one. And number two would be, get the system you're comfortable with actually using. You know, just saying you have it's not enough. You got to use it, you got to drive it, and you got to use every, you know, element of it that it can do. Yeah, that's the term you use earlier was platform utilization. It's so easy as businesses scale to bloat that tech stack. Oh, we just need to have this, we should have this, even though those two systems do kind of the same thing. And there's overlap.

[ 01:07:51 ] I think that's what's key as a leader. And as you scale is to be really cognizant of platform utilization. Are you using 20% of the platform, 50% of the platform, 80% of the platform, like, just constant analysis of how much you're utilizing those platforms. And I love what you said, you know, there's, there's like enterprise packages, HubSpot's a great example. I think that's above and beyond, you know, most home care owners and operators. Yes, it exists. But if it's not fit for you and your needs and solving the problems that you have, you know, don't, don't, you know, have kind of that FOMO of going after having a full-fledged CRM system. And I'll use an example of like QuickBooks Online.

[ 01:08:28 ] We, over the last 14 years, we've actually often found QuickBooks experts, our CPA, we found other people, we're not asking them to work in the system, we asked them to optimize it. We're like, hey, like, here's the thing we're trying to solve. We have multiple locations. What's the best way to deal with that in QuickBooks Online without, you know, we would say, oh, you can't do it. Well, they just very quickly go, oh, there's a setting in here. And you can do classes. And then if you build out your budget this way, it's going to take some work, but then you'll get all the things that you want. Well, guess what we don't have? We don't have QuickBooks Enterprise. We don't need that. Right? From that side of bookkeeping, we're actually really simple.

[ 01:09:07 ] So, from a bloat perspective, to use your words, you get people who get these really big enterprise systems, and it's way too much, it's the Ferraris of the mix, where really what you needed was spend a little bit of money on somebody who knows how to use it. Sometimes it's the actual vendor. And just say, do you have? Do you have a QuickBooks expert that could help us just look at it and see if it could be better? A lot of times, if you have a bookkeeper in your business, as a good example, business office manager, whatever they are, you might be using that system to the level of understanding that that person has. And you just got to go, hey, this isn't personal. You're doing a great job.

[ 01:09:44 ] We're going to bring in someone else to look at this and maybe level this up. And we want you to work with them to really understand that. And you're going to keep it going. I think we all want some professional development. Our accounting team, which is three people at this point, they all continuously do QuickBooks certifications. And we pay for it. We pay for their time. And for those of you that go, 'oh, well, like, if I get them too knowledgeable, then what if they leave?' The old saying is, 'like, what if they stay and they don't get any of the new knowledge? Like, what did you accomplish?' Yeah, that's a really good call. It's not uncommon for the platform, the technology to reflect the person behind, you know, and that's not always the indicator that you're maximizing that technology.

[ 01:10:33 ] And yeah, it's no offense, like you said to the person. But it's just how do we dig in here and see what, where our gaps are and how we could be more efficient and where we could optimize. Kunu, this has been awesome. We have really just kind of found our way here. It's such a pleasure to talk to you. I think the day that you get into podcasting, I become irrelevant. So, keep me posted on that front. But thank you. Really, you've given so much good information the past two weeks. I wish I could interview every single week and we could dig into every little bit of operations in the business. But I encourage everyone to reach out to you. I know you're a busy guy, but you are so gracious with your time.

[ 01:11:15 ] So connect with Kunu on LinkedIn, shoot him an email, catch him at a conference. You know, don't hesitate to associate yourself with someone like Kunu. He is a wealth of knowledge. So, thank you for being here. Thank you for giving your time. I look forward to seeing you probably later this year at some conferences. And I hope you have a great rest of your weekend, great rest of this year. Thanks so much for the opportunity. And who knows, maybe I'll see you in the next season, right? So, we can do it again. Exactly. I'll take you up on that. No doubt. Thanks, everyone, for being here. Great, great session today. I'm really excited about some upcoming guests. We've got Jensen Jones. We've got Bob Roth. We've got Steven Tweed. We've got a lot of great content coming the next few weeks. So, continue to listen. We'll look forward to seeing everyone back again next week. Bye, bye for now. Take care.